Coronavirus drives opening of Turkish hospital in Gaza
The Palestine-Turkish Friendship Hospital has finally opened in the Gaza Strip to help fight the coronavirus outbreak, which authorities fear will quickly become a humanitarian disaster.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gearing up to battle the coronavirus outbreak that's beginning to take hold in the Palestinian territories, the Islamic University of Gaza has opened a hospital that had stood unused since it was completed three years ago.
The 180-bed Palestine-Turkey Friendship Hospital began operating this week after Turkey's parliament approved March 25 an operating budget for the facility. The hospital's construction was completed on the school's Gaza City campus in 2017 with funding from the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), but due to political differences between the West Bank and Gaza, the hospital never operated until now.
The private university is close to Hamas, but Turkey and Ramallah had signed a protocol in 2017 that said, “Turkish support to the Palestinians will be implemented only through official Palestinian institutions, and through Turkish institutions operating in Palestine in cooperation with official institutions.”
"Official" means the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah — not Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
