Gaza- A Humanitarian Crisis?
15 November 2023
At the Al Shifa Hospital, the fate of 39 newborns in incubators remains unknown.
This video shows Al Quds, the second largest hospital in Gaza, operating under torchlight, dirty floors, dead bodies, no pain or other medication.
Professional doctors who worked for years to fine-tune their knowledge, skills and experience, reduced to doing the best they can while under bombardment and in fear of their own children's lives.
An Edinburgh Hospital Consultant has gathered 500 signatures of British and Palestinian doctors who are prepared to go to Gaza under Ceasefire conditions.
Where and how will they operate even if this is possible?
One of the Palestinians we support told us about his wife’s grandparents. An elderly couple in their nineties living in North Gaza. When the order came to leave the North or be assumed to be a combatant, they remained behind in their home while the rest of the family - their children and grandchildren - headed South. They were too frail to walk. They are not the only ones who had no choice but to stay.
Despite ordering hundreds of thousands to flee to 'safety' in South Gaza, Israel has reportedly intensified bombing of safe zones and corridors.
Palestinians call them "death passages" and claim there is no safe place in Gaza as indiscriminate carpet bombing continues over refugee camps, hospitals, bakeries, UN workers, aid trucks, ambulances, water supplies and solar panels, journalists, and doctors.
The population is besieged, beleaguered, starving and cut off from electricity or medical supplies. They are burying their dead in mass graves. Words can be dangerous, with Israeli government ministers routinely - as part of public discourse - declaring genocidal intent.
In 2010, David Cameron called Gaza a “a giant open prison”. In 2019, Israeli journalist Amira Hassan called Gaza a “concentration camp” and wrote: “In the Gaza Strip, which is closed off like a confined and separated camp, live some two million people in one of the most densely populated places in the world. About 70 per cent of them are the descendants of refugees expelled from their homes. Absent freedom of movement condemned them to a life of unemployment, dreariness, poverty, disease, depression, contaminated water and soil, and dependence on ever-dwindling charity. And that is even without the military bombings and incursions.”
Last month, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General For 16 years, said: “Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard.”
R Qureshi
#CeasefireNOW
#ReleaseTheHostages
#EndTheSiege
Sources:
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/david-cameron-gaza-prison-camp-israel-b2446287.html#
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190208-israel-writer-gaza-is-a-concentration-camp/