At approximately 5:17 p.
m.
on Monday 25 July 2011, Raed Azzam Salim Mghari, 33, died after the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) rejected his request for a permit to exit from Gaza to receive lifesaving medical treatment in the West Bank.
  Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemns such practices, which violate human rights standards and international humanitarian law, and calls for prompt international intervention to lift the Israeli siege on Gaza, which threatens Gazan patients’ lives and imposes heavy suffering on Gaza’s population at large.
  According to the information available to Al Mezan, the deceased was suffering from chronic heart disease resulting from lack of blood flow to the heart.
  Such cases cannot be treated in Gaza, and patients must be referred to a hospital outside the Strip.
 On Sunday 10 July 2011, Mr.
Mghari’s health condition deteriorated.
  As a result, doctors at Shifa Hospital in Gaza city decided to refer him to a hospital outside Gaza to undergo open-heart surgery.
  The patient’s relatives successfully completed all the procedures required for urgent medical referral to receive treatment at the Arab Hospital in Nablus City in West Bank.
  On Sunday 17 July 2011, the patient’s relatives submitted an application for urgent permission for the patient and his father in law, who was to accompany him in the trip, to travel via Erez crossing.
  On Tuesday 19 July 2011, the patient’s application was still under review, according to the response from the Israeli authorities.
  The Palestinian Coordination Office asserted to Al Mezan that the office had informed the Israeli side about the emergency status of the patient and the urgent need to issue him permission to travel.
  However, Israel denied the application of the patient’s father-in-law, his father-in-law, Asa’d Al Maghari, 48.
  As a result, the patient‘s relatives submitted another application to the Israeli side, this time for just the patient, without a companion.
  On Sunday 24 July 2011, Israel rejected the application of the patient to travel via Erez crossing for unknown reasons.
  As a result, after further deterioration of the patient’s health, he was referred to Shifa Hospital in an attempt by doctors to save his life.
  He died during surgery.
  According to the information available to Al Mezan, the patient, Raed Maghari, had previously obtained permission to receive treatment at the same hospital in Nablus, on the 11 June 2011.
  According to earlier investigations by Al Mezan, two other Palestinian patients who were prevented from leaving Gaza for life-saving medical treatment, died since the beginning of 2011.
  Moreover, the health conditions of hundreds of patients in the Gaza Strip have been exacerbated as Israel prohibits them from traveling to receive treatment and/or delays their travel procedures.
  Al Mezan notes that IOF continue to extort patients by summoning many of them for questioning by the Israel Security Agency, in connection with the granting of their permissions to travel.
  According to documentation of such cases carried out by Al Mezan, IOF blackmail patients in order to obtain security information and “bargain” with many of them in order to obtain their collaboration with the IOF.
  Moreover, the IOF continues up the present to lure many patients or patients’ companions to the crossing in order to arrest them upon arrival.
  According to documentation carried out by Al Mezan, at the outset of the year 2011, the IOF arrested four patients and another two travel escorts.
  In addition, during the period from 20 August 2010 to 30 June 2011, the IOF denied 234 applications for travel, ignored 670 applications, and summoned 167 patients for questioning by the Israeli Security Agency at Erez crossing.
  Al Mezan regrets the death of patients caused by deprivation of access to treatment, often in hospitals located about two hours’ travel by car from their residences.
Al Mezan condemns the continuing grave violations perpetrated by IOF against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, in Gaza in particular.
These practices violate the rules of international human rights law and the fundamentals of international humanitarian law, including the right to health, decent living standards, and human dignity.
  Al Mezan Center for Human Rights calls for the international community to promptly intervene to protect civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories and to work urgently to lift the siege, which amounts to collective punishment of the most grave sort and is a crime that threatens the living standard of the million and a half people of Gaza.
  Al Mezan calls for the relevant United Nations agencies in the occupied Palestinian territories, and international human rights organizations to highlight and challenge these Israeli violations of human rights, especially with regard to the matter of Gazans’ right to receive medical treatment and care abroad.
  End