Health ministry denounces IOA blackmail of the sick and wounded

The health ministry in the PA caretaker government in Gaza has denounced the Israeli occupation authority”s “immoral behavior” against Palestinian patients in violation of international laws that stipulate protecting the sick and wounded.

The ministry in a press release on Monday said that the fourth Geneva Convention clearly incriminates any pressures on civilians for the sake of obtaining information or exploiting their illness to achieve “cheap goals”.

The IOA was not content with blocking treatment of the sick and wounded Palestinians in the Gaza Strip but also detained those patients for several hours under the sun heat then took them to underground areas for interrogation in Beit Hanun crossing (Erez) to blackmail them and obtain any intelligence information possible, “which is a serious precedence against the sick patients”, the ministry elaborated.

It asked the Red Cross, WHO and all human rights organizations to pressure the IOA to halt such “savage practices”, which were confirmed by the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel in a recent report.

The ministry also asked Egypt to swiftly open the Rafah border terminal for sick Palestinians to end their suffering and to spare them blackmail at the hands of the IOA