TEL AVIV, October 14, 2009 (WAFA)- Of 16 requests to enter Gaza and extend medical aid, 13 were PHR medical teams are delayed in roadblocks while on humanitarian missions in the West Bank. 

'The simplest interpretation of the Defense Ministry's conduct is that it is deliberately impeding our ability to carry out humanitarian missions in the Occupied Territory,' says PHR-Israel.

 Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-Israel) has recently asked Minister Ehud Barak to stop the deliberate harm that the ministry is causing to PHR-Israel’s activities in the Occupied Territories by impeding its access both in Gaza and the West Bank and eventually severing ties with the organization.

For the past 21 years, PHR-Israel has been providing medical services in the occupied territory in a variety of ways including a mobile clinic operated by volunteer Israeli physicians in the West Bank every week.  This effort to provide much-needed medical services to the Palestinian population was extended to the Gaza Strip in 2008, in which 9 medical delegations of PHR-Israel had entered the strip for that mission. The services include medical treatment and consultation, surgeries, training of Palestinian medical teams, distribution of medications, and sometimes even referring complicated cases to Israeli hospitals for further treatment.  These are humanitarian activities of the first degree, mainly in view of the problems that the Palestinian medical system faces in providing appropriate treatment in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Since 2008 when PHR-Israel began activity in Gaza, it has been sending delegations of physicians and medical equipment there, including after Operation Cast Lead.  PHR-Israel is the only Israeli organization to enter Gaza from Israel in recent years.  Over the past several months, however, PHR-Israel has met major hindrances that impair its humanitarian activities.  Of the 16 requests filed to enter the Gaza Strip last year, 13 were rejected without explanation or reason.  A PHR-Israel delegation with medical equipment was last allowed to enter Gaza in May 2009 but since then all eight requests filed were refused.  While the army denied PHR-Israel delegations' entry, it allowed unaffiliated physicians to enter the strip and carry out medical activity privately.

At the same time, in recent weeks, the PHR-Israel's West Bank mobile clinic has been delayed for hours at army checkpoints before being allowed to continue.  In addition, the army is making it very hard to transport medications and medical equipment through the mobile clinic.

'This conduct by the Defense Ministry raises fears that it intends to undermine the organization's many years of humanitarian activity in the Occupied Territories.  The State of Israel has recently declared that it does not intend to create a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  It is not clear how such these statements coincide with the IDF's practical policies,' said a letter sent by PHR-Israel to the Defense Ministry.

In addition to these policies, Colonel Moshe Levi, Commander of the Gaza Strip District Coordination Office in the Israeli army, has recently decided to cut contact with human rights organizations. Thus, PHR-Israel can no longer file requests for patients to leave the strip for life-saving or other urgent treatment in Israel or the West Bank.