Beit Jala, occupied West Bank – Khaldoun Atwan starts each day in the oncology ward at Beit Jala Government Hospital, not knowing what barriers will come his way. The Nabi Yunis checkpoint in Halhul seems to be “always closed”, so the head of the daytime oncology unit at the hospital leaves his car and finishes the commute from Hebron by taxi. I found the wiper broken,” he said about his journey through an area where settlers are now active.
Traversing a dizzying array of gates and checkpoints opening or closing at will, he does not know whether he will reach the hospital, whether his patients will, or whether the drugs they need will be on the shelf when they do. Beit Jala is the only government hospital in Bethlehem governorate, home to some 320,000 people. Inside his tiny, spartan office, Atwan is struggling to keep up with his cancer patients who have regressed because they missed crucial appointments or essential drugs needed for their chemotherapy treatment.
Not even during the second Intifada, he recalls, was drug supply an issue. Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, including widespread road closures, checkpoints and a series of settler pogroms against Palestinian communities, have also impacted the economy. As a result, the occupied West Bank’s healthcare system is rapidly deteriorating, with staff receiving just half their salaries, while the PA can’t pay for essential medications.
Alongside others nervously pacing in the courtyard, an older cancer patient from a village in Bethlehem governorate stood at the entrance of the hospital, weighing with his son what to do. Ministry clinics are now operating part-time, with doctors seeing well more than 100 patients a day when they are. Now, even a doctor’s visit is rushed and unaffordable: “If we want to go to the doctor for a checkup, we need 200 shekels [$65],” said an older cancer patient.
Getting paid only half their salaries, “the government employee is working just two or three days a week, because he hasn’t got enough to come in for his full hours,” he added. As a result, the hospital ends up covering emergency cases only. But now everyone understands: Everyone’s suffering,” Dari said.
The medical supplies crisis in Beit Jala and across the West Bank is the result of Israel’s withholding of tax revenues earmarked for the PA, an action spearheaded by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Even before the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, Israel was periodically withholding tax revenues, endangering the Ministry of Health’s coffers, Milena said. According to Yosef Ojra, an internal medicine specialist at Beit Jala, the withheld revenues have depleted the Health Ministry’s funds to pay medical suppliers, who are now withholding their services.
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