Temat: Wiadomości z kraju i ze świata

In March 2020, Israel announced that as part of its fight against the coronavirus, it would further reduce the already miniscule number of Palestinians permitted to leave the Gaza Strip for medical purposes. In doing so, Israel shirked its duty to allow ill residents access to essential treatment unavailable within the Gaza Strip, and left them to their fate.

Gaza’s healthcare system has been in a state of collapse for years due to Israeli policy. Already, it cannot meet the population’s needs due to a shortage of medicine, equipment, doctors and professional training. Before the pandemic, thousands of Palestinians a year applied to leave Gaza to receive medical treatment unavailable at home, either in hospitals in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) or in Israel. The Israeli authorities hampered the approval of these requests, including by restricting permits to treatment they define “lifesaving” and only if they are unavailable in Gaza.

n comparison, from March 2019 to February 2020 (just before the pandemic), according to World Health Organization figures, almost 24,000 Gazans applied for permits to enter Israel for vital medical treatment. Some 65% of the requests related to treatment at hospitals in East Jerusalem, about 22% to hospitals in the rest of the West Bank, and some 13% to hospitals in Israel. Of all these applications, more than a third (about 8,500) were rejected or not answered before the scheduled appointment, including at least 2,274 minors and about 996 persons over 60. Among the persons who were rejected or went unanswered, at least 1,996 had cancer, 597 had a heart condition, and 210 required neurosurgical treatment.

Allowing Palestinians from Gaza to enter the West Bank or Israel for medical care is not an act of charity on Israel’s part. Israel created this reality and is therefore responsible for it. It is the authority that controls all passage into and out of the Gaza Strip (except for Rafah Crossing), that determines the level of medical care available within Gaza, that has chosen to imprison more than two million people and keep them cut off from the world, and that prevents residents from receiving crucial treatment they cannot receive within Gaza due to Israeli policy.