Palestinian Civil Society Watch - Just Wait Till They Try to Open a DMV!
In the interest of honesty, we admit that we too have sometimes wished that we could deal with medical bureaucrats this way:
Hamas gunmen backed by police came to the rescue of the new Palestinian health minister -- a top Hamas official -- after angry gunmen raided his office Sunday and sparked a shootout that left three people wounded. The shootout was the latest explosion of violence in Gaza and it marked the first time a Hamas Cabinet minister turned to his group's gunmen to help restore order. It also underscored Palestinians' growing dissatisfaction with the Hamas-led government as it confronts a crippling financial crisis...
The fighting Sunday came a day after Health Minister Bassem Naim announced that he was cutting $2 million from the monthly health budget to help alleviate the financial crisis by halting payments for patients to get treatment abroad. The state of Gaza's health care system is poor, and Palestinians routinely travel to Israel and other countries for complicated procedures. On Sunday, a group of men, some of them armed, whose relative needed treatment abroad came to Naim's office and asked him to authorize the trip, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Radi said.
Palestinians routinely travel to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment, where Israeli doctors - being good and human - treat them as patients rather than as enemy combatants.Occasionally, upon being restored to health in Israeli hospitals by Israelis doctors, those same Palestinians return to try to blow up those very same hospitals and doctors. It's a cycle of violence!
(hat tip: Esther)
Hamas gunmen backed by police came to the rescue of the new Palestinian health minister -- a top Hamas official -- after angry gunmen raided his office Sunday and sparked a shootout that left three people wounded. The shootout was the latest explosion of violence in Gaza and it marked the first time a Hamas Cabinet minister turned to his group's gunmen to help restore order. It also underscored Palestinians' growing dissatisfaction with the Hamas-led government as it confronts a crippling financial crisis...
The fighting Sunday came a day after Health Minister Bassem Naim announced that he was cutting $2 million from the monthly health budget to help alleviate the financial crisis by halting payments for patients to get treatment abroad. The state of Gaza's health care system is poor, and Palestinians routinely travel to Israel and other countries for complicated procedures. On Sunday, a group of men, some of them armed, whose relative needed treatment abroad came to Naim's office and asked him to authorize the trip, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Radi said.
Palestinians routinely travel to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment, where Israeli doctors - being good and human - treat them as patients rather than as enemy combatants.Occasionally, upon being restored to health in Israeli hospitals by Israelis doctors, those same Palestinians return to try to blow up those very same hospitals and doctors. It's a cycle of violence!
(hat tip: Esther)
