CNN — A Palestinian toddler forced to wait weeks for permission to leave Gaza for life saving medical treatment has finally arrived in Jordan. The girl is now in hospital receiving critical medical treatment.
Jordan decided to evacuate her following a CNN report on her story. Doctors believe Habiba has protein C deficiency — a rare but highly treatable genetic condition, which causes excessive blood clotting — and warned that the child will likely lose her right leg and possibly arms. Israel then delayed the mission, Jordanian officials told CNN last week. Her heart stopped twice, according to her mother and health workers who resuscitated her. On Sunday, Israel further delayed clearing the evacuation — postponing the urgent mission and refusing to allow her mother Rana to accompany her daughter.
In CNN video from the hospital over the weekend, Rana, 37, sobbed and embraced her daughter at her bedside. Habiba, sitting up in her bed, stared quietly at the nurses who rushed to pick up her mother. To spare Habiba a long and perilous journey, Jordan had requested an airlift by its military from the Israel-Gaza border, but Israel denied that request, according to a senior Jordanian official, who told CNN Israeli authorities would only approve a land movement. The official told CNN that they finally obtained approval for the whole family to leave Gaza early Monday.
The senior official described the mission to evacuate Habiba as unnecessarily difficult. After a fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas materialized on January 19, Palestinians say they are struggling to reconcile the psychological trauma and physical destruction wrought by more than a year of war.
Habiba was then taken through Israel and into Jordan via the King Hussein Bridge, also known as the Allenby Bridge crossing, where a medical team dispatched at the order of King Abdullah II was waiting in a helicopter to take her to a hospital in Amman. A CNN team on the ground at the Jordanian side of the border heard sirens and saw blue and red ambulance lights illuminating a path leading to the helicopter.
