PORTLAND, Ore. — Crowds gathered late Saturday night at Portland International Airport to welcome a teen from Gaza who lost both of his arms in an explosion amid fighting between Israel and Hamas. Waving flags, cheers and smiling faces greeted 15-year-old Diaa as he arrived at PDX.
The group responsible for bringing him here, the Portland chapter of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), hopes that the treatment he receives in Oregon will help him resume a normal life. He was brought to Portland to get outfitted for prosthetic arms.
"We are really excited to find out some adaptive ways to help after he has gotten his prosthetics fixed, to get back into school, to get back to his lessons," said Niyyah Ruscher-Haqq, Patient Affairs Coordinator with PCRF Portland.
Dr. Ahmed Ebeid is hosting Diaa and his older sister while they're in Portland. He said Diaa aspires to be a photojournalist and had begun to use a camera to capture scenes around him. Ebeid has traveled to Gaza with a medical team on two separate occasions since the war broke out, getting a firsthand look at what's happening.
"Your worst nightmare can't really get you to believe what you see until you actually see it on the ground," he said.
Hospitals in Gaza don't have the capacity to treat all the patients who need help, he said, and they're running low on supplies. Many of the people who need help are children.
"There are thousands of children that are in need of medical care that they're not getting," he said. "They need nutrition that they are not getting, the babies are not getting formula and vaccines."
Diaa is one of the lucky few who have been able to leave Gaza, but for many others, the suffering continues.
"They deserve life, just like any other child in the world," said Intesar Amirkani, President of PCRF Portland.