Wounded Gazans are receiving care in Italy, but their future in the country is uncertain

In a community complex that once housed Rome’s central slaughterhouse, men and women holding infants leaned over platefuls of golden rice dotted with chicken, cashews and raisins, chatting and laughing, the squeals and commotion of children punctuating the festive atmosphere.

It was an evening near the end of Ramadan, and the people gathered were injured Palestinians and their family members who, over the past several months, had been evacuated in planes and on a ship from Gaza via Egypt to be cared for in Italy — the only European country to organize such help, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.

So far, the Italian Foreign Ministry has co-ordinated the evacuation of 156 Palestinians from Gaza. But both those evacuated and the NGOs trying to help them say last-minute planning on the part of the Italian government has led to confusion and isolation for evacuees cut off from their homeland and anxious about losing their Palestinian nationality and becoming permanent refugees.

Doaa, 28, sat in a wheelchair at a square table with her mother. With her left hand, she poured some juice into a plastic cup, before scooping up some humus with a triangle of pita bread.

Doaa, 28, left, sits in a wheelchair waiting to eat at an event for Gazan evacuees at a community centre in Rome. She lost a leg and a hand and miscarried when an Israeli airstrike hit her home and was brought to Italy in late January. Two of her four daughters were killed in the same strike. (Megan Williams/CBC)

Through a translator, Doaa, who did not want to give her last name because she feared that it might jeopardize her safety when she returned to Gaza, explained that she arrived in Italy aboard a military plane in late January after she lost her leg and right hand when the Israeli military bombed her family home in Gaza.

With quiet composure, she pulled out her cellphone and scrolled to a photo of two smiling girls.

“She has four daughters, and these two are deceased,” relayed Mamoun Barghouthi, a longtime member of Rome’s Palestinian community, who translated. “They were killed in the bombing. Doaa was five months pregnant and lost the child.”

Doaa learned only recently that her two other daughters and husband survived the bombing and are in Rafah, where hunger is widespread and, a UN report warned, famine is “imminent.”

Since March 10, Doaa has been treated at Rome’s Orthopedic Traumatology Centre.

Others at the gathering have similar stories.

Odah Al Kurdy, 30, with his leg in a cast and hobbling around on crutches, said he was an ambulance driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society when his leg was torn apart when an Israeli rocket hit his ambulance on Oct. 10.

“It hit us just as I was pulling out from rescuing a family,” said Al Kurdy. “Everyone was killed except me.”

Odah Al Kurdy, 30, an ambulance driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, was evacuated from Gaza to Italy through a humanitarian corridor in March. His leg was injured when an Israeli rocket hit his ambulance on Oct. 10, killing everyone in it but him. (Megan Williams/CBC)

Confusion, isolation, worry following evacuation

Doaa, Al Kurdy and the others are part of four groups of injured and sick Gazans and their relatives whose evacuation was co-ordinated by the Italian Foreign Ministry.

They include 58 gravely injured children, with another 42 children expected to be evacuated from Gaza over the next months, according to the ministry.

The medical care they’ve received in public and private hospitals throughout Italy has been excellent, according to Yousef Salman, a Palestinian surgeon who has worked in Italy for 50 years and heads the country’s Red Crescent Society.

But, he says, after people are released from hospital, the Christian NGOs and municipal governments tasked with looking after them struggle to accommodate them. Many live in subpar housing and have little access to the legal support to decide if they want to request asylum or not.

Yousef Salman, a Palestinian surgeon who has worked in Italy for 50 years and heads the Red Crescent in Italy, says while the medical care the evacuees receive has been excellent, once they leave the hospital, they are largely on their own. (Megan Williams/CBC)

“Unfortunately, the Italian government brought people here and then abandoned them,” Salman said.

While handing out packages of dates, he said the small local Palestinian community of several hundred is doing all it can to help.

“We fundraise, get them clothing, cellphones and numbers and help them with bureaucratic problems, but it’s a lot.”

A spokesperson for Italy’s Foreign Ministry says the assistance to the Palestinians is a joint effort among the health, defence and interior ministries and that it is not responsible for co-ordination. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said it has nothing to do with the evacuees.

Refugee status concern

Along with patchwork support, some of the Palestinians say they face another worrisome uncertainty: the Italian government is subtly pressuring them to accept refugee status in order to simplify the bureaucracy and make it easier for them to access social services after their three-month visa expires.

This strikes a deep fear among some of losing their Palestinian identity and remaining stuck as refugees abroad, not being able to return to Gaza.

“We are insisting that our nationality is a red line,” said Abeer Odeh, the Palestinian ambassador to Italy.

Most of the Palestinians came without passports, evacuated in a rush from Gaza to Egypt before boarding military planes to Rome, she said.

“The right of return of the Palestinians is very important to us,” Odeh said. “We don’t want to see more and more refugees. We want them to keep their passports, to get back to Gaza whenever they finish their treatment here and the conditions are right.”

Students take part in a rally in Rome in support of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip at the end of March. (Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse/The Associated Press)

When Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians poured into the EU, which granted them permission to stay for 90 days — with access to the health-care system and social services — and then apply for a “permit of stay” for temporary protection.

So far, no such permit of stay is being offered to the Palestinians, with the three-month visa for the first arrivals set to expire at the end of this month.

“We want the same conditions as the Ukrainians got,” said Mamoun Barghouthi, who represents the office of the observer of Palestine at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

“They need to find a temporary category for us. Our people are not escaping a government; we’re not refugees.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, meets with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in Rome last May. Some advocates would like to see the same kind of measures that Italy put in place to accommodate refugees from the war in Ukraine applied to Palestinians who have fled the war in Gaza. (Alessandra Tarantino/The Associated Press)

But Maria Quinto, a refugee co-ordinator at Sant’Egidio, one of the NGOs helping support the Palestinians, says about 40 per cent of the Gazans she’s dealt with in Rome have chosen to apply for asylum, if reluctantly.

“They’re struggling to decide what to do — to ask for asylum, to join family members in other countries or to return to Gaza,” she said.

Under the Geneva Convention, refugee status does not have to be a permanent designation and can be undone, she said.

Italy’s shifting alliances

Italy was one of the first Western governments to establish relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1980 and, historically, was a strong supporter of the Palestinian right to self-determination, recognizing Palestine as a state in 2015.

While considered neutral regarding Palestinian-Israeli relations, Italy’s foreign policy has shifted toward Israel, to which it supplies arms. In a rare show of unity, in February, the Italian parliament approved an opposition motion to request an immediate ceasefire in Gaza while also reiterating support for Israel.

A Palestinian girl and her brother being evacuated to Italy from Gaza look out of a bus window on their way to board a military aircraft in Cairo in February. At least 58 children injured in the war have been brought to Italy. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Along with many other countries, Italy cut off funding to UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, after Israel accused some of its employees of being involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and about 250 others taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli officials.

More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children.