A health catastrophe threatens the Palestinians in the city of Hebron by preventing the Israeli occupation of medical personnel from facing the Corona epidemic

Occupied Jerusalem,(ST)-The suffering of the Palestinians, especially in the West Bank city of Hebron, is exacerbated by the outbreak of the Corona epidemic due to the Israeli occupation’s prevention of medical teams from moving between the towns, villages and camps of the city to carry out their work in the face of the epidemic, with Hebron recording the highest rates of infections in occupied Palestine, threatening a serious health disaster.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced in a statement that the epidemiological situation in Hebron is dangerous, indicating that 67 percent of active injuries in the Palestinian territories, which numbered 4037, are registered in the name of the city, with a total of 2749 active cases, of which 216 were recorded during the past 24 hours.

The number of new cases of coronavirus emerging in occupied Palestine reached 4,722, of whom twenty died, most of them in Hebron, while the number of recovery cases reached 665.

Palestinian medical staff warned of the danger of the occupation continuing to disrupt their work in Hebron and prevent them from freely accessing areas where the virus is spreading, treating infected cases and sterilizing public facilities.

The Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Al-Barghouthi, explained to a SANA correspondent that despite the outbreak of the Corona epidemic in Hebron and its villages, the occupation and its settlers’ attacks on the Palestinians in it did not stop, as it carries out break ins into homes and properties, arrest campaigns, land grabs, and burns agricultural crops and closes roads.

Al-Barghouthi said that the occupation tightens the screws on 25,000 Palestinians in Hebron and prevents Palestinian medical teams and volunteers from working to surround the epidemic despite the registration of more than 2700 injuries in the city, which portends a health disaster with the situation out of control, calling on the international community to provide the necessary medical support to the Palestinians and obligate the occupation authorities to allow the Palestinian Ministry of Health to work freely in the villages and towns of Hebron and in every inch of the occupied territories.

Al-Barghouthi pointed out that the matter does not stop at the city of Hebron, as the occupation prevents medical teams from reaching more than 100 towns and villages in the occupied West Bank to provide treatment for the injured cases or even transfer them to central hospitals in the cities of the West Bank.

Director of the Palestine Medical Complex Ahmed Al-Bitawi pointed out that the Corona epidemic broke out in Palestinian cities and towns in light of the tragic reality of the Palestinian health sector that was  prevented  from being developed by the Israeli occupation.

For his part, the coordinator of the National Committees for Resisting the Wall and Settlement in the West Bank, Ratib Jabour, clarified that the occupation forces and their settlers are taking advantage of the circumstances of the Corona epidemic in Hebron to implement their Judaic colonial schemes by escalating their daily attacks on Palestinians and their properties and preventing volunteers and medical teams from reaching the injured and working to limit the spread of the epidemic What will make it worse is  if the international community does not act to stop the disastrous consequences of the occupation’s practices.

The representative of the Fatah movement in the old city of Hebron, Muhannad Al-Jabari confirms that the occupation prevents the entry of medical teams into the old city and prevents the implementation of a complete quarantine process for villages and areas that have become the focus of the epidemic, indicating that the settlers infected with Corona virus intensified their attacks on the Palestinians in Hebron in order to spread the virus and displace them and seize their lands and the establishment of more settlement units .

Haifaa Mafalani