 Since October 2023, Israel has been relentlessly attacking the Gaza Strip, causing over 50,000 deaths (though this is almost certainly an undercount) and the complete or partial destruction of over 80% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. As part of this onslaught, Israel's armed forces have repeatedly attacked Palestinian healthcare workers, facilities and infrastructure, severely hampering the ability to treat the sick and wounded and leading to further suffering and thousands of preventable deaths. Healthcare workers and facilities are protected under International Humanitarian Law—they are afforded, per the principle of medical neutrality, a baseline protection from attacks. The direct targeting of hospitals, doctors, nurses, paramedics and ambulances is a war crime—a war crime particularly calculated by Israel to accelerate the genocide and the extermination of all life in Gaza. The collection of crimes committed by Israel against Gaza's healthcare sector is as atrocious as it is vast. In the past 18 months, every single hospital in Gaza has been attacked by Israel at least once. As a result of these attacks, most hospitals across the Gaza Strip are no longer operational. Doctors and other healthcare workers have been attacked, beaten, abducted, disappeared, and murdered in their uniforms, sometimes while performing their duties or attempting to provide emergency care. Many abducted healthcare workers have endured torture in Israeli prisons. Attacks on healthcare facilities carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been a regular occurrence from the first weeks of Israel's genocidal campaign on Gaza. Each attack has drastically weakened an already deprived healthcare system and has exponentially compounded the suffering of Palestinians across every part of the Gaza Strip. By October 15th, 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) had already reported 48 attacks on healthcare facilities. These constituted five or more attacks per day on healthcare infrastructure, within the first week of the genocidal campaign unleashed by Israel on the Gaza Strip on October 8. According to Forensic Architecture, Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza follow a pattern designed to maximize civilian deaths. Often, when the IDF attacks a healthcare facility, it simultaneously attacks other healthcare facilities in the same area, cutting off all avenues for rescue, emergency, and medical care within the strike zone. Hospitals, due to their protected status under International Humanitarian Law, have also come to serve as shelters for displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, further raising the number of casualties after each Israeli strike. On October 17th 2023, an explosion on the grounds of the Ahli Arab Hospital (also known as Baptist Hospital) compound killed 471 and injured over 300 people, many of whom were civilians merely seeking safe shelter in facilities protected by international law. Prior to this incident, according to WHO, the IDF had already conducted 51 strikes on healthcare facilities and infrastructure and had issued evacuation orders for all hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, including Ahli Arab Hospital.  Israel again and again repeats the same genocidal patternShortly after the extent of the destruction at the Ahli Arab Hospital became clear, Israel issued a dubious statement claiming that the explosion had been caused by a misfired rocket from Gaza. This claim was immediately parroted by mainstream Western media without any inquiry into the incident. Further investigation by Forensic Architecture, has debunked the Israeli claims as inconclusive at best and outright false at worst. The massacre at Ahli Arab Hospital also shows a pattern that Israel has applied many times in the course of this genocidal campaign. First, Israel obscures the facts around an attack, then Israel ensures that its narrative of the attack is repeated in Western media, until the IDF commits another atrocity, muddying the waters and distracting Western media, leaders and audiences from the factual happenings of an attack. Many might still remember the IDF's PR stunt after besieging and raiding the Al Rantisi Childrens' Hospital in November of 2023, in which IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari takes a tour through the besieged hospital, pointing at things that are usually found in Children's hospitals, such as diapers and baby bottles, and claims this as proof, that the hospital has been used by Hamas as a base. These claims are of course completely baseless and led to much ridicule, but for Israel, these claims still, even if hardly believed, serve a function. That function is specifically the muddying of the waters around Israel's military conduct. The more disinformation there is, no matter how baseless and ridiculous the claims, the harder it becomes for outside observers to keep on track with the constant debunking that has to be done to bring truth to light. Since the massacre on the grounds of Ahli Arab Hospital, Israel has continued its decimation of Gaza's healthcare sector with over 600 attacks on healthcare facilities to date. In addition to targeting healthcare facilities, the IDF directly targets doctors and healthcare workers. During the raid and destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in late December 2024, Israeli armed forces abducted the hospital's director and pediatrician, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Dr. Abu Safiya remains in Israeli captivity where he has endured months of torture and abuse. Paramedics in clearly marked ambulances on their way to rescuing the lives of injured Palestinians are also targeted by Israeli armed forces. In fact, two paramedics were killed while attempting to rescue our foundation's namesake, Hind Rajab. Hind was murdered in late January 2024 along with six members of her family while trying to flee northern Gaza. She and her cousin were the only survivors of a direct attack by the IDF on their family's car. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) informed the Israeli Army that children were present in the car and that an ambulance was on its way. The PRCS coordinated the arrival of their paramedics with the Israeli Army to ensure safe passage. Nevertheless, the paramedics and their ambulance came under fire. Hind and two PRCS paramedics were killed in the onslaught. Following their typical modus operandi for covering up their crimes, Israeli authorities refused to allow any party into the area to investigate the incident.  Israel besieges, forcefully evacuates, and brutally targets hospitals, frequently attempting to justify these attacks with entirely unsubstantiated claims that healthcare facilities are being used as "terrorist strongholds." Even if fighters are present in healthcare facilities, their mere presence does not override the principle of medical neutrality. An attack on a healthcare facility justified by the mere hypothetical presence of fighters also amounts to collective punishment, another war crime. Compounding the collective punishment, Israel's blockade and siege on the Gaza Strip makes no exemptions for healthcare in its denial of the fuel, electricity and medical supplies required for the rudimentary functioning of Gaza's healthcare sector, which was already beyond its breaking point due to the 16-year Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza, which began well prior to October 7, 2023. The 2025 January 19 Ceasefire offered Gaza's healthcare sector only a brief respite. Attacks on medical facilities and workers immediately resumed after Israel unilaterally terminated the ceasefire—which it continually violated while in force—by refusing to progress to, or even negotiate the previously agreed upon second phase. On the night of March 18-19, the IDF launched a surprise attack on the Gaza Strip, effectively ending the ceasefire and killing more than 400 Palestinians, including 263 women and children, in one of the deadliest days since the genocide began.  Israel's depravity knows no bounds On March 23, 2025, paramedics from the PRCS and Palestinian Civil Defence (PCD) were again targeted. First, dispatchers lost contact with their colleagues in an ambulance on its way to rescue wounded Palestinians. Another ambulance carrying paramedics was subsequently sent, which also lost contact with its dispatchers. PRCS reported the incident to the IDF. Again, no one was allowed into the area to conduct a search for the missing paramedics for seven days. When access to the area was finally granted on March 30, the PRCS found their missing colleagues buried in a shallow mass grave—all shot at close range, some with their hands bound—next to their charred ambulances. And once again, Israel tried to conceal the facts of this ruthless, criminal attack on health care providers, this time with the dubious claim, that "the ambulance approached in a suspicious manner". This seems to have been enough of an "explanation" for Israel's Western allies, since there still have been zero consquences for Israel, eventhough all evidence speaks against the Israeli narrative. On April 2, 2025, the IDF again targeted an UNRWA field clinic killing 22 civilians, including nine children. A little over a week later, on April 13—on the second night of Passover and in the dawn of Palm Sunday—Israel carried out repeated, intense airstrikes on the Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital, destroying its emergency department and forcing yet another hospital in Gaza entirely out of service. Every life is sacred. But the deliberate targeting and destruction of healthcare facilities and infrastructure and the deliberate targeting and murder of doctors, other healthcare workers, and paramedics, hold special significance in the course of this ongoing genocide. Every doctor murdered, every paramedic and EMT killed, every ambulance destroyed, every emergency room, maternity ward, MRI and X-Ray machine destroyed ensures that thousands more sick or wounded Palestinians will most certainly die otherwise entirely preventable deaths.  Images:
1) © Olga Cherevko/OHCHR. 2) Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah at the podium, during a press conference at al-Shifa Hospital on 17 October 2023. Image: Anadolu. 3) PRCS. 4) Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera Comments are closed.
|
Archives
April 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed