We were flying through the warm light of the setting sun. There were villages and small towns where the lights were coming on. It was a peaceful landscape where people walked and drove without constantly looking to the sky.
We were over the suburbs of Amman when Safa’a Salha held up her mobile phone so that I could read a message she’d written.
“Oh my God,” this Gaza mother wrote, “Jordan is so beautiful.”
The evacuees had come to the Jordanian border by road. I joined them there for the final part of the journey by helicopter to Amman.
Safa’a spoke very little English, and in any case the noise of the helicopter made it impossible to converse.
She showed me another message. “We used to see this [helicopter] every day and it was coming to bomb and kill. But today the feeling is totally different.”
Next to her sat her 16-year-old son Youssef who showed me the scar on his head from his last surgery. He smiled and wanted to speak, not of Gaza but ordinary things. How he was excited by the helicopter, how he liked football. Youssef said he was very happy and gave me a fist bump.
Beside him was nine-year-old Sama Awad, frail and scared-looking, holding the hand of her mother, Isra. Sama has a brain tumour and will have surgery in Amman.
“I hope she can get the best treatment here,” said Isra, when we were on the ground and the noise of the engines faded.
I asked a question which had been answered for me many times by looking at images, but not face to face by someone who had just left.
What is Gaza like now?
“It is horrible. It is impossible to describe. Horrible on so many levels. But people are just trying to get on with living,” Isra replied.
Four sick children were evacuated to Jordan along with twelve parents and guardians. They left Gaza by ambulance on Wednesday morning and travelled through Israel without stopping until they reached the border crossing.
The plan to evacuate children was first unveiled during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Jordan’s King Hussein in February.
Jordan’s stated aim is to bring 2,000 sick children to the kingdom for treatment. So far only 33 have been evacuated to Jordan, each travelling with a parent or guardian.
Jordanian sources say Israel has delayed and imposed restrictions and this – along with the resumption of the war – has impeded the evacuation process. Sick Gazans have also been evacuated to other countries via Israel.
We put the Jordanian concerns to the Israeli government organisation responsible – Cogat (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) – who told us that since “the beginning of the year, and especially in recent weeks, there has been a significant increase in the number of Gazans evacuated through Israel for medical care abroad.”
Cogat said thousands of patients and escorts had gone to countries, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the US and others. The statement said that “the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip pose a challenge to the implementation of these evacuation operations.”
Israel broke the last ceasefire in March launching a wave of attacks on what it said were Hamas positions.