Human rights scandal: Gaza patients denied treatment in Israel

Anyone who denies aid to seriously ill patients must be cruel and depraved. Rights groups should protest the inhumane and barbaric violation of the rights of Palestinian patients who are refused travel to Israel. Students and others are also being face with an arbitrary wall of bureaucratic red tape. This scandalous behavior must be condemned by the UNHRC, the PCHR, the Women in Black, Physicians for Human Rights and all the usual defenders of Palestinian rights.

 

Are you all ready? Do you have your signs out? Be sure to picket the right people though.

 

It is the Hamas that is denying the permits to exit Gaza: :

 

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the territory's Hamas rulers further restricted the movement of its 1.4 million residents. Gaza has been virtually cut off from the world since a violent Hamas takeover in 2007, with border closures enforced by Israel and Egypt.

Hamas recently announced that even the few still able to travel - university students, top business people, patients with life-threatening illnesses - need to get permission from Hamas to leave the territory.

The ruling has further complicated the already obstacle-ridden travel of those seeking treatment in Israel.

At Gaza's Erez crossing into Israel, medical workers said that Hamas police on Tuesday held up an ambulance carrying a baby boy for about an hour, demanding that his parents first get a travel permit. The boy had swallowed a battery and was headed to Israel for urgent treatment.

Dozens more patients were returned to Gaza and told to apply for permission, in line with the new policy, the medical workers said.

Hamas government spokesman Hassan Abu Hashish said the new policy was meant to minimize "chaos." He did not elaborate.

Abu Hashish, what have you been smoking?

Ami Isseroff