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Original article by Vijay Prashad republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh giving an interview.
Israel has systematically attacked Gaza’s health system and killed over 700 health workers, a flagrant violation of international law
In the first week of June 2024, the Palestine office of the World Health Organization (WHO) released figures about the atrocious attacks on health care facilities and workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Thus far, according to the WHO, the Israelis have attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured 933 health care workers, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances. “Health care,” the WHO’s Palestine office argues, “is not a target.” And yet, during the past seven months, health care workers have faced relentless attacks by the Israeli military. Each of the stories about the deaths is heartbreaking, the names of the dead are too long to list in any article (although a group called Healthcare Workers for Palestine did read the names of their dead colleagues as a protest against this war). But some of the stories are worth reflecting on because they tell us about the commitment of the workers and the great loss to humanity from their murder.
Dr. Iyad Rantisi, who was 53 years old, ran the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, which lies in the northern part of Gaza. There are many Rantisis in Gaza, but they are not native to that part of Palestine. Like many Palestinians who live in Gaza, they have roots in other parts of Palestine from which they had been expelled in the Nakba of 1948; the Rantisis come from the village of Rantis, northwest of Ramallah.
On November 11, 2023, during the Israeli military assault inside northern Gaza, Dr. Rantisi was taken into custody at an Israeli military checkpoint when he tried to leave northern Gaza for the south, following the orders of the Israeli military. Since then, his family had not heard anything about his whereabouts. Now, months later, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he was taken to the Shikma Investigation Center of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which is inside the Ashkelon Prison. Dr. Rantisi was tortured and then killed six days into his detention. His family was not informed of this until the Haaretz report. Then, Dr. Rantisi’s daughter Dima wrote of the death of her father, a social media post that she paired with photographs of him in medical scrubs performing surgery on a patient.
Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh, also 53, trained in Romania before he returned home to Gaza to head the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital. He has a reputation of being a very loved doctor, whose office was crowded with his diplomas (from Jordan, from Palestine, from the United Kingdom). When the Israeli military attacked al-Shifa, Dr. Al-Barsh was forced to leave his post, but he did not leave his work. He first went to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Dr. Rantisi worked, and then to Al-Awda Hospital in the area east of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, which was also attacked several times by the Israelis. On December 18, 2023, the Israeli military raided Al-Awda and took Dr. Al-Barsh and other hospital personnel into custody. Included among those arrested was the manager of the hospital and another very popular doctor, Dr. Ahmed Muhanna. On October 15, 2023, Dr. Muhanna made a video—which went viral—in which he pleaded to the world for help and for an immediate ceasefire. It is now reported that on April 19, 2024, Dr. Al-Barsh was killed by the Israelis in Ofer Prison. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, said, “Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities.”
Dr. Hammam Alloh, age 36, was killed when an Israeli missile struck his home near his ward in Al-Shifa Hospital on November 12, 2023. Trained in Yemen and Jordan, Dr. Alloh was Gaza’s only nephrologist, a kidney specialist. Concerned about his patients who were on dialysis, particularly with the lack of electricity and the constant attacks, Dr. Alloh—who was known as “The Legend” during his residency in Jordan—refused to leave the hospital. On October 31, Dr. Alloh was asked why he did not abandon his post and go to southern Gaza. “If I go,” he replied calmly, “who would treat my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” This was the caliber of Dr. Alloh. Less than two weeks later, when he left his post to have a rest at home with his parents, his wife (pregnant with a child), and his two children, the Israelis struck his home. He died alongside his father.
At the International Court of Justice in January 2024, the Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh made the closing arguments for South Africa’s claim of genocide against Israel. In the course of her statement, Ní Ghrálaigh showed an image of a whiteboard with the following written on it: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These lines had been written by 38-year-old Dr. Mahmoud Abu Najaila, who worked as a physician for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. On November 21, 2023, the Israeli military bombed the third and fourth floors of the hospital, where Dr. Najaila worked with Dr. Ahmad Al-Sahar and Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. All three of them were killed.
On her LinkedIn page, Reem Abu Lebdeh, a physiotherapist who was an associate trustee on the board of MSF’s UK branch, wrote, “Such a devastating loss for the medical community and humanity.” These doctors, whom she knew, she said, “were true embodiments of selfless service and humanitarian dedication, tirelessly saving lives in the most urgent conditions.” Then a few weeks later, sometime in December, the Israelis attacked a residential area in Khan Younis and killed Reem Abu Lebdeh, whose own messages of solidarity now sit on the web like Dr. Najaila’s whiteboard note: Remember us.
Injured Palestinians are brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on January 22, 2024. (Photo: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The WHO “was not permitted to enter” the facility in recent days, said the agency chief, warning that “the cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives.”
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Sunday that the largest hospital in the southern Gaza Strip “is not functional anymore, after a weeklong siege followed by the ongoing raid” by Israeli forces.
After claiming that Hamas was using Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for “military activity” and some hostages’ bodies may be there, the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday began raiding the facility, where around 10,000 people had sought shelter. Sources there said the IDF bombed “a ward full of patients” and multiple people who were dependent on oxygen have died due to power outages.
Tedros highlighted on Sunday that the WHO team “was not permitted to enter” the facility in recent days “to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel alongside partners.”
“There are still about 200 patients in the hospital. At least 20 need to be urgently referred to other hospitals to receive healthcare; medical referral is every patient’s right,” he added. “The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives. Access to the patients and hospital should be facilitated.”
What conceivable purpose could Israeli forces have to prevent the @WHO from delivering medical aid to Nasser Hospital? To collectively punish the patients and doctors? To cover up when Israeli forces have done to the hospital? https://t.co/dlO1phoIif
Later Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said that “150 patients who cannot move are piled inside the rooms and corridors of the old building at Nasser Medical Complex without medical care after the arrest of 70 of the complex’s management and medical staff.”
“The occupation refuses to evacuate patients for treatment in other hospitals, which endangers their lives, including seven intensive care patients, five dialysis patients, [and] three newborns in the nursery, in addition to cases of burns, amputations, quadriplegia, childbirth, and others,” the ministry added.
The IDF said on Telegram that in its operations around the facility, Israeli troops apprehended “hundreds of terrorists and other terror suspects who were hiding in the hospital, some of whom had posed as medical staff,” including alleged participants in the October 7 Hamas-led attack that led to the war.
Noting IDF claims that soldiers aimed to recover the remains of hostages believed to be in the facility, The Washington Postreported that “Israeli forces have not yet found the bodies of any hostages but said on Sunday that they discovered medicine at the hospital bearing the names of Israelis who were abducted by Hamas.”
Israeli forces taking a hostage to cover up what they have done in Gaza's Nasser Hospital. https://t.co/j1PzCuXenl
The Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians, injured over 68,800 others, devastated civilian infrastructure—including hospitals—and left most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced, hungry, and at risk of disease. Global experts and critics have accused Israel of genocide, including in a South Africa-led case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In response to IDF orders to leave northern Gaza, most residents are now crammed into the southern part of the strip. According toAl-Jazeera:
Al-Amal Hospital, the only other major medical facility still operational in Khan Younis, continues to be a target of Israeli attacks. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Sunday said Israeli forces targeted the third floor of the hospital with artillery fire.
The Israeli military has expanded its siege on Khan Younis and its medical facilities as it pushed further south into Rafah on the border with Egypt.
Throughout the week, people around the world including humanitarian and United Nations leaders have pressured Israel to refrain from a full-scale attack on Rafah. The ICJ on Friday echoed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ warning that it “would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”
A Palestinian woman receives dialysis treatment at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on February 8, 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
The lack of medicine, food and water means thousands of people with asthma, kidney disease or diabetes are unable to treat or control their conditions
Four months of conflict in Gaza is jeopardising the health of thousands of people with chronic illnesses such as kidney disease, diabetes and asthma, doctors have warned.
The chronically ill are the hidden casualties of the war, as access to water, food and medicine is severely restricted, said Guillemette Thomas, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical coordinator for Palestine.
“Hospitals that are still functioning are overwhelmed with injured people, they are not able to deal with chronic illness at all,” she said. “Before the war there were 3,500 hospital beds in Gaza, now there are fewer than 1,000, and hundreds and hundreds of injured. We don’t know how many people are dying because they can’t access healthcare.”
When medication is allowed into the territory there are no safe ways of distributing it, Thomas said. “We have some insulin coming in aid trucks, but patients can’t get to the places where it is stocked because of the airstrikes. People are bombed on their way to the hospital.”
Palestinians receiving dialysis treatment are pictured at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on February 8, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“There is a particularly cruel circular logic at play here: Israeli forces, as they bomb and besiege Gaza, are creating an urgent need for medical care among civilians while simultaneously denying them access to it.”
A pair of human rights experts on Friday urged the International Criminal Court to prosecute any Israelis who have played a part in the assault on Gaza’s healthcare system, which is in tatters after months of relentless airstrikes, shelling, and a suffocating blockade.
“Since Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack, Israel has repeatedly targetedhealthcare facilities, ambulances, and access roads,” Annie Sparrow, a practicing clinician in war zones, and Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote in an op-ed for Foreign Policy.
“It has arrested healthcare workers, blockaded fuel needed for generators, and withheld critical medical and surgical supplies—all of which are intended to undermine Gaza’s healthcare system,” they added. “There is a particularly cruel circular logic at play here: Israeli forces, as they bomb and besiege Gaza, are creating an urgent need for medical care among civilians while simultaneously denying them access to it.”
Sparrow and Roth called on the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is currently investigating alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, to “prosecute Israelis responsible for bombing hospitals, denying access to medicines and vaccines, and causing excessive civilian harm.”
“These attacks could be part of a plan to make Gaza uninhabitable and drive Palestinians out, an outcome that senior Israeli ministers—whose support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to remain in power—continue to promote,” they wrote.
The near-total collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system under Israel’s assault, combined with the scarcity of clean water and other necessities, has left millions of Gazans at growing risk of disease. There is no longer a single fully functional hospital in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations.
“Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system is not only an important part of the genocide charges [brought by South Africa]—it is also a blatant war crime that should be prosecuted outright by the International Criminal Court,” Sparrow and Roth wrote Friday, noting that while the International Court of Justice “resolves disputes between states, the ICC adjudicates criminal prosecutions of individuals.”
“Targeting healthcare achieves little militarily while amplifying the death toll and suffering caused by indiscriminate bombardment,” the pair continued. “Such attacks flout the core purpose of international humanitarian law—to relieve civilian suffering—and are thus often an omen of broader atrocities to come.”
Destroying Gaza’s Healthcare system is a war crime.
The ICC should prosecute Israelis responsible for bombing hospitals, denying access to medicines and vaccines, and causing excessive civilian harm @ForeignPolicy
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that it has documented more than 350 attacks on healthcare in the Gaza Strip since October 7. The attacks killed at least 645 people and injured 818 more, according to newly released WHO data.
“These attacks have affected 98 healthcare facilities, including 27 hospitals damaged out of 36, and affected 90 ambulances, including 50 which sustained damage,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.
The WHO’s new figures came shortly before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Israel’s military to craft a plan to forcibly “evacuate” civilians from Rafah, a densely crowded city whose hospitals are overwhelmed with injured patients and displaced people.
Netanyahu’s order intensified concerns that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah is imminent.
Catherine Russell, head of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), warned that a Rafah assault could be catastrophic for the enclave’s already starving and desperate population.
“We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets, and water systems to stay functional,” Russell told The Associated Press. “Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives.”
