The world has looked on in horror as the devastation in Gaza continues. According to UNICEF, 1.9 million people, that's nine in ten of Gaza's population, have been internally displaced. Half of them are children. And as Gaza's remain on the move, its healthcare infrastructure has been decimated. In tonight's prime focus, we introduce you to one palestinian family that was able to get out thanks to an IDF medic. The palestinian family is dubbing their guardian Angela, who worked to get them into Israel to receive life saving medical treatment. ABC's Britt Clennant shares their story.

At the al Sawna hostel in east Jerusalem. These gazan cancer patients in remission are in a constant state of limbo, wracked with uncertainty. Reem Abu Abaydah shows me photos of her children back in Han Yunus, who she hasn't seen since she left just before the war, began to receive chemotherapy for stage two breast cancer. Now in east Jerusalem, feeling trapped, these patients medical permits strictly only allow them to stay within the confines of their hotel or hospital. And there's been an added weight of stress since March, when the israeli government ordered a group of 22 gazan Palestinians who have completed treatment for life threatening illnesses, including Reem, to be sent back home.

Rim what went through your head when.

You were told you might be sent back to Gaza? In the face of intense pressure, the israeli government is now allowing this kind of mediation process where by CoGAT, that's an israeli defense ministry agency dealing with each gazan patient on a case by case basis. Meaning even though there's less chance of them being directly sent back to Gaza, their circumstances remain completely unclear.

Reem, who still requires follow up hormonal treatment, is one of hundreds of Palestinians who traveled here for the kind of advanced, specialized care that's impossible to receive in Gaza. Mass, brutal attack on October 7 and Israel's resolute response changed everything. Since then, it's become virtually unheard of terminally ill or critically injured Gazans to be treated in Jerusalem.

One of our staff members went to Jerusalem. She spoke with the family.

Guy Shalov, director of physicians for Human Rights Israel, the NGO fighting against the government's push to deport them shows me a detailed breakdown of each patient's case they've been tracking.

She's a resident of Gaza that was injured today because of a bombing in her left eye. To our understanding, she was released to Jerusalem, to the hospital in Jerusalem.

St. John as we've been looking into.

These deportation cases, one family story has really stuck out. It's a family in northern Gaza, who were critically injured about a month into the war in northern Gaza in an IDF attack. Now they were taken out of northern Gaza to a hospital in Israel, to another hospital in Israel, and then eventually here at this hospital in east Jerusalem. And we want to hear their story.

Assalamualaikum. Right. Of us meeting this family from Bedlar Haya, northern Gaza. We couldn't have known how remarkable the last seven months have been living. How they tell me they got out of Gaza when so many others do not. How they became split from their father and they never see him again. And how on the morning of November 23, this family stared death in the face just as they were taking shelter at Wassam's brother's house after their own house was obliterated.

What was it like that day that.

You guys left Gaza?

What happened

then? In those tense, critical few seconds, her family's entire fate changed. Wassem Halabi describes how a medic with the IDF starts screaming at the soldiers to put their guns down. Medical reports show the extent of their injuries from explosions that day, shrapnel piercing through Wissem's eye, her teenage daughter with abrasions from debris, and the father with multiple puncture wounds and fractures in his spine. What comes next is virtually unheard of. From the uncle's house, the medic loads Wassem and the children into an armored vehicle and gets them out of Gaza, traveling along a road by sea, taken to two hospitals in Israel, ending up at St. John's in east Jerusalem. The father, who was unconscious, becomes separated after he's taken to a different hospital for surgery and eventually to Makassad Hospital for a month. After that day, they have no idea that they are less than a mile and a half away from each other in east Jerusalem. But due to the strict rules applied to Palestinians here on medical permits, the family say they aren't allowed to visit their father in person.

That family has been through hell, and now they can't even leave this hospital to see their dad, who is just around the corner.

When a patient gets a permit to leave the Gaza Strip, they can only stay in the premises of the hospital. So you'd see families of patients that are just stuck there, sometimes for months, going through very hard and very long treatments, and they're basically illegal if they leave the hospital and they risk being arrested. And this whole system is part of a larger kind of bureaucratic mechanism of the pyramid regime that really controls every movement of Palestinians.

When asked about the efforts to deport the palestinian patients, the IDF Kogat and the israeli government told us they do not comment on ongoing court cases. Inside the Knesset, I meet Simchar Rotman of the right wing Zionism party, who serves as the chair of the Knesset's constitution, law and justice committee. He's been advocating for the deportations.

Ngo's say that, you know, how can you consciously send these people back to their deaths in Gaza where there's no sanitation, where the health system has completely collapsed? What do you say to that?

It's not that sending someone to Gaza is a death sentence, but in war, you must take care of your own people.

What's your view on this medic who helped these Gazans who were critically injured.

Get through the again, I think to help them is a good thing. To bring them to East Jerusalem is a very bad idea because they will be the hotbed for the next attack on Jews in Israel.

You really think that they are a source of terror?

I don't think. I think after October 7, that's reality. It's not about what I think.

If you see a nine year old or 78 cancer patient or an 82 year old that cannot even properly or move by himself as a terrorist, I think it shows a lot about what every palestinian is basically considered as a terrorist.

Back in east Jerusalem, the family has a message for the medic who helped save them. Bahidalamal Kayiri Obahman Kulina sakit kun zaha. Suddenly we get word that authorities are permitting the family to visit their father after four difficult months. Apartheid inside a surprise reunion. Despite the trauma of the recent past and the profound unknowns that lie ahead for this family, for now, a moment of joyous.