Palestinian cancer patient denied entry from Gaza into Israel for hospital care
Israel are now refusing cancer patients entry from the Gaza Strip:
At the same time Defence minister Ehud Barak has given the go ahead to begin phased cuts in power to the strip in response to rocket attacks.A 21-year-old cancer patient in urgent need of specialist treatment was stopped from entering Israel from Gaza despite securing prior permission from the Israeli military to cross the border.
The incident, the latest in a series which the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) claims is part of a tough new policy by the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet towards seriously ill patients from Gaza seeking treatment in Israel, came as Israel separately stepped up its response to the firing of Qassam rockets by Gaza militants.
The patient turned back from Erez on Monday, Mahmud Kamal Abu Taha, was sent back to hospital in Khan Yunis after waiting two-and-a-half hours in an ambulance at the Erez crossing while he was receiving oxygen and on an intravenous drip. Shin Bet agents also arrested his father at the crossing even though he had also been told he had permission to accompany his son to a hospital in Tel Aviv.
In testimony to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, the patient's brother Hani, 34, explained that his brother had lost about a quarter of his body weight, prompting fears for his life after 75 centimetres of his small intestine had been removed when doctors had found a cancerous growth.
He added that, unable to eat, his brother had been fed with four to six doses a day of vitamin solution but that the dosage had been reduced to one because the hospital was suffering a shortage of the solution. He said that specialists decided to transfer him to Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel. He added: "Mahmud is melting away in front of our eyes like a candle."
His deputy Matan Vilnai said Israel was no longer obliged to supply more power than the "minimum needed to avert a crisis". The move is likely to begin with cuts of around 15 minutes after a rocket is fired, with the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a frequent site for rocket launches, the most affected initially.Both of these actions are acts of collective punishment:
Collective punishment is a violation of the laws of war and is a breach of the Geneva Conventions.Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behaviour of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying powers have used collective punishment to retaliate against and deter attacks on their forces by resistance movements (e.g. by destroying whole villages where attacks have taken place).
I wonder if that other Occupying Power will consider such actions against the Kurdish population of Iraq for the actions of the PKK? Of course they won't. But neither will they issue any condemnation as Israel deprives an entire area of power and turns cancer patients away from check points because of actions that the residents of Gaza and the cancer patients had nothing to do with.
When one finds oneself unable to condemn such an obvious wrong, then you really have lost all of your moral authority.
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