Ref: 27/2023

Date: 08 March 2023

Time: 08:15 GMT 

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)’s ongoing arrest policy against the Gaza Strip patients and their companions during their travel for treatment in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem; the latest was the arrest of a female patient’s companion at Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing.

According to PCHR’s follow-up, on Sunday, 05 March 2023, IOF stationed at Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing arrested Na’eem ‘Abed al-Salam al-Shareef (65), from Rafah, while accompanying his daughter-in law, Kefah Nafiz al-Shareef (26), a cancer patient receiving treatment at the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah.

The patient’s husband, Hasan al-Shareef (39), said to PCHR’s fieldworker that his father accompanied his wife twice during her treatment in January and February 2023. On 05 March 2023, they traveled again to complete her chemotherapy treatment at the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah. At around 11:00, they arrived at Beit Hanoun Crossing and waited for the approval to pass, noting that both of them have travel permits issued by the Israeli authorities. At approximately 15:00, an Israeli soldier asked his father for an interview with an intelligence officer, while his sick wife waited for about 8 hours until she was allowed by an Israeli soldier to travel alone without her companion. Hasan al-Shareef added that his wife decided to return to Gaza out of fear and tension she went through and because she had no companion. Al-Shareef said that on 06 March 2023, he received a phone call from the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs (GACA) informed him that the Israeli occupation authorities arrested his father.

PCHR reiterates its strong condemnation of the Israeli policy to arrest patients and their companions at Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing and calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to exeert pressure immediately on the Israeli authorities to stop this inhuman and unjustifiable policy.  PCHR also demands them work seriously on facilitating the movement and travel of patients from the Gaza Strip to the hospitals in Israel or the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, especially that continuing to apply this policy endangers the life of hundreds of patients and deprives them of receiving the proper medical treatment for their serious diseases that is unavailable at Gaza Strip hospitals.