BEFORE ANYONE (FALSELY) CLAIMS THAT ISRAEL prevents sick residents of the PLO/PFLP and Hamas controlled areas from accessing medical care in Israel, LEARN THE FACTS.
It is NOT Israel that prevents “Palestinian” access to Israeli medical care. The PLO/PFLP closed the border (to everyone except politicians and their near kin).
GRANTED, even before the PLO/PFLP and Hamas closed the border, getting medical care in Israel oft times was difficult.
That might be because too many “Palestinians” brought bombs and other weapons with them into Israel to slaughter any Israeli they could attack.
But “Palestinians” have been coming to Israeli public and private hospitals from the beginning; even before there was a call for another “Palestinian” state. Jordan is the original Palestinian state and it controlled the area where Egyptian Yassar Arafat wanted to create a new state. Egypt controlled Gaza and most Gazans have an “Egyptian connection.”
According to a headline in the English on-line version of Israel HaYom, PA's bid to halt application of sovereignty leaves Gaza patients in limbo1 “The refusal to process requests for medical permits, aimed at protesting Israel's plan to begin applying sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria, has instead hurt many sick Palestinians.”
Jomaa al-Najjar was desperate to send his 2-month-old daughter Joud out of the Gaza Strip to Israel for urgent medical treatment for epilepsy. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to relay his request, there was no way to coordinate her transfer.
This week, she died in a Gaza hospital.
Who killed the child?
Mahmoud Abbas.
Last month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the authority was no longer bound by previous agreements with Israel going back to the 1990s, which created the PA. He suspended all ties with Israel, even security coordination.
The Palestinians view Israel's proposed sovereignty initiative in the Jordan Valley and some settlements as an existential threat because it would make it virtually impossible to create a viable Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and east Jerusalem.
Never mind that the so-called Trump Plan — a plan that Abbas refused to even review — did create a “Palestinian” state in Israel that included the PLO/PFLP and Hamas-controlled Gaza.
"We are on the brink of medical chaos," said a spokesperson for Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a humanitarian group. It said the PA Health Ministry has also stopped covering the cost of treatment in Israeli hospitals, meaning that organ transplant patients are unable to return for post-surgery rehabilitation. The group has appealed to Israeli authorities to ensure the continued movement of Palestinian patients to Israel for treatment.
It is the PLO/PFLP and Hamas that are preventing their citizens from treatment in Israel. Given that Israel is treating patients from area countries, sometimes via an intermediate country such as Cyprus, it is highly unlikely that Israel would refuse to treat any legitimate patient from anywhere. Worst case, Israel could bill the patient’s government, even realizing there is little chance of collecting.
Patients requiring advanced treatment usually travel to east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, or even in Israel proper. They need Israeli permission for all three. Egypt has sealed its border with Gaza since March due to the coronavirus.
Hamas has no direct contact with Israel but allows a PA-run liaison office in Gaza to coordinate the entry and exit of medical patients, even during the wars.
According to the Israel HaYom posting, “The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a Gaza nonprofit, briefly stepped in to help coordinate the permits but stopped after Israeli media reported the arrangement.”
Ibrahim Melhem, a Palestinian Authority spokesman in Judea and Samaria, defended the decision to cut ties.
"Israel is the occupying power on the borders of Gaza and it bears responsibility for the results of delaying or preventing patients from crossing to hospitals in Jerusalem and [Judea and Samaria]," he said.
Gisha, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement, said Israel, the PA, and Hamas must protect that right. It called on Israel to "identify an immediate solution to meet the urgent needs of Gaza's residents for movement, especially patients in need of life-saving treatment."
But if the PLO/PFLP and Hamas refuse to even talk to Israel HOW can Melhem honestly claim that Israel “bears responsibility for the results of delaying or preventing patients from crossing to hospitals” As for Gisha, this apparently left-wing NGO also refuses to lay the blame where it belongs: squarely at the feet of the PLO/PFLP and Hamas “leadership.” Rather than demanding that Israel "identify an immediate solution to meet the urgent needs of Gaza's residents for movement, especially patients in need of life-saving treatment" it should be pressing the PLO/PFLP and Hamas to do exactly what it demands of Israel.
The world undoubtedly will hear only the cries of Ibrahim Melhem and Gisha, blaming the lack of access to health care in Israel on Israel.
True, it often is difficult and time consuming to get permission to cross into Israel for medical care. But it was being done.
In January, close to 3,000 Gazans left for treatment via the Erez crossing with Israel, according to UN figures. That number plunged in the following months as authorities heavily restricted travel to prevent the spread of coronavirus, but 188 crossed in April.
It is not Israel that is preventing the residents of the PLO/PFLP and Hamas areas from accessing medical care in Israel. It is the pride of Mahmoud Abbas that has closed the borders.
For want of a nail2
Had Israels neighbors accepted the new state in 1948, Israel would be tiny and Jordan/Palestine would be huge.
Had Israel’s neighbors not continued to attack the small country,
* Syria still would be in control of the Golan Heights
* Jordan still wold be in control of Jerusalem (and restricting access to Jewish sites)
* The PLO/PFLP and Hamas probably would not exist as Jordan and Egypt would put them down early on.
Sources
1. Israel HaYom: https://tinyurl.com/yaxmh834
2. For want of a nail: https://tinyurl.com/n7sb629
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