The granddaughter of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was evacuated to an Israeli hospital in critical condition Sunday afternoon, but was returned to her family in Gaza Monday after her condition was deemed incurable, an Israeli military spokesman said Monday.
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Aamal Haniyeh, 1, was suffering from severe inflammation of the gastrointestinal system affecting her nervous system, doctors in Gaza said, according to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.
On Sunday, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, known as COGAT, received a phone call from the Palestinian Authority’s liaison office in Gaza requesting to admit the baby to an Israeli hospital, after her medical condition deteriorated. The baby was immediately transferred to Israel, accompanied by her maternal grandmother, and admitted to Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva.
“She was brought into Israel, but returned to Gaza after her condition could not be stabilized. She is in critical condition,” Major Guy Inbar, a spokesman for COGAT, told The Times of Israel.
The story of Aamal Haniyeh’s hospitalization in Israel first broke in the Arab media after her father, Abdul Salam, wrote on his Facebook page Monday morning that “Aamal was transferred into the Green Line (Israel) now. I pray that God cures her.” The post has since been removed from Haniyeh’s page. However, another entry on Monday afternoon by the baby’s father reported that Aamal had returned to Gaza in a state of clinical death.
Last month, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called for a popular uprising in the West Bank and lauded recent terror attacks on the second anniversary of the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas in 2006.
No mention of the hospitalization was made on Hamas’s official media outlets.