GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime has prevented a Palestinian woman, who has been suffering from breast cancer, from leaving the Zionist-blockaded Gaza Strip to receive treatment.
Nadia al-Bakri, 52, has been suffering from cancer since 2009, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), an independent Palestinian human rights organization, said in a statement.
She has undergone chemotherapy, an operation, and radiation treatment at Sheba Medical Center in the occupied territories and been advised to have periodic checkups at the hospital.
However, Zionist troops have continued to prevent Bakir’s exit from Gaza despite the fact that she has had several medical appointments arranged.
According to the PCHR, the last time Bakri was allowed to go to the hospital for a checkup was on December 27, 2015. Her latest appointment was due on September 20.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported in July that an official from the regime’s internal spy agency, Shin Bet, had told Bakri that she did not meet the criteria for “urgent humanitarian and lifesaving cases.”
Bakri is the director of the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza and a board member of the PCHR. “The continued Israeli policy to prevent patients from traveling to receive medical treatment is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, especially as this policy falls within the continued illegal closure imposed on the Gaza Strip,” the PCHR statement read.
“Bakri’s case is similar to the cases of all Palestinian patients in the Gaza Strip, who receive advanced medical treatment in hospitals” of the West Bank and the occupied Palestinian territories, the statement added.
The Gaza Strip has been under a siege by the Zionist regime since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in living standards as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
