I am a doctor in the occupied West Bank. Our hospitals are dying
Submitted by
Hazim Faisal Abusondos
on
Sun, 06/21/2026 - 13:01
Cancer patients are being turned away and surgeries postponed as Israel's financial squeeze leaves hospitals without supplies
A man transports boxes of medication past an ambulance blocked at the entrance to Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on 6 May 2026 (AFP)
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I am a physician working in the emergency room and oncology ward at Dura Hospital in the occupied West Bank.
For the past four years, I have witnessed the slow deterioration of our healthcare system. In the last two years, the situation has escalated dramatically - into something catastrophic.
Our hospitals are not simply struggling. They are being pushed beyond their limits, and our pharmacy shelves are bare.
Day by day, medicine by medicine, surgery by surgery, the system that thousands of patients depend upon is collapsing before our eyes.
This is not a natural crisis. It is the direct result of the economic collapse in Palestine and the withholding of clearance revenues - Palestinian tax funds collected by Israel. These funds, which constitute over 60 percent of the Palestinian Authority's revenues, have been frozen for months.
Without them, the Palestinian Ministry of Health cannot pay suppliers. Without payment, medicines, surgical supplies and essential equipment do not reach our hospitals. The consequence is a healthcare system being strangled, slowly and deliberately.
This financial collapse has also meant that doctors and healthcare workers can no longer sustain themselves. Because clearance revenues are withheld, the Palestinian Authority cannot pay salaries. Salaries are delayed or cut entirely.
Many of us can no longer afford the cost of the journey to work. Some cannot provide even the most basic necessities for their children. The healer is being broken alongside the system.
Empty shelves
Our oncology ward should be a place of hope and healing. It has instead become a place of uncertainty and, too often, a place of waiting or rejection.
Cancer patients who arrive for scheduled appointments are sent home because the essential medications they need are unavailable.
Many cancer patients have been affected by the medicine shortages. I have seen patients who were responding well to treatment suddenly deteriorate because their chemotherapy sessions were postponed - not because the medicine does not exist in the world, but because it does not reach our pharmacy.
Treatment plans are disrupted. Hope is replaced by waiting. For a cancer patient, waiting means the disease advances.
In our haematology and oncology clinics, we increasingly see patients whose treatment courses are interrupted because medicines cannot be delivered consistently. One patient with a previously controllable blood disorder experienced repeated interruptions in her treatment due to medication shortages and funding delays.
Over time, her condition deteriorated significantly. She later progressed to acute leukaemia. What could have been a stable, manageable disease became a life-threatening condition as a direct result of interrupted care.
In another case, a young patient with a rare malignancy had initially responded well to chemotherapy and required targeted therapy to control a recurrence. The drug existed. The medical recommendation was clear. But due to its high cost and limited availability within the current system, the treatment could not be provided.
No alternative was accessible. The patient was discharged home without a clear treatment pathway, facing a progressive disease with no effective options available. We sent a young person home to wait.
For cancer patients, time is not an abstract concept but is central to determining whether a disease remains treatable or becomes life-threatening - every delay matters.
The shortages are not limited to the oncology department. Essential medications, including antibiotics, emergency drugs and pain relief treatments, are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.
Physicians are often forced to work under conditions that compromise the standard of care our patients deserve.
Operations cancelled
Across the healthcare system, procedures are being postponed because critical supplies are unavailable. Surgeons remain ready, and patients remain in need, yet operations cannot proceed without the materials required to perform them safely.
A patient with a hernia waited months for a scheduled surgery. The procedure was postponed repeatedly - not for medical reasons, but because of the broader collapse: withheld clearance revenues left the Palestinian Authority unable to pay staff salaries, forcing a reduction in operating days.
During the delay, the hernia became strangulated. The tissue died. What should have been a routine operation became a major emergency surgery. Part of the patient's intestine had to be removed.
Patients with gallbladder infections and stones arrive at our hospital in agonising pain, crying, begging for surgery to remove the source of their suffering. But their operations are postponed again and again, because operating days have been cut, and doctors cannot always afford to come in.
Hundreds of patients have been travelling to outpatient clinics for months, only to find the doors locked. They reach the hospitals hoping for care that no longer exists
The patient weeps. The surgeon waits. The system does not move.
Patients with cardiac conditions, traumatic injuries and other urgent surgical needs face delays that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. Every postponed procedure carries potentially catastrophic consequences that extend far beyond a hospital schedule.
In towns and villages across the West Bank, healthcare services are stretched thin. Families who once relied on local clinics for routine and preventive care are finding fewer options available to them.
Hundreds of patients have been travelling to outpatient clinics for months, only to find the doors locked. They reach the hospitals hoping for care that no longer exists.
The clinics are closed - not because there are no patients, but because the funds to operate them have vanished. These are not numbers. These are mothers, fathers and elderly patients who have nowhere else to go.
With safety nets disappearing, the burden has been falling most heavily on the elderly, children and those living with chronic illness.
For years, private hospitals helped absorb pressure when government facilities reached capacity. Financial difficulties have strained cooperation between different parts of the healthcare system, reducing the options available for patient transfers and specialised care.
As a result, patients often remain in overcrowded emergency departments while medical teams search for available beds and resources.
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Recently, a two-year-old child fell from a height and suffered a brain haemorrhage and multiple organ injuries. The child needed immediate specialised surgery. Coordination was attempted between four hospitals. Not one could admit the child.
Private hospitals, crushed under the weight of millions of dollars in unpaid bills the Palestinian Authority cannot settle because clearance revenues are withheld, could no longer absorb the burden. The child was finally transferred to another government hospital, but one that lacked the specialised equipment to manage such a case.
The child remains in critical condition. A two-year-old fought for survival not just against injury, but against a system that could not catch him.
This is not the story of a single patient. It reflects the reality faced by many families seeking medical care in a system nearing its breaking point.
Reporting for duty
Despite these challenges, healthcare workers continue to report for duty every day. Many continue serving despite delayed or partial salaries. We remain because our patients have nowhere else to turn.
My colleagues and I go to the hospital every day, but we arrive already broken. We stand in the emergency room, our hands steady, but our minds fractured - torn between the patient in front of us who needs our full attention and the children at home who need food we cannot provide.
Some of us have buckled under this weight. We ask ourselves: do we listen to our patients' worries and treat them, or do we carry the burden of our own families, whom we can no longer support? This is the silent collapse of the healer.
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We continue to treat, comfort and advocate for those in our care. But dedication alone cannot replace medicines, equipment, hospital beds or functioning healthcare infrastructure.
The world has turned away for too long. Healthcare should never become a casualty of financial and political crises. The clearance funds are not a political bargaining chip - they are the lifeline for our pharmacies, our operating rooms and our patients.
When they are withheld, it is not politics that suffers. It is a child who waits. A cancer patient who is turned away. A surgeon who stands idle. A doctor who cannot feed his children.
Behind every shortage is a patient waiting for treatment. Behind every postponed surgery is a family living with fear and uncertainty. Behind every closed clinic is a community left more vulnerable.
As physicians, our responsibility is to speak for those whose voices are rarely heard.
The patients we care for cannot wait for future negotiations or distant solutions. Their needs are immediate. Their suffering is real.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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