Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh’s brother-in-law was treated in an Israeli hospital four months ago for a heart condition. After suffering a serious cardiac episode, Haniyeh’s brother-in-law filed an urgent entry request with Israel in order to receive treatment. After entry was granted, he and his wife, Suhila Abd el-Salam Ahmed Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister’s sister traveled to Israel and stayed for approximately one week where the husband received treatment. The two reportedly chose an Israeli hospital over their other option, one in Egypt.

According to an Israeli government source: “Although there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Hamas, there are many occasions when requests for help based on purely medical decisions taken in Gaza are granted by Israel for humanitarian reasons.” It’s hard to imagine that, if the tables were turned, a Hamas government would say the same.

Over the last few years Israel has granted an increasing number of entry permits to Palestinians in need of medical attention. According to the World Health Organization, in February 2012, 91.5% of Palestinian requests for medical treatment in Israel were approved and carried out. According to a report released by Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, in 2011 Israel issued 197,713 permits to Palestinians from the West Bank in need of medical treatment and for their companions, representing a 13% increase from the previous year. In addition 9,245 Palestinians from Gaza received medical care in Israel in 2011 which was a 5% increase compared to 2010. An additional 9,111 permits were provided for family members from Gaza to accompany patients to hospitals.

The Israeli government and hospitals also hold workshops for Israeli and Palestinian doctors, provide training courses for doctors from the West Bank, airlift Palestinians in need from the West Bank, and coordinate outings and activities for Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals.

April 20, 2012: The UN Rights Office of Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights charged that three men sentenced to death in Hamas-run Gaza were executed unlawfully. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville, issued a statement in Geneva that the death sentences carried out by hanging on April 7 were not approved by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as required by law.

The UN office ordered Hamas to halt planned execution’s by firing squad. At least 18 men have been executed in Gaza since Hamas seized power in the coastal enclave in 2007. Human rights activists in Gaza state those numbers only represent official executions, not the full range of human rights violations perpetrated by Hamas.The men did not have regular access to lawyers and were tried by a military court despite being civilians.

After Hamas seized control of Gaza, several members of the rival Fatah faction were dragged from their homes and shot in both legs. Hamas has routinely incarcerated, kidnapped, maimed and tortured dissidents and political rivals in Gaza over the past five years.

May 31, 2011: The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights [PCHR] called for an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and on PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas “not to ratify such cruel and inhuman punishment.” The group added that although its stand did “not reflect a tolerance for those convicted of serious crimes,” it was a ‘call for utilizing deterrent penalties that maintain our humanity.”

A military court in Gaza City has sentenced a Palestinian Authority Arab resident of Rafiah to death by hanging after convicting him of “spying in favor of an enemy state.” The identity of the enemy state was not revealed. The man, 26-year-old Fadel Msallam Shallouf, was sentenced to death for having violated the Palestinian Revolutionary Penal Code of 1979 of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Shallouf was kidnapped on January 10, 2010 by terrorists from the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), who said the group handed him over to Gaza’s Internal Security Service a week later.

The organization noted in a news release that the death sentence was the fourth to be handed down in Hamas-ruled Gaza so far since January of this year. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority itself has issued 116 death sentences since its own establishment in 1994, including 23 that were handed down in Judea and Samaria. Of those, 19 were actually carried out including one on May 4, 2011. Last year, the Hamas de facto government in Gaza executed five death sentences.

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