To Spy To Live - Inter Press Service
▻http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/spy-live
GAZA CITY , Mar 28 2014 (IPS) - “If you want to live and receive medical treatment, you have my number, so you can call me and agree to my request. You will then get medical help, and survive.” The request, the patient said, was from an Israeli intelligence officer looking to recruit him in exchange for treatment.
The 28-year-old Fadi Al-Qutshan never did become a spy for #Israel. And he did not survive long.
Qutshan suffered from a rare illness that led to artery blockage. With no help possible in Gaza, he was advised to go for treatment at a hospital in the West Bank. His application to Israeli authorities – needed for a Palestinian to enter another Palestinian area – was refused several times. It was finally granted on the intervention of the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights in Gaza.
At the West Bank hospital Qutshan was told he needed treatment at the Israeli hospital, Tel Ha Shomar. He did get passage and admission to the Israeli hospital and was operated on successfully. He needed a follow-up visit to complete treatment. That return became conditional.
“His phone rang when he was sitting next to me, and his expressions started to change and he suddenly ended the call and switched off his phone,” his mother Zeina Al-Qutshan told IPS. “He told me after that the caller was an officer from the Israeli intelligence services offering a permit to return to the hospital in exchange for working with Israel as a spy n Gaza.” Zeina said her son refused to collaborate. He died soon after.
“Blackmail of patients because of their need to travel through Israeli checkpoints has turned these checkpoints into traps for Palestinian patients,” Ahlam Al-Aqra’, solicitor with the legal aid unit of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told IPS. “Many needing to go through checkpoints are either arrested or pressured to work as spies,” he said. “This is against basic human rights, and it must stop.”