Dr. Aid Qudami has worked as a family physician at a clinic in the West Bank city of Qalqilya for the past 11 years. In recent weeks, however, he has stopped reporting to work, along with the clinic’s other doctors, leaving the facility shuttered.

His clinic is one of hundreds of Palestinian Authority-run medical facilities across the West Bank that have closed over the past month as part of a strike declared by the Palestinian Medical Association on May 9.

The association has not published an exact figure for the number of clinics affected. However, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, an organization that monitors healthcare conditions in the West Bank and Gaza and provides assistance to Palestinians, most of the government-run clinics operating in the West Bank have closed, while a minority are open only once or twice a week.

Behind the strike lies a deep financial crisis facing the Palestinian Health Ministry, which operates the clinics.

The ministry is currently roughly NIS 3.5 billion ($1.2 billion) in debt, according to PHRI, affecting nearly every aspect of the healthcare system — from cuts to doctors’ salaries, to shortages of essential medicines, to a lack of basic equipment needed to conduct examinations in the PA’s 15 government hospitals and 447 public clinics, which normally provide free health care throughout the West Bank,

According to Qudami, the Palestinian Medical Association didn’t strike over doctors’ salaries but rather because clinics and hospitals can barely function under the weight of mounting debts, prompting health workers to demand that the PA find a solution to the financial crisis.

“The strike is happening because I sit in the clinic and cannot help patients,” he told The Times of Israel.

Withheld tax revenues

The crisis is the culmination of years of financial deterioration in the PA, stemming largely from tax revenues withheld by Israel, which collects levies at border crossings and ports on behalf of Ramallah, compounded by longstanding allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement within the authority.

The withheld tax revenues amount to hundreds of millions of shekels each month and account for roughly 60 percent of the PA’s income.

In 2019, Israel began deducting sums to offset stipends given by the PA to convicted terrorists and their families, and following the October 7, 2023, massacre, also began withholding funds earmarked for Gaza, including pensions for Gazans employed by the PA before the Strip was seized by Hamas in 2007.

Over the past year, Israel has stopped transferring the funds altogether, acting on instructions from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The decision was made because of what Smotrich described in an April statement as the PA’s “activity against the State of Israel in the international arena and its support for the encouragement of terrorism.”

The move has significantly deepened the financial crisis for the perennially cash-strapped PA, which has cut public sector salaries and slashed services in recent months, including for healthcare.

In an interview with the Le Monde on June 10, Palestinian Authority Finance Minister Estephan Salameh said that the total amount currently being withheld by Israel stands at $5.7 billion.

Though on paper, the PA Health Ministry operates in both Gaza and the West Bank, there are in fact two separate Health Ministry entities, with the Gaza ministry under the control of the Hamas terror group. In 2007, when Hamas violently seized power in the Strip, the PA stopped paying Gaza employees’ salaries and ceased being responsible for its hospitals, remaining involved only in cases involving the referral of patients for treatment outside the enclave.

Dr. Salah Haj Yahya, an Israeli citizen from Taibe, has headed........

© The Times of Israel