January 26, 2008

Israeli security forces are continuing to target Palestinian medical personnel who are trying to treat or evacuate the injured in ambulances and hospitals, even when there is no gunfire or fighting in the area, a human rights organization has revealed.

Human Rights Watch released a report claiming that Israeli security forces had launched attacks that harmed Palestinian medical emergency personnel and damaged ambulances on at least six different occasions in the Gaza Strip between May 30 and July 20, 2007 alone.

"Israel should conduct an impartial and transparent investigation of these incidents to determine why medical personnel were endangered, and it should remind its forces that attacks against medical and religious personnel and objects displaying the emblems of the Geneva Conventions, are prohibited," said Joe Stork, the deputy director of the Middle East division of HRW.

During a recent Israeli military incursion into the West Bank city of Nablus, during which a three-day curfew was imposed, 60 Palestinians were seriously injured, 50 homes occupied, and more than 55 shops damaged by ransacking and dynamiting; while 56 Palestinian medics were detained by soldiers and taken away for questioning.

Dr. Wael Sadaqah, deputy director and chief anesthetist of Nablus' Rafidiya hospital, where many of the injured were treated, told the Middle East Times that Israeli soldiers surrounded the hospital and forced wounded patients to exit ambulances and enter the hospital on foot in cold and pouring rain. Other patients were delayed for hours at the entrance to the hospital, said Sadaqah.

One patient is clinically brain dead and lies in a coma after he was shot several times in the back of the head after leaving a mosque, under circumstances which the Israelis say they are investigating.

While a battle between stone-throwing Palestinian youths and armed Israeli soldiers waged on for three days, a Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance, trying to evacuate some seriously ill and wounded patients -- after coordinating its movements beforehand with the Israeli Defense Forces and gaining permission to enter the area under curfew -- was shot at.

"One of my staff was shot in the back of the thigh with a rubber-coated metal bullet, even though there was no fighting or shooting taking place. The other suffered teargas inhalation after soldiers opened the door of the ambulance and deliberately shot a teargas canister inside," Dr. Muhammad Awadeh, PRCS's emergency medical services department director, told the Middle East Times.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated that in the last seven years, 21 Palestinian medical personnel have died at the hands of the Israeli security forces, and that the IDF have repeatedly attacked Palestinian medical personnel and prevented the removal of dead bodies.

PCHR further claimed that Israel appeared to be following a deliberate policy of deterring medical personnel from providing medical services in areas of conflict.

The Palestinian human rights organization, however, has been equally scathing of attacks by armed Palestinians on ambulances, hospitals, and medical personnel in Gaza during the serious factional infighting that ravaged the poverty stricken and war-torn strip in June 2007 when Hamas took over in a bloody coup which left hundreds of Palestinians dead and many more injured.

The group said that fighters from both Hamas and Fatah had been involved in gun battles in and around two Gaza Strip hospitals, thereby recklessly endangering patients and personnel.

In one particular instance Fatah men went as far as to fire mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa hospital in Gaza city, which in turn drew return fire from Hamas men who were hiding inside the hospital.

But Israeli sanctions on the strip, too, are having a devastating effect as the Jewish state's non-violent but equally deadly assault on Gaza's fragile medical infrastructure continues unabated.

Following a recent barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli towns bordering the strip, which came in response to a number of Israeli military assaults on Gaza that left over 40 Palestinians dead, Israel has now completely closed Gaza's borders.

According to the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Gaza, 713 patients out of 4,074 applicants (17.5 percent) were denied permits to cross into Israel or over to Egypt for medical treatment last year. And toward the end of last year nearly 40 ambulances from the West Bank were refused access to Israel while over 30 were delayed at checkpoints, despite having permits.

Many specialized life-saving medical treatments are not available in government hospitals in the Gaza Strip due to the sanctions. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer patients, pediatric surgery, and neurosurgery, are among the treatments that are only available beyond Gaza's borders in Israel, East Jerusalem, or overseas.

Furthermore, most diagnostic laboratory equipment, for example MRI and x-ray equipment, at Ministry of Health facilities is no longer functioning, and cannot be repaired due to the inability to import spare parts.

An Israeli spokesman, however, told the Middle East Times that Israel allowed most medical cases to enter Israel for treatment and only patients suspected of being security risks were denied permits.