Report: Hamas Leader’s Daughter Received Medical Treatment in Israel

Sources at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv have confirmed that it treated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s daughter.

The hospital said that Haniyeh’s daughter had been admitted for a number of days for emergency care this month, one of over a thousand Gazans that the hospital treats every year.

Haniyeh, who has 13 children, is the leader of the Islamist group in Gaza and one of its most senior figures overall, serving as a deputy to Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile.

Two sources — one Palestinian and the other a foreign diplomat with knowledge of the case — declined to name the daughter and, out of respect for her privacy, asked that details of her condition not be published.

Like many Hamas officials, Haniyeh spent the seven-week-long war largely in hiding. His home in the northern part of the Gaza Strip was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

An Israeli official said he could not discuss specific medical admissions from Gaza.

But he said that in most cases a request by a Palestinian doctor to allow a patient across the border for urgent treatment was sufficient — indicating Haniyeh may not have been personally involved in his daughter’s application.

During the war and since it ended in late August, dozens of patients from Gaza have been brought to hospitals in Israel, where the resources and technology for advanced treatment and complicated operations are vastly better.

Israeli media has reported that one of Haniyeh’s granddaughters was treated in an Israeli hospital last November, while his mother-in-law sought treatment in a Yerushalayim hospital in June.

This article appeared in print on page 8 of the October 21st, 2014 edition of Hamodia.