The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem) warned of the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of Tel Aviv’s policy that makes it difficult for the health system to operate normally.
In a report published on Monday, B’Tselem accused Israel of preventing many patients from leaving the Strip to receive medical treatment.
Instead of facilitating their departure to receive healthcare available a few kilometers away, Israeli authorities obstruct their path through several arbitrary instructions and procedures, thus condemning them to suffer from their illnesses until death, it noted.
B’Tselem explained that thousands of sick people, especially cancer patients, are forced to submit applications for permits to access hospitals in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Israel, or other countries, but only a fraction are accepted.
B'Tselem accused Israel of being slow to approve the applications and only accepts permits for treatments deemed "life-saving", according to the Israeli military assessments.
As for patients who meet the very narrow Israeli conditions, they are forced to follow a hard and arbitrary bureaucratic process that does not guarantee them a permit.
According to data from the World Health Organization, of 15,466 permit applications submitted through the Palestinian Health Liaison Office by patients from the Gaza Strip in 2021, more than half were for treatment in hospitals in Jerusalem. Thirty percent of the requests were for treatment in other hospitals in the West Bank, and only 14 percent were for treatment in Israel.
B’Tselem said that in most cases, applicants receive a response a day prior to their treatment appointment through a phone message informing them whether their application has been approved or rejected by the Israeli authorities or whether it is “still under examination.”
In 2021, the Center said 37 percent of applications were rejected or received no definitive response by the date of their hospital appointment. Also, 38 percent of applications from 4,145 pediatric patients and 24 percent of applications from patients over the age of 60 were rejected or did not receive a response by the date of their hospital appointment.
It added that patients who do not receive a permit to leave Gaza by the date of their appointment are forced to go through the whole bureaucratic process all over again.
The B’Tslelem report corroborates others by Palestinian and international organizations that accused Israel of causing the death of patients from Gaza because they prevented them from leaving the coastal enclave to receive medical treatment.
Last October, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said that since the beginning of 2021 until August 31, 2022, Israeli authorities obstructed the travel of 5,000 out of 13,270 patients, or 37.6% of the total requests, who applied for travel permits for treatment at the hospitals in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, or Israel.
