Five Palestinian patients – including three children – from Gaza have died this year after Israel banned them from leaving the besieged enclave to access medical treatment, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights said.
In a statement Al Mezan Centre said: "The most recent case of delay led to the death of Mohammed al-Ledawi, a 32-year-old cancer patient residing in Rafah City, on 6 September 2022, after being denied eight medical appointments at West Bank hospitals. The patient suffered from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.”
The Palestinian was denied the required permit to leave Gaza and travel to Jerusalem and Nablus to receive treatment "for eight different appointments" leading to the deterioration of his health, it added.
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"Al Mezan strongly condemns the discriminatory movement restrictions and the arbitrary permit system imposed by Israeli authorities on Palestinian patients from Gaza, which obstruct their access to hospitals outside the Strip."
"Israel’s denials or delays of permits are not based on any valid reasons, but rather are part of the collective punishment and apartheid regime to which it subjects more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," it stressed.
The Gaza Strip has been under a strict Israeli siege since mid-2007 when Israel imposed an airtight land, sea and air blockade on the area after armed group Hamas rose to power. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters, as well as two of the three border crossing points; the third is controlled by Egypt.
Israel has restricted the movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza for much longer than the past 15 years. Starting in the late 1980s with the eruption of the first Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, Israel began to impose restrictions by introducing a permit system that required Palestinians in Gaza to get difficult-to-obtain permits to work or travel through Israel or access the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In 2006, Hamas won general elections and seized power in a violent conflict with its rival, Fatah, after the latter refused to recognise the outcome of the vote. Since Hamas’ rise to power in 2007, Israel has severely intensified its siege.
About 56 percent of Palestinians in Gaza suffer from poverty, and youth unemployment stands at 63 percent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. More than 60 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, expelled from their homes in other parts of Palestine in 1948, in places such as Lydda (Lod) and Ramle, and now live just a few kilometres away from their original homes and towns.
Since the beginning of the siege, Israel has launched four protracted military assaults on Gaza: in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Each of these attacks has exacerbated Gaza’s already dire situation. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including many children, and tens of thousands of homes, schools and office buildings have been destroyed.
The region is called as world’s first Open Prison.
