The National Security Committee, chaired by MK Tzvika Foghel (Otzma Yehudit), convened on Tuesday for a follow-up debate on the topic of stopping the treatment of terrorists at public hospitals and setting up dedicated medical services in prisons.
Committee Chair MK Foghel: “We want to see the terrorists behind lock and key and not walking around the corridors of the hospitals. This issue is a charged and difficult one. The injured could find themselves shoulder to shoulder with the terrorist who attacked them. We are the most moral people in the world, and we have to live under the international treaties that define the medical rights of the terrorists. I am asking the National Security Council to examine the issue and take the lead on coordinating it. The Israel Prison Service (IPS) should adopt an operational and security perspective towards the issue. When a terrorist is evacuated from the scene of a terrorist attack to receive life-saving medical treatment at a hospital—the cost of the treatment of this terrorist is deducted from the funds transferred to the Palestinian Authority. When a terrorist prisoner needs life-saving medical treatment and is evacuated by the IPS to a hospital—the IPS pays the bill for his treatment. We want to enact a process, in cooperation with all the relevant agencies, that does not reward terrorists who are in the prisons.”
National Security Council officials announced during the debate that they intended to examine the issue and consider possible courses of action with regard to giving life-saving treatments to security prisoners.
MK Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beitenu): “There’s no doubt that we need to give medical treatment to terrorists, even if it greatly annoys us. The question is which medical treatment, to what extent and in which frameworks. Apparently we’re the only country in the world that copes with security [prisoner] terrorists on such a scale. I have received testimonies that people who are not trained for the job guard the terrorists while they receive treatment in the hospital—and it shouldn’t be that way. I am asking the professional echelons to draw conclusions and formulate measures to be taken on the ground. If this doesn’t happen, we will have to advance legislative processes. We should go in the direction of forming a professional medical committee that will decide what kind of treatment a terrorist receives. In terms of morality, we should give life-saving treatment, but we don’t need to give the best treatment possible. This is a complex and unpleasant issue, but things cannot continue the way they have been.”
The Ministry of Health’s statement, as submitted to the committee ahead of the debate, read as follows: “The treatments given to terrorists in hospitals are done under the responsibility of the incarcerating agency—the IPS, in cases of an inmate or prisoner, and the IDF, in cases of an illegal combatant who is incarcerated in a facility in accordance with the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. The responsibility applies both to the act of giving the treatment and to its funding. The agency that determines when an incarcerated person will be transferred to a hospital is the incarcerating agency, according to its procedures, considerations and capabilities.
“The Ministry of Health is not opposed to expanding the treatment capabilities of the medical center in the Israel Prison Service, which will enable providing more comprehensive medical service within the prisons, and under the responsibility of the IPS. As the services are expanded there, the need will diminish for medical services from hospitals.
“The Patient’s Rights Law, 1996, does not include a definition for ‘life-saving treatment,’ but it defines a ‘medical emergency’ as circumstances in which a person faces immediate danger to his life or there is an immediate danger that a person will suffer a severe and irreversible disability, if he is not given urgent medical treatment. This law stipulates that in a medical emergency, a person is entitled to receive urgent medical treatment, without conditions. The term ‘life-saving treatment’ cannot be reduced to an unequivocal definition. Any treatment in the absence of which the patient will die is a life-saving treatment. The sum total of circumstances that could create a life-endangering medical situation or could cause a severe and irreversible disability is very broad, and is not necessarily limited to extreme situations or to immediate risk. Therefore, a closed list of cases cannot be produced.”
Adv. Aviv Israeli of the Ministry of National Security: “The IPS makes every possible effort to leave the medical treatment within prison walls. Every outing by a prisoner to receive medical treatment in public hospitals is only done when there is no other choice, and it involves a suitable security escort. It should be understood that any move to introduce life-saving medical treatments or surgeries into the prisons will cost quite a lot of money.”
Lt.-Col. Eilon Raz of the Israel Prison Service: “Everything that can be done within the IPS is done, and it doesn’t go out to the public hospitals. We have an intention to expand some of the clinics in the [prisons] so that they will also have specialists. In many cases, we hold consultations for incarcerated persons with a specialist physician by videoconference.”
Col. Noam Yaakov of the IPS stated, “We currently have a broad range of treatments that we give to all types of inmates in order to reduce the outings of inmates to public places. If there is an intention to bring operating rooms into the prisons, then this requires dedication of areas and personnel.”
Ministry of Health official Dr. Hagar Mizrahi: “We give treatment in accordance with the physician’s instructions when it is a medical emergency. We don’t offer inmates treatments at additional cost that are outside the healthcare services basket.”
Dr. Yossi Walfisch, chair of the Israel Medical Association’s Ethics Bureau: “When a patient comes to a physician, he receives treatment like any other person, regardless of his origin or race or whether he is a terrorist. That is required by the code of medical ethics. The physicians can’t be turned into judges. A physician doesn’t know and isn’t supposed to know the identity of the patient and his security record—a physician should give the best possible medical treatment. Wait times for an orthopedist in the IPS are shorter than in the public sector, but the orthopedist who treats a prisoner does so online and doesn’t examine physically the prisoner being treated.”
Committee Chair MK Foghel said in summation, “I am requesting that for the next follow-up debate the IPS provide data on the number of prisoners receiving medical treatments within prison walls and outside the prisons in hospitals, as well as the costs of the medical treatments administered in the hospitals.”
