Rights group warns Israel’s policies are pushing the West Bank healthcare system to collapse

IKTABA, West Bank (AP) — For six months, 70-year-old Bassam Musleh searched desperately for a pharmacy or clinic that could fill his prescription for blood pressure and other heart medications. Public dispensaries were out of stock, he said, and he couldn’t afford the private ones.

But when he arrived Tuesday at a mobile clinic in the West Bank village of Iktaba, pulling the tattered prescription from his pocket, a local aid group finally gave him the medication he needs.

Musleh, who has a pacemaker, is one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians struggling to get healthcare in the West Bank, where a report released Thursday by Physicians for Human Rights Israel warns that Israeli policies have pushed the territory’s health system to the brink of collapse.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began nearly three years ago, Israel has withheld billions of dollars of tax and customs revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the government body that administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Without those funds, the PA has struggled to pay health workers, buy medications and support public hospitals, pharmacies and clinics, 75% of which have reduced operations and are functioning just once or tw...