Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has produced a checklist of critical questions that policymakers, officials and other key decision-makers should ask to evaluate whether proposed UK foreign and aid policies and initiatives are aligned to the principles of international law, sustainable development, and Palestinians' right to self-determination, and conducive to the goal of a just peace that enables Palestinians to enjoy their full and equal rights to health and dignity.

These questions also provide a basis for parliamentarians to scrutinise decision-making through parliamentary questions, debates, correspondence and other action. You can read the checklist below.

Read the checklist

For decades occupation, blockade, annexation and the permanent displacement of refugees have denied Palestinians equitable access to many of the essential building blocks of health. More than 70 years of dispossession has fragmented Palestinian society and stymied the development of collective political structures and essential institutions like healthcare, locking Palestinian communities across the region in a situation of perpetual humanitarian crisis and dependency on international aid. 

There is a growing realisation among policymakers that the moribund Oslo peace process has failed to meet even the most basic aspirations of the Palestinian people, instead cementing what the EU has termed a “one-state reality of unequal rights, perpetual occupation and conflict.” While successive UK governments have reaffirmed their commitment to Palestinian self-determination through resolutions at the United Nations, this right remains perpetually unfulfilled. 

MAP has recently documented how systematic discrimination and the fragmentation of the Palestinian people by Israel present a fundamental challenge to Palestinians’ rights to health and dignity, and inhibit the delivery and development of a viable Palestinian healthcare system. MAP’s position paper can be read here

If a just peace is to be achieved – one that enables Palestinians to enjoy their full and equal rights to health and dignity – the UK must ground its foreign and aid policies firmly in international law, and promote sustainable, locally-led development. The checklist of critical questions below is intended to be a practical tool to enable MPs, policymakers, officials and other key decision-makers to evaluate whether foreign and aid policies and initiatives are aligned with this goal. You can click each question to see a series of sub-questions relevant to that theme.

Read the checklist

GET IN TOUCH:

MAP’s Advocacy and Campaigns Team are available to connect policymakers to data, stories and analysis relating to the challenges facing Palestinian health and dignity, as well as the voices and perspectives of the communities and partners with which we work in the occupied Palestinian territory and Lebanon. 

Email: [email protected]