Days of Palestine – Gaza
Israeli media is actively promoting the so-called “humanity of Israel” and trying to show it as sympathetic to cancer patients after lighting the Israeli Ministry of Defense building in pink, coinciding with the start of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month activities in October.
Palestinian human rights reports confirm that the Israeli occupation annually prevents more than 50 percent of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip from traveling for treatment, which has led to the death of hundreds of them.
The images that were widely speared during the past two days regarding “Israel’s sympathy” with cancer patients were met with a large-scale campaign organized by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
The campaign published and reported information and stories of dozens of Palestinians killed because they were prevented from traveling for treatment outside the besieged Gaza Strip for more than 15 years or even prevented access to treatment; thousands of them are still on waiting lists.
EU recalled the stories of several women, children, and youth who lost their lives due to the punitive measures that are part of an entire Israeli system to tighten the siege around the residents of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took power in 2007.
On its director Twitter, He referred to the story of Kholoud Al-Saedani, the mother of two children, who was diagnosed with cancer in her thirties.
However, her attempts to obtain an Israeli permit to leave the Gaza Strip and reach the city of Jerusalem were met by Israeli investigation with her, so the Israeli occupation showed her a picture of one of the Palestinian resistance fighters.
Still, she confirmed that she did not know him, which annoyed the occupation authorities, who refused her request to leave and return her to the Gaza Strip until she died in March 2017.
Kholoud is not the only one. The 5-year-old girl, Aisha Al-Lulu, passed away in 2019 alone in a Jerusalem hospital. The occupation prevented family members from accompanying her during a complex operation in tears due to her cancer. According to testimonies of Palestinian escorts from The occupied interior, the little girl entered the operating room crying and asking to see her mother.
Israeli occupation is waging war against patients in the Gaza Strip, claiming that it is imposing punitive measures that come within the framework of a political process.
Israeli war against patients caused Mira Al-Fajm (4 years) to lose her sight, as she was suffering from a cancerous tumor in her right eye, in which she lost her sight completely.
She was prevented from receiving treatment outside the Gaza Strip on the pretext of stopping civil coordination between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli ban, under the pretext that one of the patients may have blood ties with any of the resistance elements, also applies to Shireen Nassar and Samira Siam, who were diagnosed with breast cancer and stomach cancer. Still, they could not go out for treatment on the pretext that they are related to a Hamas member.
In the middle of this year, Hassan Al-Kharti, 62, died after suffering from a cancerous tumor that extended to the throat and tongue. He received a treatment transfer to complete treatment at Al-Makassed Hospital in occupied Jerusalem. The Coordination and Liaison Department of the Ministry of Health submitted a request to travel on May 27, but the Israeli occupation refused to grant him a permit.
According to human rights reports, the Israeli occupation prevented about 51,000 Gazan patients who applied to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment in Israeli hospitals or those in the West Bank between January 2008 and December 2018.
Stories of the pain of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip
Jamalat Zain al-Din was diagnosed with uterine cancer in Nasser Governmental Hospital in Khan Yunis (south) in mid-January 2017 before she faced Israeli blackmail to force her to make confessions about Palestinian resistance fighters. She applied for several permits, but the occupation rejected all of her requests, which made her succumb to the disease that killed them on February 2, 2018.
In July 2017, Jamil Tafesh, his 60s, passed away, after long suffering from liver cancer, due to the lack of treatment and the occupation’s delay in allowing him to leave for more than 20 days. His family made dozens of calls to save his life, but all of them failed in the face of the occupation’s insistence on banning him from traveling.
Acceptance for arrest is one of the most prominent Israeli methods in granting passage permits to patients from the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud Abu Taha (21 years old) was diagnosed with small intestine cancer. Israeli occupation agreed to give him an entry permit with his father, who was arrested by the Shin Bet security service. Mahmoud was returned to his home in Gaza before he died out of grief for his father and the pain of that silent guest called cancer.
Israeli occupation does not even consider the appeals made by international organizations, including those concerned with children. An example of this is the appeal made by the family of the child Youssef Abu Maryam to the World Health Organization and Childhood, but he died due to being prevented from traveling for treatment.
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip suffer medical deficits and a high number of cancer patients due to Israel dropping tons of explosives in four successive wars on the Gaza Strip and the severe shortage of medicines designated to treat cancer patients, which the occupation prevents from entering.
All threaten the lives of more than 13 thousand patients.
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