Dutch to treat 'very limited' number of injured Gaza children

The Netherlands will treat a small number of children with life-threatening injuries sustained in Gaza, the government announced Thursday, reversing its previous policy and joining several other European countries.

Children requiring "complex, highly specialized care, who are in immediate danger of death and for whom no immediate assistance is currently available in the region, can be temporarily helped in the Netherlands," the government said.

The number of children would be "very limited" and the availability of care for Dutch children would also be taken into account, added authorities.

It was not immediately clear when the policy would come into force, but Foreign Minister David van Weel said it would be "between days and weeks."

The Dutch government had previously opposed bringing children from Gaza for medical treatment, arguing it was more efficient to care for them closer to home.

According to the European Commission, some 10 countries have so far offered medical treatment or transport to vulnerable Palestinian patients.

The issue has proved divisive in the Dutch parliament.

A parliamentary motion to bring a wider range of sick and injured children to the Netherlands was narrowly defeated on Tuesday, with 72 in favor and 74 opposed.

Children have suffered a particularly acute toll in Gaza since Israel launched its full-scale campaign in retaliation for the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said last month that a child "had been killed on average every hour for almost two years in Gaza."

Hamas' attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 66,148 Palestinians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

Their data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.