AWDA warns: Israel's closure of crossings targets patients' lives and residents' health

The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has come to a halt, but the Israeli occupation continues to close Gaza's crossings, coinciding with its military operation, which, until May 11, 2023, killed 25 and injured 76 Palestinians, many of them women and children.


With the closure of the Karam Abu Salem crossing, Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip are denied entering fuel, goods and medicines. Cancer and serious illness patients with the closure of the Beit Hanoun checkpoint are also denied travel to West Bank hospitals, Jerusalem and the occupied interior in the absence of the necessary treatment at local health facilities.


Al Awda Health and Community Association condemns the continued occupation of civilians in contravention of article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantee the right to life as the basis for all rights.


AWDA considers preventing patients from travelling as a method of willful killing by denying the right to health guaranteed by article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
It also deplores the denial of access to medical supplies, goods and fuel, in violation of articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in particular, as well as a wide range of economic and social rights.


AWDA warns of the predictable health and environmental risks due to medical staff's obstruction of their role in providing health care, power cuts to critical facilities such as desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants.


AWDA calls on the international community to compel the occupying Power's leaders to immediately stop brutalizing international law, holding perpetrators accountable and obliging them to end the policy of collective punishment, which article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention considers to be a war crime warranting prosecution and accountability. According to official statistics, 142 cancer patients were unable to travel on the first day of the aggression, and 136 others were unable to travel on the second day, including 8 serious cases. 
The deficit in basic medicines reached 43%, and the deficit in medical disposables reached 19%, as well as continuing to prevent the introduction and maintenance of medical devices necessary for the treatment and diagnosis of patients since months. 

*AWDA is the most important civil society health organization working in Gaza, and a PHM member