Israeli permit system prevents some parents from accompanying their sick children to hospitals outside of Gaza Strip.
Gaza City - Last month, five-year-old Aisha came home from nursery vomiting and saying she had a headache.
Her condition deteriorated, so her family took her to hospital, where, after undergoing medical checks, they had every parent's worst fear confirmed.
Aisha was diagnosed with brain cancer.
"The news hit me like a thunderbolt," Mona Lulu, Aisha's mother, told Al Jazeera from her home in the al-Bureij refugee camp.
Aisha underwent urgent surgery in al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City but she needed a medical transfer to go to the Augusta Victoria Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem for further treatment.
But when it came time to decide which of her parents would go with her, the family found the decision was out of their hands.
"Her mother and I applied and we both were rejected," Aisha's father Wesam said.
Everything Israel ever does, to any of its regional neighbors, is always defended, as "normal and routine."