Hundreds of Palestinian patients have been trapped in the Gaza Strip, unable to travel abroad for crucial treatment for cancer and other diseases, because of political infighting between Hamas and its rival secular faction, Fatah.

Eight Gazans who were waiting to travel abroad have died since the crisis began in March, when the dispute shut down a medical referral committee that helps sick residents find treatment outside of Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.

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In response, the West Bank government, which funds medical treatment for Palestinians abroad, froze most patient transfers.

On Monday, there was hope for a resolution. Hamas health minister Basim Naim announced the restoration of the referral committee, which Hamas' rival, Fatah, had controlled but Hamas shut down in March.

The committee would resume coordinating medical treatment abroad. But Hamas has reservations and has asked mediating independent health workers to find new committee members both sides can agree on, said senior health official Yousef Mudalal.

The IDF has also begun to coordinate entries into Israel, but has demanded that any patients previously under the care of Gaza's humanitarian organizations coordinate their entry through the referral committee. The organizations claim this will prolong the patients' waiting period.





Ten-year-old Ribhi Jindiyeh, ill with lymphoma (Photo: AP)

Rights activists say the political differences are jeopardizing people's lives. "They are playing with the lives of people and their pain. There's a complete absence of responsibility," said Khalil Shaheen of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, working with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, has managed to get 35 patients out of Gaza for treatment since the committee collapsed, said Ran Yarom of PHR. But the groups say they don't have the resources to do the committee's job.

The PHR also stated that the IDF has demanded the referral committee take charge of 78 cases, including 31 patients requiring life-saving or eye-saving surgery, 17 cancer patients, 15 cardiology patients, and several patients who require organ transplants.

"From the moment the referrals were brought to the IDF it should have taken responsibility for them," the PHR said in a statement.

The organization also demanded the army complete treatment of the referrals it had been responsible for and prevent further bureaucratic delays.

"The army told us that it wasn't urgent and that lives weren't at stake, and that there is a difference between life endangerment and quality of life. Maybe for the army loss of sight is just a matter of quality of life," the statement said.

'He might be dying before my eyes'

The crisis compounds the challenges facing Gaza's medical system. Hospitals use aging equipment and suffer from low medicine supplies.

And in late January, the West Bank government halted payments for medical care in Israel, saying the treatment was too expensive. Fatah health officials said they would only pay for Gaza residents to obtain cheaper medical care in Egypt.

Ten-year-old Ribhi Jindiyeh, a lymphoma patient, lies in bed at home, skinny and jaundiced, too weak to move. He underwent chemotherapy last year in an Israeli hospital, and when he returned home in January, he seemed better. But in March, he began urinating blood.

Gaza doctors can't find the problem and give him infusions every two days to keep him alive.

"Nobody here knows why he is losing so much blood, but nobody can refer us to a hospital abroad, either," his mother, Nevine, 38, said.

Another son, 4-year-old Yehia, was diagnosed with lymphoma in March.

"I want everybody to help my son — Israel, Fatah, Hamas, whoever," Nevine said. "If they can't help a sick child, who can they help? They should all pack up their bags and go home."

In Gaza City, 12-year-old Mohammed Zibdeh, a brain cancer patient, waits for a permit to travel, breathing with the assistance of a ventilator device in his throat.

Last year, doctors in an Israeli hospital worked to shrink his brain tumor with chemotherapy. Now Zibdeh has constant headaches, and his father, Riyad, 48, fears the tumor is growing back. "I can't help him, and he might be dying before my own eyes," he said.