Ramallah: Palestinian officers at the Palestinian-Israeli Civil Affairs Coordination Liaison Office began intensive talks on Wednesday with their Israeli counterparts regarding the Israeli occupation’s decision to ban the entry of Gazans seeking medical treatment in private hospitals in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem or hospitals inside the Green Line areas that the Israeli state controls.
The ban has been instituted under the pretext that the official medical transfer documents the sick people presented to the occupation authorities on Erez Crossing were letter-headed with “State of Palestine” and the logo of the Palestinian state.
The ban affects ill people using the Erez Crossing and has been labelled by Palestinians as “rude, barbaric, illegal” and “aimed at killing patients” for whom treatment, as the Israelis know, is not available in Gaza.
The medical transfer documents are issued by the Ramallah Health Ministry, which had complied with the decision of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to order all official documents of the various Palestinian ministries to be headed with the logo and title of the “State of Palestine” instead of the “Palestinian National Authority”.
The Presidential order was made months after the status of Palestine was upgraded in the UN General Assembly to that of a non-member observer state.
A Palestinian official at the Palestinian-Israeli Civil Affairs Coordination Liaison Office in the West Bank told Gulf News that the issue will be handled in the West Bank and via the Palestinian Health Ministry, which issues the medical transfer documents and sponsors the treatment of sick Gazans.
The official said that the Israelis have repeatedly but verbally objected to the logo and the title on the letterhead but Palestinian officials have told them it was a political and sovereign decision taken by the Palestinian leadership and that it should be discussed in the political arena rather than on a busy crossing point.
The official said that the Israelis cannot ban patients from crossing Erez to reach hospitals as medical conditions in Gaza have deteriorated to such a degree that the lives of sick people are on the line.
“The Israeli occupation jeopardises the lives and safety of those ill people and uses them to achieve trivial political gains,” the official said.
The official said that 70 patients from Gaza were turned back from the Erez Crossing on Wednesday and that the Palestinian side was officially told that Palestinian patients holding otherwise complete medical transfer documents but with the inappropriate letterhead will not be allowed to cross from the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said that the issue is currently under review and that it will be settled in favour of the Palestinian patients from Gaza.
