For the second time, Israel’s Supreme Court or High Court of Justice, with a composition of three judges, deleted Magen David Adom’s vexatious petition to have United Hatzalah’s emergency number of 1221 canceled in an attempt to shut down the emergency organization’s dispatching service. The ruling which was issued on Monday afternoon, marks the second time that MDA has petitioned the High Court in an effort to cancel the younger EMS organization’s number and attempt to bar it from providing service to the residents of Israel.

Back in 2010, following the recommendation of the inter-ministerial committee for assigning abbreviated numbers to emergency hotlines, an abbreviated number was assigned to United Hatzalah allowing its dispatch center to operate more effectively. Since then, MDA has fought tirelessly against the organization having an emergency number claiming that two emergency numbers for emergency medical services confuse the population with regard to which organization to call in the case of an emergency. The claim made its way to the Health Ministry in 2017 and 2019 during which the Ministry decided that while United Hatzalah has the right to maintain an emergency number they should not publicize the number with the word “emergency dispatch” attached to it. At the same time, the ministry also mandated that MDA would share all of the information about emergency calls, including the address of where the emergency is taking place with United Hatzalah. To date, United Hatzalah claims that this has not been fully implemented and that they are only receiving partial information, such as street names without addresses, or no information at all in some cases, even in cases when their volunteers are the closest responders to the medical emergency.

It is important to recall that Israel does not have a unified dispatching service such as 911 in the U.S. and Canada, 999 in the UK, and 112 in Europe. Rather, in Israel, each emergency service has its own hotline. The police are 100, Magen David Adom is 101, the Fire Department is 102, the electric company is 103, the municipal emergency hotline in most cities is 106, and the list goes on. Other non-profit emergency organizations such as United Hatzalah were given the right to have four-digit numbers. These include Zaka 1220, United Hatzalah 1221, ‘Eran’ the center for emergency mental health issues 1201, the Rape Crisis Center in Israel has two such hotlines, one for women 1202 and one for men 1203, Judea and Samaria emergency services in most places is 1208, and even Yedidim B’Kvishim, and organization that provides emergency roadside assistance for free has one 1230. Amid all of these numbers, it is hard to understand MDA’s claim that specifically United Hatzalah’s number will confuse the populace. This claim becomes even more absurd when understanding that attempts have been made by several members of Knesset, including Moshe Gafni and most recently Idit Silman, to unify the dispatching service in Israel for all agencies into one dispatching hotline similar to 911, 112, and 999, but in specific for emergency medical services, but the initiatives were blocked in most cases by MDA itself who rejected the idea claiming, among other things, that their dispatchers were most ideally trained to respond to medical emergency calls, and that any unification of dispatching services would only delay response times.

MDA for its part made its own sort of semi-joint dispatching system with the fire department back in July 2021, when they developed the technology for the fire department’s dispatching system and allowed the possibility of having the systems be linked. Similarly a shared CAD system was setup with the police in 2022. However, neither system is fully integrated, and while the different emergency organizations notify each other of emergencies when they occur, a person still needs to call 100 to reach the police, 102 to reach the fire department, and 101 to reach MDA.

Having failed to cancel United Hatzalah’s number via the health Ministry, MDA began submitting petitions to the high court calling for a ban on specifically United Hatzalah’s shortened emergency number. MDA asked the court to both ban the use of United Hatzalah’s number as well as ban the organization from publishing the number to the public. They even asked the High Court to order the Ministry of Communications to cancel the number entirely.

The first petition was presented in December 2019 and was rejected by the High Court in the spring of 2020. The second petition was submitted by MDA earlier this year and yesterday was rejected once again by the High Court of Justice.

In a previous statement, Director General of MDA Eli Bin said: “We’ve long believed that having separate numbers for police, EMS, and fire rescue has been an advantage for callers in an emergency. In a medical emergency, for example, callers are instantly connected to an EMT or paramedic, who can provide lifesaving medical instructions to the caller while the ambulance is dispatched.”

Discussing the current attempt by MDA to cancel United Hatzalah’s emergency number CEO of UH Eli Pollack, praised the decision of the High Court by saying: “I welcome the decision of the court which saw before its eyes the public good and the importance of the organization’s activities and how essential our dispatch number is. The number 1221 which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, is there for the benefit of the citizens of the State of Israel who we will continue to serve by providing the fastest emergency medical response completely free of charge.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)