by Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch
The Palestinian Authority has decided to stop paying for the successful cancer treatment of a seven-year-old Palestinian child Majed Muhammad Majed Ah-Sha’er in Ichilov Hospital in Israel, in order to keep paying salaries for terrorists.
The decision was made despite the fact that Ichilov is the first hospital outside the United States using a new cancer treatment “that holds promise for lymphoma and leukemia patients.”
According to the boy’s father, Majed Muhammad was diagnosed with leukemia in 2015 and was sent for treatment in Israel.
“He has been transferred to hospitals in the occupied interior (i.e., Israel) since the outbreak of the disease,” he told the independent Palestinian Authority news agency Donia Al-Watan on May 28, 2019. “He added that he has received full treatment and that the response [to the treatment] has been good. He also said that the doctors have emphasized that check-ups need to be made every six months in order to complete the treatment and necessary medical tests.”
Majed’s father explained that the new request for approval of his son’s next trip was submitted “to the relevant bodies in Ramallah, but his referral to Ichilov Hospital was not approved and the doctors have said that he is expected to be referred to a different hospital in the occupied West Bank.”
He added, “The reason that the referral to the hospital in the occupied interior (i.e., Israel) was not approved is that the president [Abbas] has decided to stop the referrals to the Israeli hospitals but there are sick people who are still being treated in the occupied interior.”
Until recently thousands of Palestinian Authority citizens every year, such as Majed, were receiving medical treatment in Israeli hospitals. But this humanitarian program came to an end, when the Palestinian Authority decided to stop sending its citizens in need of medical treatment to Israel.
The PA explained that since Israel is refusing to transfer the money that was spent by the Ramallah government last year on salaries to terrorists (approximately $138 million), the PA will no longer permit its citizens to travel for medical treatment in Israel, for which the PA has to pay.
This decision clearly demonstrated the PA’s priorities – the continued payment of the salaries to the Palestinian terrorist prisoners and released prisoners is more important than providing sick Palestinian Authority citizens with the opportunity to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.
In a desperate attempt to try and invoke public pressure to force the PA to allow Majed to continue receiving his life saving treatment, his parents turned to the press to call on Mahmoud Abbas to approve the treatment.
“The father of the sick [boy] Majed Muhammad Majed Ah-Sha’er called on the relevant bodies and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to approve covering the cost of his child’s trip to Ichilov Hospital in the occupied interior (i.e., Israel) that was set for June 4, 2019, to complete his treatment,” Donia Al-Watan reported on May 28.
It should be noted this story was not reported in the official Palestinian Authority press.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) notes that the decision of the PA to stop referrals of Palestinian Authority citizens to Israeli hospitals appears only to have affected the regular residents such as Majed, but not the leaders, such as Jibril Rajoub, who recently received medical treatment in the very same Israeli Ichilov hospital.
Majed’s treatment, which was to have been this week, had been scheduled long before Abbas prohibited PA residents from going to Israeli hospitals. As of this writing there was no report in the Palestinian Authority press that Abbas had changed his mind and permitted the treatment.