On Wednesday 1 November, on the eve of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) delivered our petition to No.10 Downing Street, calling on the UK Government to do more to support the rights to health and dignity of Palestinians.
MAP’s Health and Dignity campaign began in January 2017, the beginning of a year of painful anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 10 years of closure in Gaza; 50 years of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza; and 100 years since the signing of the Balfour Declaration.
The petition to UK Prime Minister Theresa May contained a simple call from Palestinians: “We demand health and dignity”. This demand was endorsed by 13,018 people across the UK who signed our petition this year, urging the UK to take action to bring an end to the occupation and the blockade, and to support a brighter future for Palestinians based on humanitarian principles and international law.
MAP were joined at the petition delivery by Richard Burden MP (Chair, Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group), Nadia Hijab (Executive Director, Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network), and Atallah Said OBE (Chairman, British Palestinian Policy Council).
MAP CEO Aimee Shalan said:
"We are grateful to everyone who supported MAP’s campaign. As the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territory continues to deteriorate, it is more important than ever that the UK Government find ways to bring half a century of occupation – and a decade of closure in Gaza – to an end.”
The delivery came on the same day as MAP launched our new report, ‘Health Under Occupation’, which exposes the ways in which prolonged occupation and blockade create barriers to healthcare and affect the health and well-being of Palestinian people. You can read the report here.
Thank you to everyone who has taken part in this important campaign this year. You can read the petition in full here, and the letter we delivered with it below.