The Israeli army rejected H.'s request in light of 'classified intelligence' that suggests he has 'ties to terrorist operatives' ■ Concluding that traveling to Jordan isn't possible, H. has made arrangements to have his leg amputated in Gaza next week
Israel is barring a Gazan resident from traveling to Jordan through Israeli territory for medical treatment that would prevent his leg from being amputated. Egypt is also preventing H., 43, from going through its territory.
H., who asked to remain anonymous, is a merchant born in Jordan. He moved to the Gaza Strip with his parents as a teenager after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, and is now married with six children.
He has a chronic infection in his left thighbone that has been growing worse and causing increasingly severe pain. The complex operation needed to remove and then reconstruct the bone could be done in Jordan, but it isn’t performed in Gaza. He has already been through various treatments and operations in Gaza that didn’t help, and the only option left there would be a leg amputation.
H. also suffers from vision and hearing loss.
In November 2022, he sought a permit to travel to Jerusalem for treatment at the Palestinian hospital Al-Makassed. He applied to Israel’s District Coordination and Liaison (DCL) office via the PA’s civilian liaison committee.
As part of this process, he was summoned for questioning by the Shin Bet security service. He said his interrogator told him he couldn’t go to Jerusalem but would be allowed to go to Jordan. He also told his lawyer he was asked only about the condition of his leg, and nothing about other people.
Due to the interrogator’s statement, he has been trying since January to get a permit to go to Jordan via Israel. But the DCL rejected his first two requests for various bureaucratic reasons and never responded to two others.
H. therefore sought help from Gisha, an Israeli organization seeking to advance freedom of movement for Gazans. When Gisha’s appeals to the DCL also got nowhere, it petitioned the Jerusalem District Court on H.’s behalf in early May.
In her petition, Gisha attorney Elinor Kaminer Goldfainer wrote that H.’s request to go to Jordan for treatment meets even the limited, stringent criteria set by Israel for Gazans to travel through its territory. Those criteria allow Gazans to go to Israel, the West Bank or elsewhere to get “medical treatment that is life-saving or without which life’s quality would be utterly changed.”
The organization also noted that in certain cases, Gazans can go directly from the border crossing with Israel to the border crossing with Jordan with an escort to ensure that the traveler doesn’t get off in Israel or the West Bank. Gazans can also pay to be escorted by security guards.
In the state’s response to this petition, deputy state prosecutor Lior Skverer wrote that the security services have no record of H. being told he could go to Jordan, and his request to do so was rejected “in light of classified intelligence whose gist is that the petitioner has current ties to terrorist operatives.” In a phone call with Haaretz, H. vehemently denied this and said he was stunned to hear it.
Skverer also wrote that “one of the most significant rationales underlying the movement policy is the security necessity of segregating the Gaza Strip from the region” – in this context, a term for the West Bank.
“This rationale stems from the fear that connections between Gaza residents and residents of the region could be exploited to promote terrorist activity, whether wittingly or not,” he added. The courts have approved this segregation policy many times, his brief continued, and Israel has no obligation to accede to humanitarian requests.
The petition was heard on Sunday by Judge Ilan Sela, who has a doctorate in law from religious-Zionist-oriented Bar-Ilan University and is also an ordained rabbi. At the hearing, Sela said the classified material that two Shin Bet officials showed him had persuaded him the petition should be rejected. Consequently, Gisha withdrew it.
H. subsequently informed the organization that he can no longer bear the pain, and having concluded that going to Jordan for treatment won’t be possible, he has made an appointment in Gaza for his leg to be amputated next week.
The Shin Bet said in a statement that H. was interrogated in line with agency rules, “given the need to examine the potential security risk posed by his entry into Israel. According to the information possessed by the Shin Bet, his entry into Israel would entail a security risk.”
H. submitted numerous requests for a permit to enter Israel over the last year, the statement continued, “and moreover, during his interrogation last December, he said he wanted to flee Gaza.” Regarding this, H. told Haaretz he was merely expressing his frustration over his difficult life.
The Shin Bet also stated, “The combination of all these circumstances, on top of the information about the security risk posed by his entry into Israel, led the Shin Bet to oppose it. This position was accepted by the court. His entry into Israel with an escort was considered, but due to the security risk he poses, the Shin Bet concluded that there was no room to allow this.”
Gisha said the Shin Bet’s response “shows that H.’s medical situation wasn’t considered at all, and that even though a simple solution exists that would ensure his passage directly to Jordan without any risk, Israel prefers to stand by its refusal, which will result in H.’s leg being amputated.”