An Israeli 'apartheid hospital' is drawing condemnation for making Palestinians exit a bus to be searched before entering its grounds, with thousands of activists demanding an end to the discriminatory policy.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel warned the hospital the practice reflects "a policy of profiling that attributes dangerousness and suspicion to an entire group of people based on their ethnicity or nationality." A number of groups are planning to protest the procedure, Sicha Mekomit reports.
"Recently, a woman with a hijab and her husband were carrying a bouquet of flowers in their hands, and they had a blue identity card but they took them off the bus," she said.
Barzilai Hospital says only those with a green ID card, identifying them as being from the West Bank and Gaza, must undergo a search of their belongings, including a metal detector sweep to check for weapons. "It is sheer audacity to accuse Barzilai Hospital of humiliation and racist discrimination," it said of the criticism.
"Doctors from the West Bank, who are accepted for a full residency, serve in the hospital and work side by side with doctors who are Israeli residents, including Israeli Arabs."
Some have questioned the need to search the commuters who must wait at the entrance if they are not allowed to travel into the hospital anyway. "There is sensitivity around hospitals, but it does not justify this behavior, you do a search, you see that everything is okay - let them in. If you're not going to let people in - why are you doing a search?" Hadas Ziv of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel) asked.
Meanwhile, the bus company involved in running route 18 services said the security guard at the hospital is not their employee, that the buses are "subject to the instructions of [the hospital's] security department and [are] obligated to act according to those instructions."