The situation in Palestine is getting worse and worse. The world is watching Israel commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Health care in particular is being targeted. The violence and complicity must stop as soon as possible!
The reports coming out of Palestine in recent days are worrying and alarming. Health care and medical infrastructures have been particularly targeted by Israeli violence. This violence is of unprecedented intensity. Israel fired almost as many rockets into Gaza in one week as the United States fired into Afghanistan in an entire year.
On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday 17 October, the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City was bombed. The rocket attack killed more than 500 people and injured hundreds more in a single attack. According to a doctor who survived the attack, four thousand people were in the buildings. They were hoping to find safe shelter in the hospital before the Israeli rockets hit nearby residential areas.
Al Awda hospital in the spotlight
Our partner AWDA's health network, which includes six health centres and two hospitals in the Gaza Strip, has already lost two colleagues to the relentless Israeli bombardment. On Friday 13 October, AWDA received an evacuation order from the Israeli army for the Al Awda hospital in Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip. The hospital, which gave birth to 81 new babies last week, was given the impossible task of moving all its patients to safety in a matter of hours.
«On Friday, I received a call from the Israeli army asking me to evacuate the hospital completely. This is simply impossible. Some patients have been evacuated. But others, whose condition is more serious, cannot be moved because of the seriousness of their condition. Our team is determined to continue treating our patients», Ahmed Muhanna, from Al Awda Hospital, told me.
Al Awda hospital played a crucial role in providing care during the brutal Israeli attacks on the north of the Gaza Strip last week. Evacuating the 80-bed hospital, overwhelmed by victims of the ongoing Israeli bombardment, is practically and logistically impossible. The 35 carers at Al Awda are risking their lives if they take to the streets, and vulnerable patients could lose their lives during an evacuation. What's more, the other hospitals in the centre and south of the Gaza Strip are full. And who else will look after the people left behind in the north of the Gaza Strip?
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are overwhelmed with patients. The medical staff are doing everything they can to keep the hospital running above maximum capacity, but the bombardments are making the task very difficult. Some patients are treated in the corridors. Others are even treated in the surrounding streets because of the lack of hospital beds. In the meantime, there are no painkillers. Claire Magone, from Médecins Sans Frontières, reports that «colleagues speak of patients screaming in pain; of the wounded and sick who cannot get to hospital; of the agony from which everyone suffers».
War crimes against healthcare
Palestinian healthcare has been a target of the Israeli occupation for decades. But in recent days, the number of attacks has increased at a frantic pace. Not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the occupied West Bank. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 111 Israeli attacks were carried out against Palestinian health establishments between 7 and 15 October. These attacks killed 15 health workers, injured 33 and damaged 23 ambulances. These are all war crimes.
On 11 October, an Israeli bombardment killed four Palestinian Red Crescent rescue workers and an ambulance driver, even though Israel knew their exact position. The Red Crescent always communicates the coordinates of its rescue operations to the Israeli army. The attack on medical personnel and medical facilities is a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
The orders to evacuate the 23 hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip are also a violation of international humanitarian law. The WHO has made its position very clear: «Forcing more than 2,000 patients to move to the south of the Gaza Strip, where health facilities are already operating at full capacity and unable to cope with a dramatic increase in patient numbers, is tantamount to condemning them to death».
Ethnic cleansing and the risk of genocide
The Gaza Strip remains totally isolated from the outside world. Israel refuses safe passage to trucks carrying humanitarian aid, and the army has since bombed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt four times. This is the only crossing point through which humanitarian goods can enter. Without electricity, fuel, food, internet, drinking water, medicines and other medical supplies, life in the Gaza Strip is simply impossible. Israel's total blockade of the Gaza Strip will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine, warns that the Palestinians are at great risk of mass ethnic cleansing. «There is a great risk that we will see a repeat of the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa, but on a much larger scale», she said in a press release.
The Palestinian human rights organisations Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights are calling on the international community to intervene urgently to protect Palestinian civilians from genocide. They highlight the genocidal language of several Israeli political leaders and the specific intention to partially or totally destroy an ethnic group, the Palestinians. Raz Segal, a Jewish Holocaust scholar, describes Israel's brutal attack on Gaza as a textbook example of genocide unfolding before our very eyes.
Complicity
Despite the violence and bloodshed against Palestinian civilians, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, major European countries such as France and Germany, and the Presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament continue to give Israel their full support. The world is watching Israel commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We must end the violence and complicity as soon as possible! Echoing Palestinian civil society and our Palestinian partners AWDA, Bisan Center for Research and Development and Health Work Committees in particular, we call for :
- an immediate end to the violence and massacres; ;
- lift the blockade and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza ;
- a UN investigation into war crimes committed by all parties to ensure that the perpetrators are held to account.
The aid you provide to our partner AWDA remains vital. As long as there is fuel and medicine in the Gaza Strip, they can continue to work. Please make a donation by clicking on the following link:https://vivasalud.koalect.com/fr-FR/p/appel-d-urgence-pour-awda-gaza.
Make your voice heard and show your solidarity with the Palestinians at the big rally on Sunday 22 October at 2 p.m. on Place Schuman in Brussels: https://www.facebook.com/events/857959058955404.
