JERUSALEM (Reuters) - One of the few open-heart surgeons based in the occupied West Bank said on Saturday he was being detained at Israel‘s airport and faced deportation, preventing him from performing operations on patients.
Dirgham Abu Ramadan, a German cardiologist of Palestinian origin, has performed surgeries at hospitals across the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip for years.
He said he has been detained at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv since Friday and was informed he would be deported later on Saturday for failing to get a work visa in Israel.
‘I have several open heart surgeries lined up for today, and I‘m the only open-heart surgeon to carry out these operations. Deporting me would endanger the lives of those patients,‘ Abu Ramadan told Reuters.
Mazen al-Shawa, general manager of the al-Mezan Hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron, said Abu Ramadan was scheduled to perform eight procedures on Saturday alone.
‘This is a very grave issue. He‘s the only professional surgeon in the West Bank,‘ al-Shawa said.
Some Palestinians can receive treatment at Israeli hospitals but it is difficult to get permits and many cases have been refused.
Shlomo Dror, an Israeli defence ministry spokesman, said efforts were underway to obtain an extended temporary visa for Abu Ramadan but gave no timeframe.
Abu Ramadan told Reuters by telephone from the airport that he has been working legally in the West Bank for years and that a lawyer was working on his work permit.
His German wife, Dagmar, said she was ‘surprised‘ that the Israeli authorities had decided to deport him. ‘He has always renewed his visa as required,‘ she said.
Thousands of expatriates of Palestinian origin have been entering the West Bank for years on tourist visas because of the difficulty of getting permanent residency cards and other permits issued by Israel.
But since the Hamas Islamist movement took power in March, Israel has tightened up on the use of tourist visas, which had been renewable every three months by leaving the West Bank and returning again.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reached a deal last month with the Israeli government to allow foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to get Israeli visas that would allow them entry to Palestinian areas.
The Israeli human rights group B‘Tselem estimates that Israel has frozen 120,000 Palestinian family reunification requests since a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Haithim Tamimi in Jerusalem)