Salah Haj Yihye (far right), the mobile clinic coordinator, with the medical delegation from the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
Now for something different: an old form of killing in Gaza.
This morning the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that, as part of its siege of Gaza Israel is continuing its strangulation of this Palestinian territory by condemning further medical patients to death by withholding essential medical care. The group of Israeli doctors from Physicians for Human Rights shown above, who volunteered to enter Gaza in order to treat seriously ill Palestinian patients, were recently denied entry, and not for the first time.
This report was issued through IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), the news service for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
TEL AVIV, 15 October 2008 (IRIN) – Israel has denied a group of Israeli medical volunteers entry into the Gaza Strip, affecting the group’s ability to reach patients in the beleaguered enclave, an official told IRIN.
“We had 350 patients waiting for us in Gaza,” said Salah Haj Yihye, the mobile clinic coordinator with the medical delegation from the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel), a non-governmental organisation. They had planned to spend 8-10 October in the enclave.
The eight-member team was granted a permit on 6 October, but only when they arrived at the Erez Crossing to Gaza two days later were they informed that the permit had been “frozen”.
Some of the patients, anticipating surgery, had already prepared themselves and many were fasting when they found out that the doctors would not be coming, causing distress.
Yihye said the work was coordinated with local health officials, including the ministry of health in Gaza, which is headed by a Hamas minister.
PHR-Israel had arranged for four orthopaedic physicians, an oncologist, a specialist surgeon and two psychologists to visit the enclave.
Some members of the mission were planning on conducting surgical operations in the enclave, others were set to give training.
“The two psychologists were going to train Gazans on trauma and post-traumatic treatment,” Yihye said, noting the need for this knowledge in the territory, which has seen a lot of violence.
The Gaza Strip lacks medical specialists in certain fields, including psychology and certain orthopaedic specialist areas, and all the doctors were chosen for their specific expertise.
LINK to the rest of the article, HERE.
All the PHR volunteers were members of the Palestinian minority in Israel, which make up 20 percent of the country’s population. The Israeli military cited “security concerns,” the same old bogus rationale for killing Palestinians.
Last May, Jimmy Carter called the siege of Gaza `a human rights crime.’ In a statement from the Carter Center, he said that the world must stop standing idle while the people of Gaza are treated with such cruelty.
Although the announcement was reported in the UK Guardian, no major newspaper in the US carried this condemnation of the Gaza siege. America continues to be complicit in this human rights crime.
