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Israel’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians

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Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Photo: UNRWA

Israel’s deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza has emerged as key weapon against the people of the territory. More than 20 Palestinians have reportedly been killed due to starvation in the last few weeks and numbers are expected to explode in the coming days.

Though Israel denies it has any such policy, almost all UN agencies working to provide aid on the ground in Gaza, as well as several other groups, have termed the deliberate blocking of aid as the most important reason for an imminent famine in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

Research conducted by organizations such as Refugees International show that, “Israeli conduct has consistently impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

By denying adequate aid to Gaza, Israel has been in violation of the interim order passed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 while hearing the genocide petition filed by South Africa. The ICJ had asked Israel to facilitate “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life.”

In its submission to the court in February, Israel claimed it had complied with the ruling. However, UN data shows that the actual number of trucks with aid reaching Gaza decreased by half in February in comparison to the previous month. International organizations still describe experiences where the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) block their entry into Gaza, especially North Gaza, after being made to wait for hours on end.

According to Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA, in February, on an average just 98 trucks entered Gaza in comparison to around 200 trucks a day in January. Before October 7, Israel used to allow around 500 trucks a day to the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

Israel’s denial of adequate aid to Gaza also violates the UN Security Council resolution adopted in December which talks about greater access to humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. 

The US, which was the primary mover of the UN security council resolution, recently airdropped aid to Gaza. While delivering his State of the Union address on March 7, President Joe Biden also talked about opening a temporary port in Gaza to deliver faster aid. Both the moves confirm the claims that there is not enough aid reaching Gaza at the moment, despite Israeli claims.

However, the US act is widely seen as a face-saving exercise given the Biden administration’s reluctance to press Israel for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and its supply of arms and ammunition which is used by Israel to bomb Palestinians.

The Biden administration has failed to make Israel comply with its own National Security Memorandum (NSM 20) as well. It requires that countries seeking security aid from the US make arrangements for adequate humanitarian assistance.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK highlighted on her page on X that Biden says “Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and protect civilians. But it doesn’t. And Biden keeps sending them more weapons.”

Meanwhile “after five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter and basic medicine. Famine level hunger is already widespread and worsening” in Gaza, Refugees International’s report says. The lack of adequate food has significant health implications for children in Gaza who have been the primary victims of Israel’s war since October 7.

Israel weaponized starvation against Palestinians

Israel has killed over ten thousand children in its bombings and ground offensives in Gaza since October 7. In addition to that, the health effects of Israel’s blockade on aid delivery are worsening by the day.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age in Gaza are acutely malnourished. The combination of food shortages, lack of clean water, and inadequate healthcare provision is having devastating effects, particularly on young children and mothers.

Many women are facing extreme difficulties in initiating and continuing breastfeeding due to their own nutritional status and stress. “People are hungry, exhausted, and traumatized,” said Adele Khodr, Regional Director of UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office.

The food shortage in the north is so severe that health workers report 95% of female patients are suffering from anemia. “There have been many operations performed, such as cesarean sections, to remove fetuses, [which] died of malnutrition among women,” Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda Hospital, told ActionAid.

Pediatricians at Kamal Adwan Hospital have reported not having the resources to treat more than half the children admitted to the hospital for malnutrition, as there is no food or medical supplement the staff can give them. “The most we can do for them is give them a saline solution or sugar solution,” physician Imad Dardonah told UN teams visiting the institution.

Israeli obstacles to aid delivery also mean that there is not enough infant formula or diapers. On the rare occasions when these essential supplies are found, their cost puts them out of reach for most of the population in Gaza.

A box of diapers in northern Gaza now costs around ILS 200 (USD 55), while monthly income before October 7, 2023, was reported around ILS 1,200 (USD 343)— not even enough to cover a newborn’s monthly supply during her first month of life, let alone food on top of that.

Restrictions are also being applied to the number of international medical teams allowed into Gaza and to field hospitals, which would allow for a partial expansion of much-needed health service capacities.

The siege is causing a devastating paradox: at the same time, there are too few health workers to respond to the needs of the population and those who have been working in Gaza’s healthcare system since October; and there are too many health workers in comparison to the operational surgery capacities—the only remaining functional operation rooms are located at the European Hospital in southern Gaza, according to surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah.

Some countries have attempted to circumvent Israel’s aid blockade by airdropping supplies, but the amounts reaching the population in Gaza this way are nowhere near sufficient. To adequately stock hospitals and health centers, several international agencies have warned, it is paramount to ensure unimpeded passage for truck convoys carrying a wide range of supplies, not just a specific type of food or sanitary bandages.

When it comes to aid delivery, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, James McGoldrick, said, “There is no alternative to food trucks, to road transports.”

Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIsrael’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians

Malnourishment could lead to even more deaths among children in Gaza

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Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Displaced Palestinians wait for food at Al-Shaboura camp, in Rafah. Photo: WHO via UN Photo

A new report found that that over 15% of children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, with 3% of them suffering from wasting. The World Food Programme has warned that without a ceasefire, a famine may ravage Gaza by May

Nutrition indicators among children in Gaza have been declining at an unprecedented rate since the beginning of Israeli attacks on October 7, 2023. Without a ceasefire, there will be a famine ravaging through the region by May, warned the World Food Programme (WFP).

In a new report based on data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, the Global Nutrition Cluster found that over 15% of children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, with 3% of them suffering from wasting. 

The numbers in the southern regions, including Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has been displaced to, are somewhat lower, yet still represent a massive increase compared to the situation before October 7. The report indicates that by January, 5% of under-2-year-olds in Rafah were acutely malnourished. Previously, less than 1% of children younger than 5 experienced such circumstances across the entire Strip.

The extent of malnourishment is creating the perfect conditions for the spread of communicable diseases, which could drive the devastating number of children killed by Israeli attacks even higher. As most children can only consume food of low variety, their bodies become more vulnerable to the effects of otherwise treatable conditions, like diarrhea. Additionally, the lack of clean potable water, affecting all households in Gaza, further decreases the chances of treating these conditions.

Children are not the only group affected by the lack of food. Their parents, including pregnant mothers, are choosing to forgo meals to feed their children. Approximately 95% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza are not getting enough to eat. If they have access to food, it is of low nutritional value, adding to the pre-existing burden of anemia and undermining maternal health.

The WFP has documented much of this situation but stopped delivering aid to northern Gaza as the occupying forces did not ensure conditions for safe delivery. The aid entering southern regions of Gaza remains only a small fraction of what is needed, and the effects of malnutrition are exacerbated by the destruction of the health infrastructure.

Read more: Israel intensifies assault on healthcare in Gaza. Only 11 hospitals are partially functioning

No hospital or health center is spared in this process, and attacks have also been noted against civilian infrastructure where health workers and their families are seeking shelter. In one of the most recent attacks of this kind, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) targeted a house where 64 Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff members and their families were staying. The building was clearly marked with an MSF flag, and the IOF were informed of their presence, yet they attacked the house, killing several people inside.

According to MSF, the IOF’s action “shows a complete disregard for human life and a lack of respect for the medical mission. This makes it almost impossible to sustain medical humanitarian activities in Gaza.”

As the IOF persists in its attacks on hospitals, not only the shelling but also the evacuation orders and sieges further jeopardize the health of people who are already sick or wounded. Commenting on recent cases of hospital evacuation in Gaza, Guillemette Thomas from MSF pointed out that patients were forced to leave on foot, in wheelchairs, or even rolled in hospital beds, despite being in no condition to be moved.

Their treatment increases the risk of infection and lowers the chances of recovery, Thomas stated. “This can be extremely dangerous for them. When someone with a severely fractured leg starts to walk, it compromises their possibility to regain mobility and can have life-threatening consequences.”

Even after most patients, medical staff, and forcibly displaced people are evacuated from the hospitals, Israeli forces continue to besiege them. On February 22, after a full month of besieging and targeting Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, the IOF damaged the hospital’s communication devices, which are used by the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for locating and dispatching teams. This is only one in a series of IOF attacks that hit the PRCS, following the kidnapping of several staff members, destroying ambulance vehicles dispatched to rescue children, and raids on Al-Amal, which left behind damaged medical equipment and vehicles.

Read more: Palestinian health workers kidnapped by Israel subjected to torture and humiliation

The situation is far from better in Nasser Hospital. While the WHO and other organizations were finally able to reach the complex to evacuate one part of the patients who had stayed behind following a violent incursion into the buildings by the IOF, over 100 patients who cannot move and about a dozen medical staff providing them care still remain behind.

The UN health agency was granted permission to enter Nasser Hospital only earlier this week, after several attempts were blocked by the Israeli forces. “Prior to the missions, WHO received two consecutive denials to access the hospital for medical assessment, causing delays in urgently needed patient referral. Reportedly, at least five patients died in the Intensive Care Unit before any missions or transfers were possible,” the organization said in a statement.

Upon their return from Nasser, WHO staff said the destruction was indescribable. “Gaza has become a death zone,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingMalnourishment could lead to even more deaths among children in Gaza

The US Must Stop Arming Israel’s Assault on Hospitals

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Original article by KATHY KELLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Injured Palestinians, including children, are brought to Nasser Hospital to receive medical treatment following Israeli attacks in Khan Younis, Gaza, on January 22, 2024.  (Photo: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images)

If we can’t find the morality to stop, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights.

Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, unarmed security guard named Frank. He sat at a classroom style desk near the entrance with a ledger book.

Over the course of four years, on weekends and evenings, “security” at the hospital generally consisted solely of Frank and me. Fortunately, nothing much ever happened. The possibility of an attack, invasion, or raid never occurred to us. The notion of an aerial bombardment was unimaginable, like something out of War of the Worlds or some other sci-fi fantasy.

Now, tragically, hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked, invaded, bombed, and destroyed. News of additional Israeli attacks is being reported on a daily basis. Last week, Democracy Now! interviewed Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and eye surgeon who recently returned from a humanitarian surgical mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. Dr. Khan spoke of bombings taking place every few hours resulting in a constant influx of mass casualties. The majority of patients he treated were children from age 2 to 17. He saw horrific eye injuries, shattered faces, shrapnel wounds, abdominal injuries, limbs severed above the bone, and traumas caused by drone-launched laser-guided missiles. Amid the overcrowding and chaos, healthcare workers tended to patients while lacking basic equipment, including anesthesia. Patients lay on the ground in unsterile conditions, vulnerable to infection and disease. Most of them also suffered from severe hunger.

At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch.

Normally, a child who undergoes an amputation faces as many as 12 additional surgeries. Khan wondered who would do the follow-up care for these children, some of whom have no surviving relatives.

He also noted sniper fire prevented doctors from going to work. “They’ve killed healthcare workers, nurses, paramedics; ambulances have been bombed. This has all been systematic,” Khan explained. “Now there are 10,000 to 15,000 bodies decomposing. It’s the rainy season right now in Gaza, so all the rainwater mixes with the decomposing bodies and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply and you get further disease.”

According to Khan, Israeli forces have kidnapped 40 to 45 doctors, specifically targeting specialists and hospital administrators. Three healthcare professional organizations have issued a statement expressing deep concern that the Israeli military has abducted and unlawfully detained Dr. Khaled al-Serr, a surgeon at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

On February 19, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described conditions in the Nasser hospital after Israel ordered evacuation of Palestinians from the complex. “There are still more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses inside Nasser,” he said. “The hospital is still experiencing an acute shortage of food, basic medical supplies, and oxygen. There is no tap water and no electricity, except a backup generator maintaining some lifesaving machines.”

Eight years ago, in October of 2015, the United States military destroyed Afghanistan’s Kunduz hospital, run by Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). For more than an hour, a C-130 transport plane repeatedly fired incendiary devices at the hospital’s emergency room and intensive care unit, killing 42 people. Thirty-seven additional people were injured. “Our patients burned in their beds,” read the MSF’s in-depth report. “Our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.”

The horrific attack outraged war resisters and human rights groups. I remember joining a group of activists in upstate New York who assembled outside a hospital emergency room with a banner proclaiming, “To bomb this site would be a war crime.”

In 2009, on a smaller, yet still horrific scale, I witnessed an Israeli onslaught in Gaza called “Operation Cast Lead.” In the emergency room of the Al Shifa hospital, Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an orthopedic surgeon, described experiences similar to Khan’s. This surgeon grew up in Chicago, very close to the neighborhood where I lived. I asked him what he would want me to tell our neighbors back home. He listed a litany of horrors, and then he stopped. “No,” he said. “First, you must tell them that U.S. taxpayer money paid for all of these weapons.”

Taxpayer money feeds the bloated, swollen Pentagon budget. U.S. Senators, last week, cowed by AIPAC, decided to send Israel an additional $14.1 billion to boost military spending. Only three Senators voted against the bill.

From Palestine, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American human rights attorney, wrote on X: “The scary part is not that Israel is planning the forcible transfer of the Palestinians it hasn’t slaughtered, but that the so-called ‘civilized world’ is allowing it to happen. The ramifications of this coordinated evil will haunt its collaborators for generations to come.”

At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch. Gravely distorted versions of what occurred on October 7, cannot—even if believed—justify the scale of the horrors being reported in Gaza and the West Bank each day.

The U.S. government continues enthusiastically to bankroll Israel’s systemic and inhumane destruction of Gaza. U.S. advisers make feeble attempts to suggest Israel should pause or at least try to be more precise in their attacks. In its quest for hegemonic superiority, the United States tears into ever tinier shreds whatever remains of a commitment to human rights, equality, and human dignity.

What kept Forkosh Hospital secure, decades ago, was a social contract that presumed safety for a small hospital serving the local population.

If we can’t find the morality to stop supplying weapons for ongoing Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and its places of healing, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights. We may be creating intergenerational wounds of hatred and sorrow from which there will never, ever be any safe place to heal.

A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive website.

Original article by KATHY KELLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingThe US Must Stop Arming Israel’s Assault on Hospitals

Israeli Assault Leaves Gaza’s Nasser Hospital ‘Not Functional’

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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.”

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.”

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.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsraeli Assault Leaves Gaza’s Nasser Hospital ‘Not Functional’

In a flagrant violation of international law, Israel intensifies siege of Nasser Medical Complex

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

The Nasser Medical Complex has been under siege for several days

After over 20 days of besieging Nasser Medical Complex, Israeli occupation forces attacked thousands of people sheltering inside the hospital

On February 14, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched an attack against thousands of civilians seeking shelter at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, including the hospital’s staff and patients. The complex has endured a siege by the IOF for over 20 days, during which those inside were kept under sniper threat, resulting in the deaths of dozens in the vicinity of the hospital. Among the casualties were children who attempted to fetch water, as well as healthcare personnel.

“Get out, animals! Get out, dogs!” shouted IOF soldiers at the people inside Nasser Hospital during the final stages of the siege. Additionally, soldiers forced a young Palestinian man, whom they had detained, to deliver evacuation orders to the hospital. Reportedly, the man was coerced to return to the IOF after carrying out the task, under threat of the soldiers invading the hospital to find him. The Israeli soldiers then shot the man as he was walking back to them.

Most of the complex became unusable due to Israeli attacks throughout the siege. The IOF demolished the northern wall of Nasser Hospital, leaving only one passage usable—the same one through which they marched people out on Wednesday. Before forcing them to leave, Israeli soldiers reportedly positioned face-recognition technology near the exit. This move, according to observers tracking attacks on healthcare in the Gaza Strip, indicates the declaration of Nasser Hospital as a military target, likely to be followed by mass arrests and abuse of healthcare workers and patients.

Read more: Palestinian health workers kidnapped by Israel subjected to torture and humiliation

Until the evacuation was enforced, Nasser was one of the last major health centers remaining in Gaza. Its capacities seconded only those of Al-Shifa Hospital, the Strip’s largest hospital. According to Ubai Aboudi, Executive Director of Bisan Center for Research and Development, Nasser’s beds accounted for some 12% of the overall capacities in Gaza. 

The attack on the hospital is certain to have a devastating effect on the tens of thousands of people injured in Israeli attacks. While the hospital was besieged, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that it was crucial to keep the complex operational as IOF attacks south of the Wadi Gaza line intensified. 

Despite all the warnings and pleading, the WHO was last able to deliver supplies to Nasser Hospital at the end of January. After that, attempts to organize medical missions were blocked by Israeli authorities. This meant that health workers had barely anything to work with, especially after an attack on nearby school buildings led to a fire, which then destroyed approximately 80% of the stocks in Nasser’s medical warehouse. As a result of the incessant attacks, the hospital’s emergency department was flooded in sewage water, making it unusable.

“The hospital is barely functioning, but we are trying to work as much as possible to save lives,” Mohammed Harara, a doctor from the hospital, told WHO officials days before the attack. “We are scared that any moment we might lose our lives, and we have no clue about our families.”

Staff from the hospital faces additional threats, as the Israeli forces continue to target health workers in particular. Dozens of nurses, paramedics, and doctors have been disappeared by the IOF. They are still be held  under torture and extreme duress, without any access to legal or humanitarian protection.

The dehumanizing attacks against patients, staff, and displaced people at Nasser Hospital are another step towards making Gaza uninhabitable, according to Aboudi. Little doubt remains that the few health institutions that remain in southern Gaza will meet a similar fate as the Israeli armed forces approach. 

After that, says Aboudi, “there will be no care, simply put.” 

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIn a flagrant violation of international law, Israel intensifies siege of Nasser Medical Complex