Gaza Strip
Geneva/Washington/Riyadh/Amman: As the United Nations agency responsible for public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) today “strongly” condemned Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2000 inpatients in northern Gaza. The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe, WHO stated, adding that hospitals were already at breaking point in Gaza.
“The lives of many critically ill and fragile patients hang in the balance: those in intensive care or who rely on life support; patients undergoing hemodialysis; newborns in incubators; women with complications of pregnancy, and others all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death if they are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated,” WHO said.
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Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond maximum capacity. Some patients are being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds, WHO said. It added that forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence.
According to WHO, hospital directors and health workers are now facing an “agonizing choice”: abandon critically ill patients amid a bombing campaign, put their own lives at risk while remaining on-site to treat patients, or endanger their patients’ lives while attempting to transport them to facilities that have no capacity to receive them. Overwhelmingly, caregivers have chosen to stay behind and honour their oaths as health professionals to “do no harm,” rather than risk moving their critically ill patients during evacuations. “Health workers should never have to make such impossible choices,” WHO stated.
Additionally, tens of thousands of displaced people in northern Gaza are seeking refuge in open spaces in or around hospitals, treating them as havens from violence as well as to protect the facilities from potential attacks. Their lives, too, are at risk when health facilities are bombed.
“There are verified reports of deaths of healthcare workers and the destruction of health facilities, which denies civilians the basic human right of life-saving health care and is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law,” WHO said, and called for Israel to immediately reverse evacuation orders to hospitals in northern Gaza, and called for the protection of health facilities, health workers, patients, and civilians.
WHO also reiterated its calls for the immediate and safe delivery of medical supplies, fuel, clean water, food, and other humanitarian aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian side – the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, where life-saving assistance – including WHO health supplies that arrived earlier on October 14, 2023, – is currently awaiting entry.
Incidentally, the United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is on a never-before-proactive mission to generate global opinion in Israel’s favour, particularly of the Arab nations. He was not shy of projecting his Jewish identity and endorsing Israel’s right to defend itself, in the face of rising criticism and protests across the Arab world as Israel’s retaliation continues. He accused Hamas of using innocent civilians as human shields and blocking roads to prevent Palestinians from moving out of harm’s way to southern Gaza. This he claimed during his talks with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Doha. Al Thani in particular referred to the hitting and targeting of civilians, women and children and made it clear to Blinken that “the collective punishment that is not acceptable under any circumstances. And these condemnations must go to anyone who is involved in these matters”.
“On our views on the Israeli response in Gaza, we see – we have seen the amount of devastation that’s hit Gaza, which almost now half of it being destructed, and the number of people who’ve been killed throughout this operation is significant. And we believe that human beings are human beings everywhere, whether they are Israel or Palestinians – they have the same value. And this is deeply painful for all of us,” Al Thani categorically told Blinken.
It may be mentioned that earlier, Israeli authorities had asked the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza to relocate to southern Gaza within 24 hours on October 12, 2023. This order affected more than a million Palestinians, including children, and older and sick people, forcing them to relocate with little or no transport and with scant guarantees for their safety, amidst continuing hostilities. Even the United Nations Secretary-General called for this to be rescinded, avoiding a calamitous situation. According to an estimate by a UN agency, at least 340,000 Palestinians were already displaced, as Israel’s air campaign intensified. According to the UN Human Rights office, since October 7, 2023 and till today, more than 1,900 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 600 children, more than 7,600 injured, and over 423,000 people have been displaced as a result of the Israeli strikes.as of October 13, more than 2,700 people, including civilians, had already been killed in both Israel and Gaza.
Blinken claimed, “We continue to discuss with Israel the importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians”. He repeatedly made it loud and clear that “Israel has the right – indeed, it has the obligation to defend its people and to try to ensure that Hamas can never repeat what it’s done”.
Blinken has accused Hamas of using almost all of its resources for terrorist tunnels and rockets to attack Israel and using people as human shields. “It intentionally puts them in harm’s way to try to protect itself, to protect its leaders, its members, or to protect their equipment, their arms,” he has repeatedly claimed.
Later in Riyadh, he told Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud that Hamas was not representative of the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations for the future. “Hamas is a terrorist group. Its only agenda is to destroy the state of Israel and to murder Jews. And it’s important that the entire world see it as such,” he said. Blinken also had “a very good conversation” with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, and quoted Abbas saying that the Palestinian Authority “is acting effectively to try to ensure that there’s security and stability in the West Bank”.
Incidentally, Hamas has a political office in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and Qatar has not yet indicated shutting it down. Instead, Qatar’s Prime Minister Al Thani said, this office was started to be used as a way of communicating and bringing peace and calm into the region, not to instigate any war. “And this is the purpose of that office. As long as we are keeping the communication open right now and focusing on putting an end for this conflict, and this is used to. That’s what the main – our main focus is this. Actually, now our key focus for us in the state of Qatar – I believe the United States sharing with us this objective – is how to put an end for this conflict, how to de-escalate, how to create a humanitarian corridor, and how to get the hostages back safe,” the Qatari Prime Minister told journalists in the presence of Blinken. Blinken told journalists in Doha, “I’ve also been making it clear in all of my conversations throughout this trip that there can be no more business as usual with Hamas. Murdering babies, burning families to death, taking little children as hostages – these are an unconscionable act of brutality. Every country, in our judgment, needs to condemn these actions, needs to hold them accountable, and we will continue to make that clear”.
The United States is also concerned about the opening of a second front in this war in Israel after Iran and Hizbollah made threats of opening this new front if attacks on civilians or an Israeli blockade of Gaza continued. Blinken conceded that the US was very focused on the possibilities of opening of a second front “from day one”. He asserted that the US would make sure no other country or entity tried to take advantage of the situation. “The President has been very, very clear about that…And he’s backed that up in a number of ways, including, as I mentioned the other day and is known, deploying our largest aircraft carrier battle group to the Eastern Mediterranean. So that’s clearly designed to help ensure that anyone contemplating getting engaged doesn’t do it,” he said.
Today, Blinken even talked to the Director of China’s Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, reiterating US support for Israel’s right to defend itself and the importance of maintaining stability in the region and discouraging other parties from entering the conflict.
With regards to Iran’s alleged support to Hamas, Blinken conceded in an interview with David Muir of World News Tonight on October 12, 2023, that “we haven’t seen direct evidence that Iran participated in or helped plan the attack”. He, though, quickly added, “That doesn’t mean that it [Iran]didn’t; we just don’t have the evidence to show it. And as I said, there’s a long relationship between the two [Iran and Hamas]. Even the US President Joe Biden told Iran, “Be careful”.
Responding to reports that the United States and Qatar have decided to freeze the access that Iran has to the $6 billion that’s been put in the special account in Qatar, Blinken said, “Money will never reach Iran because Iran doesn’t actually have direct access to it”.
Al Thani, though said about freezing Iranian funds in Qatar, “The state of Qatar is always committed to any agreement, and every step must be done through consultations with other partners that fund – the money here in Qatar, is there. And Qatar will focus at the priorities of – need not do anything that will escalate the situation in the region”.
The $6 billion is money that accrued in an account from the sale of Iranian oil. That mechanism was established by the previous Donald Trump administration so that the money would be in specific accounts and could only be used for humanitarian purposes – for food, for medicine, for medical equipment.
“Our laws, our sanctions, from day one have always exempted resources for humanitarian purposes,” Blinken told an interviewer, adding, “But as a practical matter, those funds were in an account in South Korea where, for technical reasons, Iran couldn’t use them. So they were moved to an account in Qatar, where there was a mechanism put in place to allow them to be used under the strict supervision of the Treasury Department only for humanitarian purposes. To date, not a single dollar has been expended from that account, and we retain the right to freeze it”.
Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, a UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, warned today that Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing and called on the international community to urgently mediate a ceasefire between warring Hamas and Israeli occupation forces.
– global bihari bureau
