Oliver Varhelyi, faithful of Viktor Orban, conditions the payment of these funds to a revision of Palestinian textbooks, ritually accused by pro-Israeli lobbies to encourage violence.
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Since September 2021, the cancer department of the Augusta-Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem operates in slow motion. Short of money, the establishment built on Mont des Oliviers, one of the main care centers of occupied territories, can no longer receive new cancer patients. In total, nearly 500 Palestinians awaiting chemotherapy or another type of treatment have been refused. The lucky ones are taken care of in the less specialized, such as in Bethlehem or Nablouse hospitals. The others wait at their home, while their condition gets worse.
“Many of these patients have not received their treatment in time, or not at all, since the situation is difficult in all hospitals in the territories, not only with us, deplores Fadi al-Attrash, executive director of Augusta-Victoria. Lives are endangered: patients can arrive late with more severe forms of cancer, some can die. “
One of the causes of this drama is several thousand kilometers from East Jerusalem, in Brussels, in an office of the ninth floor of the headquarters of the European Commission: that of the Hungarian Oliver Varhelyi, commissioner in the vicinity and on The enlargement, as such, responsible for the international cooperation policy of twenty-seven.
Since December, this faithful of the nationalist Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and cantor of “illiberalism”, is hosting, almost by itself, European aid for Palestine. By deciding, against the advice of a majority of member states, to condition the payment of part of this windfall to a revision of Palestinian textbooks, ritually accused by pro-Israeli lobbies of encouraging violence, Oliver Varhelyi has created a politico-institutional imbroglio which, de facto, blocked all of this aid: 215 million euros.
“An absolute scandal”
The freezing of the funding of the European Union (EU), which is added to the non-retabling of American subsidies interrupted from the time of Donald Trump and the drying up of subsidies from Arab countries, has very concrete consequences. It contributes to a 20 % drop in the salaries of officials of the Palestinian Authority (AP) since November, deprives 120,000 poor families with a quarterly allowance and destabilizes the entire hospital sector of East Jerusalem, recipient of 10 to 20 million euros on the envelope of 215 million.
“This affair is an absolute scandal, Varhelyi pushes the pro-Israeli agenda of Hungary without the slightest scruples, is indignant a diplomat from an EU member country, in reference to the proximity between Orban and The former Prime Minister of the Hebrew State Benyamin Netanyahu. It is not conceivable to let the Commission take a decision contrary to the line of the Council of Foreign Affairs. ” Not following our maintenance requests with a general manager in the vicinity and enlargement (the “DG Near”, in the Brussels jargon).
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