Israel has plunged Gaza City into an even deeper humanitarian disaster than it was already in, as many major international aid organizations, which have already been battered by months of siege and bombardment, have now withdrawn or dramatically reined in their operations because of the relentless Israeli military offensive, and systematic displacement orders. This has left most of Gaza City’s Palestinian population, of hundreds of thousands, to face this catastrophe on their own.
MSF: “our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces”
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), whose international medics provided life saving wound care, surgeries, and malnutrition treatment to Palestinians battered by siege and displacement. announced the suspension of its activities in Gaza City in late September, blaming the continued airstrikes and advancing tanks less than one kilometre from their healthcare facilities for creating ‘an unacceptable level of risk’ to their staff.
Jacob Granger, MSF Emergency Coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement:
We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces… This is the last thing we wanted.
MSF has highlighted the critical needs of the most vulnerable in Gaza City, including infants in neonatal care and patients with severe, life-threatening injuries who could not be evacuated. It has described hospitals as overwhelmed and facing severe shortages in staff, supplies, and fuel. Until its withdrawal, MSF carried out over 3,640 consultations and treated 1,655 patients suffering from malnutrition and severe trauma injuries and burns, as well as pregnant women and others requiring ongoing medical care who were unable to leave the city.
“With us gone, those left behind face catastrophe with little or no medical help at all,” the organisation warned.
15 MSF staff members have so far been killed in Gaza
ICRC suspends operations at Gaza City office as genocide has intensified
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has worked in Gaza City for decades, but it too, as of 1 October, has now been forced to suspend its operations there, relocating to central and Southern Gaza for safety.
The ICRC’s departure is seismic – its workers have long coordinated evacuation corridors, distributed food and water, and kept what little remained of public health infrastructure alive. It also supported baking facilities in 14 displacement camps that provided 45,000 loaves of bread per day. ICRC teams also supported water and wastewater network repairs.
Sarah Davies from the ICRC Jerusalem told the Canary:
We have temporarily suspended operations from out of our Gaza City office – however, we continue to provide operational support to Gaza City, alongside local partners like the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and ongoing programmes continue.
As an organisation that works in conflict zones around the world, we are constantly assessing the risk to our staff, as well as the ability to reach civilians in need in these areas, and as military operations intensified in Gaza City, we were forced to make this decision.
Civilians facing a genocide are left without protection or humanitarian support
In a statement on 6 October Gaza’s Government Media Office expressed its ‘deep astonishment and strong condemnation’ of the ICRC’s decision, calling it ‘catastrophic, dangerous and irresponsible’, and saying:
It represents a painful retreat from the humanitarian and moral role entrusted to the ICRC, and it does not serve the Palestinian people who are facing daily acts of genocide. Rather, it abandons defenseless civilians without protection or genuine humanitarian support in one of the most dangerous and devastated areas on earth.
We affirm that the International Committee of the Red Cross is a body protected under international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. It has a duty to operate in conflict zones, not to withdraw from them. Such a step at this critical time contradicts the very essence of its humanitarian mandate and the purpose for which it was established.
Although the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has been providing lifesaving clean drinking water at about a dozen sites within Gaza City, reports that even these critical activities are being threatened by heavy bombardments and restricted access, it is still managing to continue with its operations at the moment, although the number of sites are changing every day, based on the conditions, and the ability to access areas. There has also been so much displacement that some of the sites that NRC has been serving are now empty, so they have stopped delivering to them.
Norwegian Refugee Council: “most of our staff have fled” Gaza City
The Canary spoke with Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council. She said:
Providing water is the only in person we are doing at the moment. While we are continuing to operate, the water is being delivered by contractors. We have very limited staff that have remained in Gaza city, and most of those are not in conditions where they are able to work, because of lack of connectivity and security.
Most of our staff have fled, we cannot tell them to stay. They have a right to withdraw and we have a duty of care. But I need to make clear, our staff are not the ones going out daily and delivering water. That’s being done by contractors that are connected to the desalination devices, but many have now relocated to the South and brought their equipment with them.
So we have shortages of equipment and fuel, and a limited number of service providers we are still able to work with in Gaza City, to continue providing clean drinking water.
According to Low, the NRC has managed to keep providing support for some of its services over the phone to the people in Gaza City, such as its Legal Aid Programme, and its Protection from Violence Programme, and has also helped some families who have wanted to move to the South but have been unable to do so – maybe because of injury or disability, by paying for their journey.
She says:
But now we are in a situation where we are not sure if that is feasible anymore, because Israel has closed the Northbound route, so if the trucks take Palestinian to the South they will be unable to return to the North.
Twice in September, within a couple of days of each other, NRC staff were confronted by about 40 armed individuals at its premises in Gaza City, while preparations were underway to relocate contingency supplies for operational needs. This had not happened before, in the past two years, and shows how desperate the situation has become.
The group seized 250 litres of fuel, a number of food parcels and also water bottles. Although NRC staff were unharmed, desperate, starving Palestinians, and also armed gangs supported by the occupation are becoming a growing problem in Gaza, while the teams which used to escort aid supplies and act as security, be at the warehouses and at the distribution points, have all been intentionally attacked or threatened by the Israeli occupation.
Palestine Red Crescent Society: intentional targeting of ambulances and clinics
While MSF and ICRC have halted their work in Gaza City, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) continues to operate, although many of its clinics, hospitals and ambulances have been intentionally damaged or destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, and their staff, along with the Palestinian Civil Defense – who are responsible for providing emergency and relief services – take extreme risks responding to emergencies amid the bombs.
They have been targeted in attacks while responding to airstrikes targeting shelters, schools, and residential towers filled with displaced families. They are often the only medical and rescue providers accessible to civilians in Gaza city.
PRCS staff have been killed since October 2023, while on duty, and in a statement marking two years since the start of the genocide, the PRCS said:
The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza has reached shocking levels: The stench of death filling every corner, and the rubble of destroyed homes, schools, roads, and other civilian infrastructure dominating the landscape… the occupation directly targeted its staff without any regard for their humanitarian mission or the internationally protected emblem of the Red Crescent.
Palestinian Civil Defense have rescued almost 126,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the genocide
The Palestinian Civil Defense teams in Gaza are the last emergency responders operating in Gaza City, trying to find survivors who have been buried under the rubble, with no specialist equipment and hardly any supplies or fuel left for vehicles.
On 7 October the Civil Defense announced that their teams had recovered the bodies of more than 53,700 and rescued around 125,750 wounded in Gaza, since the beginning of the genocide, and in this time they received 635,000 emergency calls. They were not able to reach 52,000 of these, either due to fuel shortages or due to the areas being targeted by the occupation
The situation is desperate and it is getting much worse every day. As international aid organizations fall silent, not by choice but because of the relentless bombing, encirclement, and systemic destruction, the population of Gaza City has been abandoned to catastrophe. Hospitals are destroyed, water is scarce, and the means of survival for Palestinians are rapidly deteriorating.
The institutions designed to help civilians in times of conflict – MSF, the ICRC, the NRC – are being pushed out one by one. This is not a natural disaster, but the outcome of policy which is deliberate and has been emboldened by global silence.
The Israeli regime has faced no consequences for any of its actions, since its formation in 1948, and acts with total impunity.
This genocide has erased thousands of families from the civil registry, and entire neighborhoods, starved the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, crushed civil infrastructure, and terrorized and murdered medics, aid workers, and civilians. The systematic targeting of these humanitarian personnel is part of the architecture of the occupation, a form of control that does not leave any pathway for accountability.
It’s time to make Israel and all its allies face the consequences and pay for their crimes
Shielded by its powerful allies, and insulated from all international legal mechanisms, the occupation has been given the strength to continue pursuing its crimes by a global order that has completely failed to hold it to the same standards that it claims to impose on others.
While the world debates wording, international law is being ripped to pieces. It is time for the illegal Israeli occupation to be held to account and to pay the price for its continuing violations of international law, and its complete disregard for humanity, before it succeeds in its goal of genocide, of erasing Palestinian life in Gaza. All those responsible for these atrocities – the individuals, states and corporations who order them, justify them, and supply them – must face consequences for their crimes.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
From Canary via this RSS feed