Access to healthcare continues to shrink in Gaza, UN says
OCHA, the UN’s humanitarian agency, is warning of shrinking access to critical health services in Gaza as Israel issues additional evacuation orders and intensifies its military operations in the coastal enclave.
In its latest update, OCHA said the Indonesian field hospital in Rafah is now out of service after Doctors Without Borders (MSF) withdrew from the facility on Monday following Israeli attacks.
This leaves only eight field hospitals operational in southern Gaza.
Israeli attacks since October 7 have put 23 hospitals in the Gaza Strip out of service, according to OCHA’s figures. Only 13 are left partially functioning – three in north Gaza, three in Gaza City, two in Deir el-Balah, three in Khan Younis and two in Rafah.
A field hospital operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 10
To date, Israel has placed 78 percent of Gaza Strip under evacuation orders
OCHA, the UN’s humanitarian agency, said the Israeli military has issued five evacuation orders for north and south Gaza since May 6, expanding the total area subjected to such orders since the war began to 78 percent of the enclave’s territory.
This encompasses all areas north of Wadi Gaza, whose residents were instructed to evacuate in late October, as well as specific areas south of Wadi Gaza designated for evacuation by the Israeli military since December 1, it said.
“As families continue to be displaced, many for the fifth time since the onset of hostilities, Israeli-designated ‘humanitarian zones’ for the displaced remain unsafe,” OCHA added, citing aid agencies.
Scale, intensity of Israeli crimes in Gaza ‘surpass worst nightmares’: Monitor
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) has warned that Israel’s evacuation orders for the people of Gaza may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity for the forcible transfer of a population.
The Geneva-based group noted that under international law, people must have adequate time to prepare for an evacuation, as well as a safe route to an area of safety with access to aid, which are “absent from Israel’s successive evacuation orders”.
Humanitarian agencies have warned that Israeli-designated safe zones in Gaza are unable to manage an influx of displaced persons and lack basic services, including food, water, medicine, electricity and sufficient shelter, the group said.
“The scale and intensity of mass atrocity crimes in Gaza continues to surpass our worst nightmares,” said Savita Pawnday, executive director of the GCR2P.
“So-called evacuation orders that forcibly displace suffering people again and again, the closure of crossings that deny aid to families and children facing famine, relentless bombardments and mass graves that reveal evidence of torture, all demonstrate a certain contempt for international law and the protections it extends to vulnerable populations.”
‘Scale of crisis defies imagination’, says IRC
Amnesty, Oxfam, ActionAid and others decry world’s failure to stop Israeli invasion of Rafah
A group of 20 prominent human rights organisations has issued a statement denouncing the failure of world leaders to act even as Israel’s invasion of Rafah “worsens the humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
The statement said third countries “have the responsibility to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for the grave breaches of international humanitarian law” taking place in Gaza.
These breaches include the Israeli military’s evacuation orders as well as its disruption of humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza. The latter violates multiple UN Security Council resolutions as well as the International Court of Justice’s orders, the rights groups said.
Displaced Palestinians walk along a street devastated by Israeli bombardments in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 15
