Israeli courts have repeatedly refused entry to the boy on the grounds he was born in Gaza
RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij has met Mohammed ‘Dodi’ Assad, a five-year-old boy from the West Bank city of Ramallah, who has been battling acute blood and bone marrow cancer.
The boy’s family has repeatedly requested his transfer to Israel for treatment, but their pleas have been repeatedly shot down by the country’s authorities.
“Most of the time he is weak and exhausted from the chemotherapy doses he takes. Sometimes he stays asleep, and he remains asleep for hours,” his mother Maali says.
Dodi has spent most of his life in a hospital, receiving treatment for lymphoblastic leukemia between 2022 and February 2025. He relapsed again last August, and now the treatment options for the boy in the West Bank have largely run out. While his family has been trying to transfer Dodi for treatment in Israel, the request has been repeatedly shot down.
Israeli courts have pointed to the fact that the boy was born in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah. West Jerusalem has enforced a blanket entry ban on all residents of the Palestinian enclave since Hamas militants’ October 2025 surprise attack on southern Israel.
Dodi’s cause has been defended in the courts by Israeli non-profit Gisha, which advocates freedom of movement for Palestinians, especially those from Gaza.
“His condition is quite acute, and his treatment options in the West Bank have run out. He really needs to get treatment as soon as he can. The treatment is really within arm’s reach, physically speaking, it’s a short drive away. We just need this wall of vengeance, of racism, of hatred to be removed so that he can reach his treatment,” Gisha executive director Tania Hary told RT.
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