Israel-Hamas War Pauses Briefly for Polio Vaccinations, Not for Hostages or Humanitarian Crisis
Amazingly, the Israel-Hamas war closed yesterday for a day or three, because an infant caught polio, not because of yesterday’s discovery of the bodies of six hostages — including an American, apparently murdered by Hamas in the last few days.
On the one hand, it is a tremendous tribute that warring factions of Israel’s cabinet and the terror-insistent leaders of Hamas — people who can’t seem to agree on anything — could recognize a humanitarian need as pre-eminent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to take pains to add that any pauses in fighting were “not a ceasefire.”
Frankly, our kitchen table question was why this could happen over a single case of polio and not for mass starvation among Gazans, the fate of 100 hostages or a razed urban landscape that lacks medical facilities altogether.
Beginning yesterday, the World Health Organization and its partners were launching an ambitious mass vaccination effort in Gaza because 11-month-old Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan contracted the first case of polio in 25 years. The disease is highly contagious and can cause paralysis and death as it spreads.
We already have other diseases growing rampant in Gaza, including cholera from a lack of sanitation and starvation from a dearth of food and medical care, and sudden violent deaths from bombings. There is sewage in the streets, and streets of ruin. All of it requires an end to fighting to address. And still, Israelis are not secure, and Hamas hides in its well-furnished tunnels with yet more weapons and the fighting continues.
How is it that officials on both sides who have been so intent on military gains that they forgo, delay, limit or stop humanitarian efforts now recognize the need for mass vaccination of an estimated 640,000 children? There is no real explanation, other than the obvious threat that any spread won’t recognize a state border or ethnicity. There is no treatment for polio; vaccination prevents the disease. Polio primarily affects children under 5 and one of every 200 infections results in permanent paralysis — and one of 10 who are paralyzed die.
At this point, 1.2 million doses have reached a warehouse in Gaza, but no one knows how to organize vaccinations while people are in hiding. The Israeli military forces have started distributing their own polio vaccines.
Indeed, the intense fighting has spread regularly if intermittently into southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is raining missiles randomly in northern Israel, and into the West Bank’s oldest refugee camps in the bewildering Israeli campaign to allow and encourage more Jewish settlements, and Iran and Houthis in Yemen threatens from further away.
Meanwhile, talks with Hamas toward a non-polio ceasefire are stalled.
It’s more war, not less — except for a childhood disease.
