Since the last round of aggression between Israel and Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, there has been a backslide in Israel’s policy of allowing Palestinian patients from Gaza to exit the Gaza Strip in order to receive medical care. Under the new policy, Israel prevents the passage of patients with chronic illnesses and other serious diseases for whom the absence of treatment dramatically affects their quality of life, in spite of the fact that the medical treatments they need are unavailable in the Gaza Strip. Additionally, patients who need essential and urgent care, such as cancer patients, patients suffering from heart disease, and those injured in IDF airstrikes whose lives are not in immediate danger are not eligible to exit Gaza. According to the new policy, announced by the Defense Ministry, only those patients whose lives are in immediate danger or who need to be transferred via ambulance to ICUs in hospitals outside of Gaza will be allowed out.
Data collected by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) in the first week since the Defense Minister announced the new policy show that during the week of May 25-31, 2021, the IDF approved only 7% of urgent applications submitted by the Palestinian Civil Committee: 13 out of 191 (compared to a 66% approval rate for pre-combat applications). The rest of the requests were denied or not answered, even though they were defined as urgent by officials in the Gaza Strip. PHRI’s data also show that authorities prevented and delayed the exit of patients from Gaz, even in cases of ambulances transporting patients for lifesaving treatments, which the IDF stated would be allowed passage through the Erez Crossing. Thus, for example, on May 31, only one of seven applications for the urgent passage of ambulances through the Erez Crossing was approved. Six applications, including those of two cancer patients, a pregnant woman at risk, and three patients wounded from IDF airstrikes, were not answered.
In response to this new policy and after receiving calls from Gazan patients seeking our help, PHRI petitioned the Supreme Court on Tuesday (June 1, 2021) through attorneys Tamir Blank and Adi Lustigman. The petition was accompanied by an expert opinion from PHRI’s Ethics Committee and an expert opinion from Professor Raphi Walden, a senior vascular surgeon from Sheba Medical Center and President of PHRI. Professor Walden writes: “A patient who is diagnosed with a cancerous growth in the brain is not expected to die immediately, but obviously delaying his treatment will lead to his death. An injured person with a severe infection may need amputation if not treated properly in an adequate medical facility. […] Using the definitions of the new policy simply constitutes a form of doublespeak which in effect says that patients cannot leave the Gaza Strip. The decision makers should understand that this sweeping ban on patients’ leaving Gaza under the existing regulations is effectively a death sentence for many, a severe, agonizing death sentence.”
PHRI’s Ethics Committee, which is made up of medical professionals, wrote: “We believe that this policy is extremely unreasonable in that it uses the right to health as a political-security sanction and exacts a high price from the most vulnerable, especially when the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip is already overloaded after the last war.”
In response to our petition, the state announced that from June 3rd forward, entry permits to Israel from the Gaza Strip for medical care will be evaluated according to the criteria laid out in the policy document “Unclassified status of authorizations for entry of Palestinians into Israel, for their passage from Judea and Samaria and for travel abroad.” This document states that entry into Israel from the Gaza Strip as well as passage to Judea and Samaria for medical treatment will be allowed for lifesaving treatment or treatment without which quality of life would be dramatically affected, if the treatment is unavailable in the Gaza Strip.
This response effectively restores the previous policy under which many patients in serious condition are not allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
Read the petition here [Hebrew]
Read the Ethics Committee’s expert opinion here [Hebrew]
