Hamas blocking journalists from medical care, NGO charges

Journalists Syndicate says armed group gives healthy people medical evacuations for $30,000

GAZA (JNI) — “Gangs of bribe takers” affiliated with Hamas are milking the system used to evacuate wounded Gazans for treatment abroad, to the detriment of genuine patients, the director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Journalists Syndicate alleged on Tuesday.

“Hamas gathers the [patients’] names and then manipulates them as it sees fit,” wrote Nasser Abu Bakr, a longtime Palestinian TV journalist and former AFP reporter who serves as director of the Syndicate. He described receiving credible reports from multiple sources that Hamas exploits the evacuation system to facilitate travel for healthy people, in return for bribes of up to $30,000 per person. The reports allege that the armed group falsely lists bribe payers as “accompanying family members” for unrelated sick or wounded people, Abu Bakr said. Evacuation procedures allow up to four chaperones to accompany each evacuee, he explained.

The director’s allegations reinforce similar charges by protesters in rare public demonstrations against Hamas last June, as previously covered by Jusoor News International.

Abu Bakr said he felt compelled to speak out after struggling repeatedly to evacuate Gazan journalists belonging to his syndicate. “We are working day and night to get treatment for 40 sick and wounded journalists, 12 of whom are in no condition to wait,” he wrote. “We have been in touch with the World Health Organization and a number of countries to host them for treatment and we pressed hard on this … But I want to make clear that it is still Hamas alone that controls who can travel for treatment.”

“Keeping silent is no longer an option,” he wrote. “We are going to expose every bribe-taking official and the names of all the fixers who stand behind them.”

The “Gaza Medical Transfers Committee,” which handles evacuations and operates under Hamas’s Ministry of Health, denied Abu Bakr’s charges in a statement issued later the same day. The committee claimed that only medical criteria determine which patients travel, subject to exit permits issued by Israeli authorities.

In response, Abu Bakr urged his Facebook followers to read their statement and his own and decide for themselves. “Stop insulting people’s intelligence,” he wrote to the Hamas-appointed doctors. “Let the people decide.”