By Hamza Abu Eltarabesh: When you walk through the front door, the first thing you see is a large photograph of a smiling teenager. It’s homely and warm, the kind of thing you would see in a happy house.
But this is not a happy house.
The house belongs to the lawyer Hasan Shubeir, 54, and the photograph is of his son Ahmad, who died of heart failure in January at the age of 17. But that, his father says, only tells a fraction of the story. Ahmad may have had a heart condition, but he was really the victim of Israeli blackmail.
Stories like that of Ahmad Shubeir are not unusual in Gaza. Shut off from the rest of the world and with a health infrastructure in tatters, Palestinians in Gaza with specialized or acute medical needs have to rely on outside health care.
That mostly means traveling to Israel or the West Bank and requires permission from the Israeli military, which has operated a highly restrictive permit regime since 2003. Consequently, say human rights activists and families, patients and their relatives are vulnerable to blackmail and pressure to spy for Israel.
This is not a new phenomenon, and the group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has been keeping tabs on such coercion, especially as it relates to Gaza.
But this is not a happy house.
The house belongs to the lawyer Hasan Shubeir, 54, and the photograph is of his son Ahmad, who died of heart failure in January at the age of 17. But that, his father says, only tells a fraction of the story. Ahmad may have had a heart condition, but he was really the victim of Israeli blackmail.
Stories like that of Ahmad Shubeir are not unusual in Gaza. Shut off from the rest of the world and with a health infrastructure in tatters, Palestinians in Gaza with specialized or acute medical needs have to rely on outside health care.
That mostly means traveling to Israel or the West Bank and requires permission from the Israeli military, which has operated a highly restrictive permit regime since 2003. Consequently, say human rights activists and families, patients and their relatives are vulnerable to blackmail and pressure to spy for Israel.
This is not a new phenomenon, and the group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has been keeping tabs on such coercion, especially as it relates to Gaza.