2 March 2018
Following the announcement that the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, will visit the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) this summer and become the first senior royal family member to officially do so, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has written to the Prince to invite him to visit specific places so as to better understand the many challenges being faced by Palestinians and, where possible, help alleviate them.
MAP with its partner organisation Caabu regularly takes groups of MPs around the West Bank, where diverse and expert local Palestinian and Israeli groups help provide fascinating field-based introductions to daily struggles. These include the ever-expanding, entirely unlawful settlement enterprise and its severe impact on Palestinians’ livelihoods and rights including the right to health; the ongoing and increasing dispossession of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, pillage of their agricultural and other resources and accompanying impoverishment of the inhabitants, with as many as one in five children severely malnourished; the hundreds of military and other barriers erected by Israel across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and between Gaza and the rest of the oPt which separate families, cut off farmers from their land and impede access to healthcare and other services; life in a Palestinian refugee camp to see how generations of residents cope with the hardships of life away from the homes and lands that were taken from their families 70 years ago.
MAP also strongly recommends that Prince William visit particular hospitals, which it can arrange, to see incubated newly-born babies separated for months from their mothers due to Israeli restrictions, cancer and other patients whose treatment pathways were negatively impacted by denials and delays in accessing permits, and medical staff who have been physically attacked and their treatment of critically-injured individuals obstructed in violent raids by Israeli security forces, and otherwise hear from medical staff about how their own professional development and that of health services more widely are hampered by policies and conduct of the occupying power.
MAP hopes Prince William would be proud to meet with British and British-based health-workers who repeatedly visit the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza to boost Palestinians’ own skills and services, and patients who have benefitted from such training and also British-funded development projects including in neo-natal wards, limb reconstruction, mental health, disability, cancer treatment and care.
If Prince William were granted access by Israel to Gaza, MAP can facilitate his visit to not only these medical projects, but would suggest he took time to meet with the residents of Gaza, two-thirds of whom are refugees, to experience the chronic humanitarian crisis they are enduring, much of it attributable to the unlawful 11-year blockade imposed on its 2 million inhabitants.
MAP offers the Prince its expertise and services, developed over 35 years working for the health and dignity of Palestinians in the oPt and as refugees, and wishes him a pleasant and eye-opening trip.
Image by Alfie Goodrich (British Embassy Tokyo) [CC BY-2.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crown_Prince_Naruhito_and_Prince_William_cropped_2_Crown_Prince_Naruhito_and_Prince_William_20150227.jpg], via Wikimedia Commons
