At some point in January, during or just after the IDF Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, the Palestinian Authority decided to stop referring Palestinian patients to Israeli hospitals, and to stop paying for their treatment in Israeli hospitals.
As a result, Israeli hospitals stopped treating Palestinian patients.
This affected, as Israeli human rights organizations reported today, “coverage for chronically ill Palestinian patients, and those in need of complex care that is not available in other tertiary medical centers in the region. The result has been that an estimation of hundreds of Palestinian patients who were in the middle of long-term treatment regimes in Israel, including cancer patients in need of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, found their treatments interrupted with no alternatives”.
A group of Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, GISHA, and B’Tselem, made the following statement:
“We, human rights organizations in Israel and Palestine, regard Israel as an Occupying Power who bears overall responsibility for the protection of the right to health of the Palestinian, including free access to health services in the territories it occupies. [On the other hand] In agreeing to act as provider of healthcare services to the Palestinian population, the PA (Ramallah) took upon itself responsibility for that population. However, the ability of the PA in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) to supply appropriate health care services is fundamentally restricted by Israel as an Occupying Power”.
So, the human rights groups called on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to act, as follows:
“[1] The Government of Israel: To recognize its ultimate responsibility as an Occupying Power for the healthcare of the population under its control, and to ensure that all residents of the OPT have access to appropriate healthcare regardless of financial coverage.
[2] The Palestinian Authority: To renew its financial coverage for all Palestinian patients who need to complete their medical treatment in Israel, at least until an appropriate and accessible new health care provider can be found. The PA has the right to decide where it will refer its patients; however, the rights of all these patients to continuity of heath care must not be violated”.
The statement can be read in full here.