Japan was exploring ways to provide medical treatment to Palestinians from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said.
“We are making efforts to find ways to accept people in Japan who have fallen ill or been injured in Gaza,” Mr Ishiba told the Japanese parliament on Monday.
His government was also working on a programme to enable students from Gaza to study at Japanese universities, Kyodo News quoted the prime minister as saying.
He was responding to a parliamentary question on whether a 2017 scheme for Syrian refugee students could serve as a model for Gazans.
“We’re thinking about launching a similar programme for Gaza and the government will make efforts towards the realisation of this plan,” Mr Ishiba said.
The proposed measures would stand apart from Japan’s asylum policy, which has been criticised for its restrictive approach and has faced growing calls for review.
The Nagoya High Court last month ruled in favour of a Rohingya man, 45, after his refugee application was rejected four times. Ruling that his case should be recognised as “objective facts exist that would put him in fear of persecution”, the court criticised the Japanese government for “lacking an understanding of the situation of those who apply for refugee status”, Asahi Shimbun reported.
In 2023, Japan granted asylum to 1,310 people, fewer than 10 per cent of the applicants. The country has taken in 82 Syrian students recognised as refugees by the UN under a separate framework, a foreign ministry official was quoted as saying by the news agency AFP.
In Gaza, meanwhile, nearly 50 patients, including 30 children with cancer, were transferred to Egypt for treatment through the Rafah crossing over the weekend, according to local health officials.
“We urge for medical evacuations to be expedited through all possible routes. Thousands of lives depend on it,” World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza has decimated the besieged Palestinian territory’s healthcare system, along with much of its civic infrastructure like water, electricity and sanitation networks, roads, schools, and homes. Israel’s ground and air assault on Gaza, which was triggered by a Hamas attack that saw nearly 1,200 Israelis killed and more than 250 taken hostage in October 2023, has since left over 46,000 Palestinians dead and more than 110,000 wounded, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Mohammed Zaqout, director of hospitals at Gaza’s health ministry, said nearly 12,000 patients were in urgent need of treatment and 6,000 were ready to be evacuated abroad. The small number of patients set to be evacuated in the coming days would not cover the need “and we hope the number will increase”, he said.
Additional reporting by agencies
