Fatima Al-Masri, a 19-month-old baby Palestinian baby, is yet another victim of the Israeli occupation’s suffocating blockade on Gaza and its arbitrary and discriminatory permit system that delays access to hospitals outside the Strip and denies care in urgent cases.

Human rights groups said that “Israel's” blockade of Gaza was the main reason behind the death of Fatima Al-Masri, who was diagnosed with a heart hole last year and passed out on Friday.

The fact that she is a baby didn’t spare her from the Israeli brutal system which systematically violates Gazans’ right to health by arbitrarily aggravating health conditions and placing plentiful barriers to health access.

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“It felt like I had died as well without Fatima”

Fatima Al-Masri’s father, Jalal Al-Masri, said as quoted by The Guardian: “I loved her from deep inside my heart. I wish I had died as well as her.” 

The bereaved father added “they kept saying the application was ‘under review, under review’ and then she died.

“It felt like I had died as well without Fatima in my life. Nothing breaks a person more than losing their child.”

The heartbroken dad detailed that Fatima Al-Masri missed two appointments for treatment at Al-Quds’ Al-Makassed hospital in December and February, adding that her family was told her case was "under review" by the Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), the Israeli occupation’s authority in charge of Palestinian travel permits.

“We are under blockade.” 

Fatima Al-Masri: Another proof of “Israel's” ongoing violations

When Al-Masri complained in February, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO, took on Fatima's case, urging “Israel” to issue the permit in time for her to be taken to Al-Makassed in the week following the appointment, before the hospital took a patient off its list.

According to Al Mezan's documentation, 71 Palestinians have lost their lives since 2011, including 25 women and nine children, as a result of “Israel's” denial of requests for exit permits and delays.

The discriminatory permit system is at the heart of its apartheid practices against the Palestinian people as a whole.

Fatima Al-Masri is yet another proof of “Israel's” ongoing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, as well as its practices as an occupying force.

In a report, last week that described “Israel's” practices against Palestinian territories as apartheid, the UN's special rapporteur for Palestine, Michael Lynk, said Gaza's health system "is flat on its back, with serious shortages of healthcare professionals, inadequate treatment equipment, and low supplies of drugs and medicines."