PALESTINIAN medical supplies are running out because of the economic siege in the occupied territories – with supplies of some basic materials already at ‘zero’ – sources at the Palestinian Health Ministry are warning.
A report on the critical situation by Na’ilah Khalil, was published by the Palestinian newspaper ‘Al-Ayyam’ on May 13.
The report said: ‘The only catheterization department for heart diseases in the West Bank is now threatened with closure due to some vital medicines running out, while the remaining supplies in this department are about to be depleted.
‘This is another example of the repercussions of the economic siege on health care in the Palestinian territories.
‘This leaves cardiac patients with just two choices: receiving treatment at private medical centres or travelling abroad. Both are extremely expensive.’
Dr Muhammad al-Batrawi, head of the Catheterization and Internal Medicine Department at the Ramallah Government Hospital, was quoted saying: ‘I believe that two months is the maximum amount of time this department can cope with in terms of stocks of the required medicines.
‘After that, the department will have to be closed.’
The ‘Al Ayam’ report said: ‘Physicians at the hospital’s catheterization department are making extraordinary efforts to keep the department open for patients by purchasing some of the necessary medicines from private medical firms at the physicians’ own expense or through personal pledges.
‘Nevertheless, closure of the department seems inevitable if the remaining medicines run out soon.’
Deputy Palestinian Health Minister Anan al-Masri said: ‘The catheterization department, like many other medical departments in the Health Ministry, has been affected by the scarcity of resources, and today the ministry faces an actual situation where its strategic supplies of some basic materials have reached zero.’
Al-Masri warned: ‘The Palestinian health situation faces the risk of collapse if Israel does not pay the PNA (Palestinian National Authority) revenues and does not end the economic siege imposed on the Palestinian people.’
The World Health Organisation issued a statement in which it explained the serious situation facing the Palestinian territories with respect to health care.
The PNA premier, Ismail Haniya, meanwhile reiterated his government’s determination not to give legitimacy to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands.
Haniya affirmed that ‘international pressures led by the US administration will fail in demolishing the Palestinian castle’.
Haniya was speaking before thousands of Palestinians gathered in the Rafah stadium in a massive rally organised by the PNA Ministry of Refugees’ Affairs.
He said: ‘We shall sanction the Palestinian resistance being a legitimate right to every people under occupation and we shall not allow anyone to enslave us in exchange for a few pennies.’
He asserted that all pressures imposed on his government will not be able to topple it, as the government possesses principles and constants that it will never compromise, under any circumstances.
Swarms of Palestinian citizens in the southern Gaza Strip district warmly welcomed the premier, who in return hailed the people of Rafah for the show of support they have displayed for his government, vowing not to dislodge an inch from the Palestinian people’s aspirations.
The premier also saluted the 10,000 Palestinian captives incarcerated in Israeli jails, pledging that his government would do all it could to secure their release through all means.
l Addressing the European Parliament earlier this week, PNA President Mahmud Abbas appealed to the international community to adhere to ‘international law’ and the Middle East ‘roadmap’, and talk to the Palestinians ‘as partners’.
‘The claim that there is no Palestinian partner has no basis,’ said Abbas.
‘I reiterate that, based on the constitutional power granted to me by our basic law . . . we remain fully committed to return immediately to the negotiating table to reach an agreement that ends this long conflict.’
Abbas noted: ‘Only yesterday, the Palestinian people commemorated the 58th anniversary of the Palestinian Al-Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, which represented the historical injustice when we the Palestinian people were uprooted from our land, our society was destroyed, most of us were displaced and became refugees, and our firm national rights were denied.’
Abbas said that ‘the Israeli policy to reject our extended hand to negotiate and give peace a chance’ had increased ‘the frustration of our people’.
He added: ‘The frustration created by the practices of the Israeli occupation and the absence of a positive outlook for the peace process formed the background for the legislative elections that took place last January.’
Hamas won the January elections that had been demanded by the West, defeating the outgoing administration of President Abbas’s Fatah movement by a landslide majority.
Appealing to European governments, Abbas said: ‘It was a European capital, Oslo, that hosted the first official contacts between the PLO and the Israeli government and the initial signature of the first agreement in history between the two sides in 1993, before its official signing in Washington that same year.
‘The abandonment of commitments and agreements and the rejection of international patronage have become a main feature of Israel’s policy, and have resulted in the peace process’s loss of momentum and the shaking of peoples’ belief in its utility.
‘This policy has developed in recent years to the level of attempting to completely destroy the Palestinian National Authority and its institutions, and to the systematic destruction of our basic infrastructure, which your countries contributed to developing. . .
‘We emphasise again that democracy remains without soul in the absence of people’s freedom and the continued occupation.’
Abbas defended the record of the previous Palestinian administration and said he was calling on the new Palestinian government to change its position.
‘We are in a continued dialogue that will take us to an expanded national dialogue in a few days,’ he said. ‘I hope that this will lead us to the required process of amendment.’
But he said that stopping assistance to the Palestinian Authority ‘will exacerbate the deteriorating economic and social conditions and will weaken the network of efficient and working government ministries, administrations and institutions that the countries of the European Union have played a vital role in building and developing.’
He said that: ‘The severest blow to the peace process, which was supposed to have reached its final stages within a few short years, was handled by the Israeli rejection of the logic of partnership and its insistence on practising destructive policies, specifically of building settlements, constructing walls and confiscating land to create facts on the ground that prejudice the outcome of negotiations.’
He said the previous PNA government had succeeded in getting an agreement ‘that provided for the first time in years an almost complete halt in armed attacks by Palestinians’.
‘But’, he added, ‘our Israeli counterpart responded with the continued construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank that divides our territories into scattered cantons, with continued assassinations, arrests and military incursions in our towns, villages and refugee camps, with tightened and suffocating sieges. . .’