(photo: Staff at Al-Awda Hospital pay tribute to their colleagues killed yesterday during a bombing of the departments located on the 3rd and 4th floors)
Palestinian health professionals and their allies around the world continue to oppose Israel's attacks on healthcare in Gaza, strengthening solidarity and resistance.
22 November 2023 by Peoples Health Dispatch
Al-Awda Hospital, located in the Jabalya refugee camp, is one of the last health facilities in Palestine to be directly targeted by Israeli occupation forces. On Tuesday, 21 November, at least three doctors were killed and many others were injured during a new attack. Among the dead is Ziad Al-Tatari, a neonatologist. It is particularly brutal to kill paediatricians, as children still account for the majority of casualties in Gaza. Yet Israel's systematic attack on healthcare in Palestine makes this fact less surprising than it should be.
The shock remains for those who have experienced first-hand the impact of the occupation on the Palestinian healthcare system, such as Dr Mads Gilbert.
During a discussion coordinated by No Cold War, the People’s Health Movement and Viva Salud, Gilbert, who has worked intermittently in Palestine for decades, explained how incredible it seemed that the world chose to look the other way while Israel repeatedly attacked Palestinians’ right to health.
He emphasised the recognition that healthcare workers in Palestine deserve. after working under occupation for 75 years. Their discipline and dignity in the face of the most horrific attacks are a living example of sumud Palestinian, or tenacity. There is no doubt that healthcare professionals will remain at work as long as there are patients in hospitals and refugees in camps.
Calm and dignity, combined with tenacity, were evident in the voices of the Palestinian speakers during the discussion. When we see the extent of the physical destruction of health infrastructure in Gaza – with only a quarter of hospitals still functional, walls and floors collapsed, and no electricity – it can be difficult to imagine how it will be possible to rebuild.
However, healthcare professionals in Palestine remain confident. «Together, we will rebuild all the hospitals that have been destroyed in Palestine,» assured Aed Yaghi, director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. «And I believe that one day we will witness Palestinian independence.”
Palestinian hospitals, health centres, medical staff and patients are not collateral damage, as the Israeli occupying forces would have us believe. The determination to destroy them is part of a strategy to eliminate any trace of a social safety net for Palestinians, said Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Council.
The Israeli attacks that followed on 7 October were particularly violent. So violent, in fact, that Barghouti said Palestine is now facing three parallel war crimes: genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment. The level of violence by Israeli occupation forces has escalated to such an extent that some are comparing the period to the Nakba, Yaghi warned.
What we are witnessing should move everyone, but we must ensure that our response is not reduced to pity or charity. «Pity is colonial,» Gilbert said. What healthcare workers and the people of Palestine deserve instead is solidarity as defined by Samora Machel – « mutual assistance between forces fighting for the same goal » – according to Gilbert.
« The two most beautiful words I know in Norwegian are love and solidarity. What we are witnessing today is an attempt to deny them.«Israel's efforts to stifle calls for a ceasefire and respect for human rights in Palestine have not worked, as public outrage over the destruction of the Gaza Strip has grown around the world," Gilbert said.
On the other hand, initiatives in solidarity with Palestine have multiplied in recent weeks, including among health professionals. The younger generation of healthcare professionals is particularly committed to opposing the targeting of hospitals as military targets. Their protests took place around the world, from Indonesia to Norway to South Africa. On Tuesday, in Cape Town, several hundred health professionals picketed outside the Red Cross Children's Hospital, reiterating their demand for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the targeting of health personnel and infrastructure.
In some cases, instead of being heard by their governments and professional association leaders, health professionals have faced censorship and harassment for their advocacy efforts, as described by Rupa Marya of the Do No Harm coalition in the United States. Attempts by some of them to build solidarity with Palestine were met with what Marya described as a «brutal backlash,» unlike anything she had seen before when health professionals took a political stance.
Despite opposition from the powers that be, healthcare professionals in the United States are not giving up their fight to expose the «horrible and dark masquerade.» Their actions are also being mirrored in other countries in the North. In Belgium, health workers and volunteers from Médecine pour le peuple (MPLP) organise regular vigils and participate in events every day to ensure that as many people as possible hear about the war in Palestine.
Hanne Bosselaers, a general practitioner at one of the MPLP health centres in Molenbeek, emphasised that reaching out to the community by drawing on personal experience was the best way to attract people to solidarity movements. Bosselaers worked in Al-Awda centres earlier in her career: for her, sharing her experience is the best way to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause and end Israeli impunity.
At this stage, the importance of growing public pressure cannot be overstated.« Don't just praise, take action« said Gilbert. What healthcare workers in Palestine are showing the world is a « teaching experience on resilience, on a culture based on values that differ from those of our capitalist healthcare systems« he emphasised. Recognising and integrating these values into the practice of solidarity movements is essential to strengthening them and truly standing alongside Palestine.
