The testimony of Aseel Aburass coordinator for Palestinian freedom of movement in the OPT and in the department of the mobile clinic Doctors for Human Rights Israel (PHRI)

Israel has been keeping the Gaza Strip under a blockade for 15 years, with disastrous effects on the lives and health of local residents. With nearly every single aspect of health care provision completely dependent on Israel’s permit regime, including access to education and training by medical staff, entry of medical equipment and medications, and access by patients to treatment the local system cannot offer, Gaza’s health care system is unable to function properly or plan its activities and development. In my mind, it can be likened to a surgeon trying to operate in handcuffs. 

One of the direst effects of the permit regime can be seen in cases of children in need of medical care outside Gaza. Even when they do receive a permit to exit the Strip, some have to do so alone or with an adult who is neither their father nor their mother because the parents had been denied a permit.

Lynn, a six-year-old from Gaza, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of three. She has been receiving care at Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel since 2018, including a six-month hospital stay during which she underwent a thyroidectomy. Lynn’s parents had been denied a permit, and during that hospitalization, she was accompanied by her grandmother. The parents received a permit only after we stepped in. We receive dozens of requests for help from families in similar circumstances each year. Israel’s policy and its impact on whether parents are able to remain with their children and comfort them during difficult treatments, is the subject of a position paper we have recently released.

The figures are shocking:32% of applications made by minors (January – September 2021) to access treatment outside Gaza were delayed or denied, meaning they missed the treatment. This is a dramatic increase (15%) compared to 2020, when 17% of applications made by minors were denied.The rate of refusal of parents’ applications to accompany their children has gone up by about 7% (from 28% in 2020 to 35% in 2021). This increase was not reflected in an increase in the proportion of children exiting without parental accompaniment.The proportion of children exiting without parents dropped from 11% in 2020 to 4% in 2021. This does not indicate an improvement in Israel’s treatment of children, but rather the opposite – the drop is a result of the dramatic increase in the number of cases in which the children themselves are denied exit, which obviates the need for parental accompaniment.This state of affairs should outrage the Israeli public in general and Israel’s medical community in particular. Parental accompaniment, particularly when the child is fighting for their life, should be obvious. Unfortunately, the reality in which Palestinians’ right to health, especially in Gaza, is always contingent, always subject to Israeli decisions, has become par for the course. When we talk about apartheid in health care, these are not just empty words. They describe a cruel reality whose victims we engage with every single day.

Israel has been keeping the Gaza Strip under a blockade for 15 years, with disastrous effects on the lives and health of local residents. With nearly every single aspect of health care provision completely dependent on Israel’s permit regime, including access to education and training by medical staff, entry of medical equipment and medications, and access by patients to treatment the local system cannot offer, Gaza’s health care system is unable to function properly or plan its activities and development. In my mind, it can be likened to a surgeon trying to operate in handcuffs. 

One of the direst effects of the permit regime can be seen in cases of children in need of medical care outside Gaza. Even when they do receive a permit to exit the Strip, some have to do so alone or with an adult who is neither their father nor their mother because the parents had been denied a permit.

Lynn, a six-year-old from Gaza, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of three. She has been receiving care at Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel since 2018, including a six-month hospital stay during which she underwent a thyroidectomy. Lynn’s parents had been denied a permit, and during that hospitalization, she was accompanied by her grandmother. The parents received a permit only after we stepped in. We receive dozens of requests for help from families in similar circumstances each year. Israel’s policy and its impact on whether parents are able to remain with their children and comfort them during difficult treatments, is the subject of a position paper we have recently released.

The figures are shocking:32% of applications made by minors (January – September 2021) to access treatment outside Gaza were delayed or denied, meaning they missed the treatment. This is a dramatic increase (15%) compared to 2020, when 17% of applications made by minors were denied.The rate of refusal of parents’ applications to accompany their children has gone up by about 7% (from 28% in 2020 to 35% in 2021). This increase was not reflected in an increase in the proportion of children exiting without parental accompaniment.The proportion of children exiting without parents dropped from 11% in 2020 to 4% in 2021. This does not indicate an improvement in Israel’s treatment of children, but rather the opposite – the drop is a result of the dramatic increase in the number of cases in which the children themselves are denied exit, which obviates the need for parental accompaniment.This state of affairs should outrage the Israeli public in general and Israel’s medical community in particular. Parental accompaniment, particularly when the child is fighting for their life, should be obvious. Unfortunately, the reality in which Palestinians’ right to health, especially in Gaza, is always contingent, always subject to Israeli decisions, has become par for the course. When we talk about apartheid in health care, these are not just empty words. They describe a cruel reality whose victims we engage with every single day.