Ref: 30/2022
Date: 24 October 2022
On Monday, 24/10/2022, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) published a new report titled as “Medical Treatment Request Under Study”. The report sheds light on the suffering of Gaza Strip patients due to the Israeli restrictions on their travel for treatment abroad.
The report lays out the Israeli occupation authorities’ violations of international humanitarian law and disavowal of their obligations to guarantee the Gaza Strip patients’ right to freedom of movement and secure access to health services as well as their right to travel for treatment of their serious diseases, which is not available in the Gaza Strip’s hospitals. The Israeli restrictions on travel of the Strip’s patients is one of the most crucial obstacles that deny their access to proper treatment and adequate medical care.
The report highlights the impact of the ongoing Israeli-imposed closure on the Gaza Strip for 16 years and its implications on the frail healthcare system and its facilities in the Strip through rendering it incapable of providing treatment services for the serious diseases and thereby forcing it to refer patients for treatment abroad.
The report also underlines that the Israeli authorities’ restrictions on travel of Gaza Strip patients have caused the health conditions of hundreds of them to deteriorate; moreover, denying the travel of “lifesaving” cases means a death sentence for patients considered urgent cases due to the lengthy periods they have to wait in order to obtain the permits necessary for their travel via Beit Hanoun “Erez.” As a result, 7 patients died since the beginning of 2022.[*]
The report underscores that from 2008 to 2021, the Israeli occupation authorities obstructed the travel of 73,955 patients referred for treatment at the hospitals in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, or Israel. This number is out of the 204,086 permit requests for treatment (i.e., 36.2% of the total requests.) According to the report, since the beginning of 2021 until 31 August 2022, the Israeli occupation authorities have obstructed the travel of 5,001 out of 13,270 patients (i.e., 37.6% out of the total requests) who applied for travel permits for treatment at the hospitals in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, or Israel.
Based on patients’ testimonies to PCHR’s researchers, the Israeli obstacles have taken different forms, including depriving patients of treatment abroad without clarifying reasons “under study”, denying patients travel for treatment under the pretext that it is available in the Gaza Strip or by claiming that their disease do not pose threat to their lives, depriving patients of travel for having a related family member in violation of Israeli laws, preventing donors from traveling with patients for organ donation and transplantation and saving the patients’ lives, delaying responses to patients making them miss their pre-set hospital appointments. All these obstacles have led to deterioration of their health conditions and putting their life at serious risk that would cause the death of some of them.
The report also reviews PCHR’s role in helping patients referred for treatment abroad and daily monitoring of the violations committed against the Gaza Strip patients as well as PCHR’s role in offering legal aid to patients denied travel or facing obstacles on their travel for treatment abroad.
In its recommendations in the report, PCHR demands the international community exert pressure on Israel to fulfil its duties as an occupying power under the international humanitarian law and promptly allow patients with serious diseases, which lack treatment at the Gaza Strip hospitals, to travel and access the hospitals they are referred to for treatment without any delay as well as emphasizing the significant need to issue long-term permits for patients with cancer and incurable diseases.
Moreover, PCHR urges the High Contracting Parties to observe the Israeli authorities’ obligations codified in the concluding observations by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which call for adherence to the basic rules and principles approved by the United Nations; most significantly the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health. Also, PCHR calls for implementing the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) that demands Israel take concrete measures to improve the health status of the Palestinians.
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[*] After finishing this report, an eighth patient died due to the Israeli restrictions on travel of Gaza Strip’s patients:
