Palestinians castigate Israel for failing healthcare

The Palestinian delegation to the UN introduced a draft resolution at the World Health Organization conference Wednesday condemning Israel for providing poor health care in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“Health care in the occupied territories is failing,” the motion contended, and the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, particularly administrative detainees incarcerated without a trial, receive the worst care.

The Palestinians introduced the draft motion with the help of several Arab countries. It was set to be discussed Wednesday at the WHO’s yearly conference taking place in Geneva this week.

Ambassadors to Europe, the United States, and Canada were instructed by Roni Leshno-Yaar, head of the international organizations division at the Foreign Ministry,  to deny the validity of the resolution’s claims, the daily Maariv reported, because the Palestinians’ health care system is “good or at least better than the level of care in other Arab countries.”

The conditions of Palestinian prisoners is a hotbed issue in Palestinian society. Their ostensible mistreatment by Israel has been used as a rallying point in the call for their release, particularly those imprisoned before the Oslo agreements of 1993.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Monday that although the Palestinians have done all the legal work necessary to join 63 UN agencies, conventions and treaties, they hadn’t applied yet — mainly to give the latest US peace effort spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry a chance to succeed.

The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly last November to upgrade the Palestinians from a UN observer to a nonmember observer state, a move vehemently opposed by the US and Israel. Recognition as a state gives the Palestinians the right to apply for membership in UN and other organizations, including the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed at the time that the upgraded status didn’t “change anything on the ground,” the Palestinian leadership had previously indicated its readiness to turn to the ICC to sue Israel for alleged war crimes, causing Jerusalem to worry it would use the international body to unilaterally advance its political goals and pursue disciplinary measures against Israel.

The introduction of the WHO resolution also comes a day after a Palestinian NGO found that human rights abuses by the rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza are on the rise.

The Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said in its annual report Tuesday that incidents of abuse are up 10 percent since last year. Director Ahmed Harb said, “Most of the complaints were on torture, mistreatment, preventing and dispersing public assemblies, preventing reporters from reporting or arresting them.”