Everything one can say about the health-care system in Palestine was summed up by the physician and political leader Haidar Abdel-Shafi in the wake of the Oslo Agreement in September, 1993. He said: “We cannot take care of health and education as long as we live under occupation”.Is it really impossible to build and support a healthcare system while under "occupation"?
...[N]ow, as the Palestinian Authority waits to hear whether the UN Security Council will back its bid for full membership, the situation is much the same. Israel has used health and medicine as an instrument of control and oppression of the Palestinian people and leadership in the occupied Palestinian territory throughout the years since 1967. We at Physicians for Human Rights—Israel conceive this situation as a disease for which the cure is the total removal of control by Israel over the Palestinians. There is no way that a future Palestinian state, if there ever is one, can handle the health-care system (or any other socioeconomic system) if the Israeli occupation and control continues.
Then it must be truly miraculous that somehow, before 1948, Jews who were under Ottoman and British occupation managed to build so many medical centers:
Bikur Holim Hospital (1826)
Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center (1902)
Hadassah Hospital (1934, but earlier medical facilities as early as 1913)
Rambam Hospital (1938)
Beilinson Hospital (1936)
These were all built right under the noses of their occupiers!
I believe that Zionists even managed to put together a few major universities while under British occupation. Yes, while the British controlled all imports and exports for Palestine, border control, access to roads and every other aspect of life in the area, somehow these institutions were built - and without the help of billions of dollars from NGOs and other countries.
I know, I know...it is impossible. My history must be very, very wrong.
(h/t YM)