Mike Ludwig
Truthout / December 10, 2024
Medical workers in Gaza’s remaining hospitals and field clinics are pleading with the international community for desperately needed assistance and an arms embargo against the Israeli occupation, as they continue to work under indescribable conditions — including being deliberately targeted by Israel’s occupying forces.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, doctors recounted horrific scenes: injured people dying alongside bulldozed roads before they are able to reach a medical center; medical personnel walking through pools of blood in bombed out buildings as they perform surgeries without requisite supplies and on floors and in hallways; limbs amputated from the bodies of children without proper anaesthesia (there are more child amputees in Gaza per capita than anywhere in the world); and countless preventable deaths from infection and malnutrition due to a lack of medicine, food and clean water.
On top of these accounts of horror, medical workers in Gaza say they and their families are being targeted by Israel. More than 1,000 medical workers have been killed in Gaza despite working in clearly marked uniforms under the protection of international law. Others have been arrested, interrogated and “disappeared” into Israeli prisons known for abuse and torture. Ambulances are targeted en route to the injured, and 130 have been damaged or destroyed, according to international aid groups.
Doctors on the call described impossible situations they confront every day in Gaza.
“We could be killed, we could be injured, we are working and we are not safe,” said a doctor who wished to remain anonymous for his safety. “We are staying for long periods in these hospitals and cannot provide for our families or our homes, and we have shortage of clean water and food … I am also [a] father.”
Despite harrowing distress calls emergency workers are unable to evacuate people from besieged areas of northern Gaza without coming under attack, according to Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the Red Cross. Even when there is official “coordination” with Israeli forces, military roadblocks and other delays prevent the recovery of the dead and wounded.
“None of our ambulances are able to work there despite receiving hundreds of calls from civilians who are trapped or injured and need to be evacuated,” Farsakh told reporters on Monday. “There are elderly and disabled people who need to be evacuated, but we can’t even send an ambulance or crew or they will be targeted and killed.”
Fahed Ghanem, a U.S.-based physician with EqualHealth’s Campaign Against Racism, pointed to a new report by the human rights group Amnesty International that describes Israel’s operations in Gaza as a genocide by attrition, or the deliberate strategy to erode a population’s ability to survive.
“Hospitals reduced to rubble, ambulances shelled; doctors, nurses and paramedics killed while wearing uniforms that should shield them from harm, not mark them as targets,” Ghanem said on Monday. “These are not isolated incidents but violations of international law meant to dismantle health care systems and leave communities without hope.”
Health care workers under siege
Hussam Abu Safieh is the director of the Kamal Adwan Medical Complex in northern Gaza. The hospital has been besieged, shelled and raided multiple times over the past year by Israeli forces hunting for militants. Last week four doctors were killed during an attack and raid on the hospital that reportedly left dozens of dying and injured people lying in the streets. Patients were rounded up and displaced while others were detained, including medical workers and civilians seeking shelter, according to Safieh.
More than 1,000 medical workers have been killed in Gaza despite working in clearly marked uniforms under the protection of international law. Others have been arrested, interrogated and “disappeared” into Israeli prisons.
Areas of north Gaza have been under siege for weeks, cutoff from food, medical supplies, fuel and evacuation routes. Safieh said ambulances can no longer reach the besieged area, but Kamal Adwan Medical Complex is the only medical center in the area and still receives calls from women and children crying for help.
“Whoever goes out from the hospital is targeted,” Safieh said on Monday, speaking to reporters through an interpreter. “This is one of the most distressful [situations], when you receive a distress call and you cannot provide any response or provide any help … and then the people die and are buried in their houses.”
Some injured people attempt to reach the hospital on foot, Safieh said, but without ambulances that can move freely, they are left on the street to die if they do not make it.
Israel has consistently denied committing genocide and violating international law by targeting civilians and medical workers, instead blaming Hamas for using civilians as “human shields,” a charge which Hamas denies and the UN has said lacks “substantial evidence” in “most instances.” However, a recent investigation by The New York Times revealed that Israeli forces have deliberately used Palestinian civilians as human shields, and last month the International Criminal Court charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister with war crimes.
There are an estimated 100,000 wounded people in Gaza, and the confirmed death toll is nearing 45,000. Farsakh said only 17 of 36 hospitals in Gaza were functioning but none of them at full capacity due to damage from raids and airstrikes.
The Red Crescent and other groups have set up field units across Gaza, but the four units operating in northern Gaza recently shut down after 19 Red Crescent humanitarian workers were killed despite wearing their clearly marked uniforms, Farsakh said.
“We have never witnessed such horror and attack. I not only lost my colleagues … dozens of others were injured, and more than 30 were forcibly disappeared and detained; four of them are still forcibly disappeared for almost a year,” Farsakh said. “There is no information about them, Israeli forces refuse to release any information about them, and we are extremely worried about them.”
Farsakh added that medical workers and first responders do not know if they will return to their families after each long shift, fearing that they will be killed or arrested like so many of their colleagues.
A ‘silent war’ on health care in the West Bank
The Palestine Ministry of Health recently called on the international community to intervene and stop Israeli attacks on health care facilities in the occupied West Bank, where at least 790 Palestinians have been killed in what Palestinians call the “silent war” as the world focuses on Gaza. There has been a surge in Israeli military operations and attacks by extremist settlers since the war on Gaza began on October 7.
“The health care community and medical institutions, especially the [American Medical Association] have been very silent and very complicit with this genocide.”
The byzantine system of checkpoints and roadblocks in the segregated West Bank, where Palestinians are forcibly displaced to make room for Jewish-only settlements, prevents first responders from reaching the sick and injured and delivering them to hospitals quickly, according to Mustafa al-Qawasmi, director of emergency services at the Palestinian health ministry.
Roadblocks and barricades are a problem in both Gaza and the West Bank, al-Qawasmi said, and Israel’s failure to coordinate in a timely fashion with the health ministry and aid groups prevents emergency managers from making and executing strategic plans to save lives.
“Insulted, attacked, being fired at — that is how they are prevented from providing health care to the Palestinian population,” al-Qawasmi said during the conference call.
On Monday, health workers across the world spoke out in solidarity with doctors and medical workers in Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire and an embargo on weapons transfers to Israel. Doctors Against Genocide is pushing American medical associations to take a stand and call out the Biden administration, Israel’s top sponsor and provider of weapons.
“Unfortunately, the health care community and medical institutions, especially the [American Medical Association] have been very silent and very complicit with this genocide,” said Nidal Jboor, a U.S.-based physician and director of Doctors Against Genocide. “We refuse to continue to be silent, it’s our moral obligation … we should be the first ones to speak up against these atrocities and these war crimes.”
“When politicians fail, when governments fail, it is on us,” Jboor added.
Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at Truthout based in New Orleans
