New York — A coalition of 25 countries and the European Union called on Israel to immediately restore a medical corridor from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, arguing that thousands of critically ill patients cannot wait for politics to catch up with their needs. The signatories pledged money, personnel, and equipment to move patients out of a health system battered by bombardment, blockade, and the collapse of basic services.
Their message was not abstract. It was anchored in a single, direct appeal that framed the entire initiative: “We strongly appeal to Israel to restore the medical corridor to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, so medical evacuations from Gaza can be resumed and patients can get the treatment that they so urgently need on Palestinian territory.” The line comes from the joint statement published by Global Affairs Canada, which also lists the governments prepared to fund care and dispatch clinical teams that Gaza can no longer provide on its own.
The corridor that the ministers want reopened is not theoretical. Before the war upended everything, patients were commonly referred out of Gaza for oncology, neurosurgery, complex orthopedics, and advanced pediatrics. That flow has withered since the destruction of hospitals in Gaza City and the closure of Rafah, forcing a precarious detour through Kerem Shalom that is too narrow for the medical emergency on the ground. The World Health Organization estimates that 7,672 patients were evacuated between October 2023 and September 10, 2025, even as more than double that number still waits for permission, logistics, and fuel. WHO’s latest medevac snapshot shows the trickle that remains of a system meant to save lives, not measure delays.
United Nations agencies describe the backlog in stark terms. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs puts the current need for evacuation at more than 15,600 patients, with many suffering from traumatic amputations, burns, complex infections, and late-stage cancers. In the same breath, OCHA and WHO point to a health system with far fewer functioning beds, insufficient surgical capacity, and intermittent electricity that compromises anesthesia, oxygen generation, and refrigeration of medicines. OCHA’s latest situation update and impact snapshot explain the caseload and the arithmetic of scarcity.
The diplomatic push unfolded while Gaza City absorbed yet another blow to its medical capacity. A facility run by the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, previously evacuated on Israeli orders, was demolished in an airstrike, according to emergency doctors on the scene. The attack coincided with a fresh closure of the Allenby Bridge crossing, a move that constricts movement of people and goods in the West Bank and further complicates any workaround for medical transfers to East Jerusalem. Associated Press detailed the destruction and closures as warnings mounted about famine and the shut down of key services.
The countries stepping forward are mostly European, joined by Canada and the European Union. Their pitch is simple: let the hospitals of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and East Jerusalem take overflow that Gaza can no longer stabilize, and let partners pay for the operating theaters, the beds, and the clinical teams to do it. Reuters, which first synthesized the breadth of the signatories and the pledge to fund care and logistics, noted the absence of the United States from the list, a striking omission given Washington’s centrality to Israeli policy.
The human context requires more than one. WHO’s public health analysis points to rising malnutrition deaths and the confirmation of famine conditions in Gaza Governorate, which means people are starving not just because food is scarce, but because access is being strangled. Malnourished children do not tolerate infection, dehydration, or anesthesia the way healthy children do. They crash faster on operating tables, they struggle to survive septic shock, and they cannot wait six weeks for a bureaucratic approval to cross a checkpoint. WHO’s September analysis describes the clinical consequences of policy in blunt terms.
There is a political story layered into this medical one. In New York, leaders arrived for the General Assembly with a recognition wave for Palestinian statehood that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. France and the United Kingdom moved in tandem with Canada and Australia, leaving Washington out of step with its traditional allies. Our rolling coverage of the floor debate and the votes explains the split and its immediate consequences for Gaza policy. Read how UNGA 80 opened with a recognition wave and how Western capitals broke ranks at the UN while Gaza’s hospitals slipped beyond repair.
Israel frames its operations as self-defense and maintains that militant groups have abused medical sites and ambulances. That claim, repeated across months, has given way to an even harsher arithmetic: the fewer clinics that stand, the fewer places there are to hide a rifle. The destruction of infrastructure has stripped Gaza of oncology capacity, left dialysis units idle for lack of power or filters, and erased the specialist care that once existed at facilities like the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. Our earlier reporting on the destruction of Gaza’s only cancer hospital underscored how quickly a war on structures becomes a war on prognosis.
Even where aid arrives, the delivery model has often compounded the danger. The United Nations has tallied deadly crowd crushes and shootings around distribution points that were supposed to relieve hunger, not amplify it. In July, at least twenty Palestinians died in a crush at a US-backed aid site, part of a grim pattern that critics say weaponizes scarcity. The aid-site fatalities we documented fit the broader picture: checkpoints that throttle throughput, sea corridors that cannot scale, and aerial drops that serve headlines more than caloric needs.
Those operational failures echo inside surgical wards. Surgeons in Gaza have triaged by flashlight, anesthetists have stretched oxygen cylinders beyond safety, and nurses have turned corridors into ICUs when the beds ran out. WHO’s medevac program was designed to bridge that gap, especially for children and oncology patients whose survival depends on timely intervention. The program’s own flowchart shows how approvals travel from Gaza’s referral committee to Israeli authorities, then to host countries ranging from Egypt and Jordan to European partners. That chain breaks at the first weak link, and the links are all weak. WHO’s medevac explainer and the latest snapshot make that clear.
Meanwhile, the war’s tempo continues to produce more patients than any corridor can move. In late July alone, strikes killed twenty-nine people in a single night, among them a pregnant woman and five children, and those numbers are replicated week after week. The Eastern Herald’s coverage of nightly strikes and aid failures captured the pattern that pushes families into harm’s way and hospitals into failure mode. September has only deepened that arc, with Gaza City residents fleeing again and again as front lines shift and safe corridors evaporate.
The United States has tried to keep one foot in humanitarian messaging and the other in strategic indulgence. At the United Nations, President Donald Trump demanded that the war end “immediately,” even as his administration rejected Palestinian statehood and declined to sign the medical-corridor appeal that its closest allies backed. Our report from the hall shows how that contradiction plays overseas and at home. Read how Trump berated the UN while blocking statehood, and then measure that stance against European and Canadian calls for medical access.
There is also the question of visas and transit paperwork for children who need care beyond the region. When intake is blocked, when permissions slow, and when quotas shrink, the wait is lethal. We have chronicled this squeeze in our reporting on US restrictions on medical visas for Gaza’s children, a policy choice that sits uneasily beside promises of compassion. If children cannot exit and hospitals cannot function, there is no policy success to be found.
What happens next will test whether rhetoric can move a checkpoint. The joint statement calls not only for the reopening of the corridor but for the lifting of restrictions on medicines and equipment, and for a predictable process that gets patients to East Jerusalem without exposing them to fresh harm. That should be the minimum standard, not the outer edge of what is politically possible.
Critics will rightly note that the Geneva Conventions and a raft of Security Council resolutions codify the protection of medical personnel and facilities. Resolution 2286, adopted in 2016, condemns attacks on medical care in conflict and demands accountability when hospitals are turned into targets. The relevance is not academic. It goes to whether a system built on law can restrain a war built on disregard. UNSCR 2286 lays out the obligations that remain unmet.
There is also the matter of political leverage. As more Western governments recognize a Palestinian state, and as public opinion in Europe hardens against the conduct of the war, the space for Washington’s hedging narrows. Recognition will not heal a wound or power an ICU, but it changes the incentives that have kept the corridor closed and the operating rooms dark. Our coverage from New York shows how that calculus is shifting in real time, from France’s recognition decision to the speeches that forced the debate onto center stage.
None of this absolves the international system for letting Gaza’s hospitals fail for so long. The medical corridor is a specific fix for a specific crisis, but it is also an indictment of a policy ecosystem that made the corridor necessary in the first place. A war premised on collective punishment will always produce more ICU admissions than any triage team can carry. The signatories have chosen to say, with some urgency, that the exit ramp must reopen now. The question is whether Israel will allow it and whether the United States will choose alignment with allies or continued exceptionalism that leaves patients stranded on gurneys.
For readers tracking the operational metrics, here are the facts that matter most today. Over 15,600 patients are waiting for evacuation, according to OCHA. WHO counts 7,672 evacuations since October 2023, including 5,332 children, with referrals routed at times through Kerem Shalom after Rafah’s closure. Gaza’s oncology capacity has been shattered, dialysis units are intermittent, and the surgical backlog grows by the hour. Hospitals in Gaza City continue to shut down under pressure. Facilities that are evacuated are not necessarily safe. Aid models that treat calories as publicity rather than logistics keep failing. None of those sentences will change without a corridor that puts patients on an ambulance in Gaza and delivers them to an operating room in East Jerusalem.
The corridor is not a silver bullet. It is a test. If the governments that signed the statement can back their promises with airlifts for supplies, predictable escorts for patient convoys, and financing that keeps referral hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem open and powered, they will have pried open a space for medicine inside a war that has tried to eliminate it. If not, the number that matters most will keep climbing, and it will not be a number anyone wants to own.
