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Israel accused of ‘medicide’ as Gaza’s healthcare relentlessly attacked
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to health, says there’s a new term coined after Israel’s yearlong war on Gaza – “medicide” – because of its repeated attacks on healthcare centres and medical workers.
“In the same way we understand the right the journalists do as human rights defenders, this genocide has shown the incredible work that doctors and other healthcare workers do in a way I don’t think we’ve seen before,” she told a news conference.
“They are the oath takers, the ones who refused to leave and evacuate, and they stayed knowing what their fate was, caring for their patients.”
Israel’s Gaza assault may amount to ‘atrocity crimes’ on civilians
Earlier, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, said Israeli military action in northern Gaza may be considered “atrocity crimes” and “crimes against humanity” under international law.
According to Wadie Said, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, those comments are “legally significant”.
“He’s indicating how serious the situation has become … The fact he’s making this statement at this time shows how dangerous things have become, how dangerous the Israeli military’s actions have become,” Said told Al Jazeera.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan in May asked judges at the court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes.
But Turk’s reference to potential “crimes against humanity” brings the situation to a new level as “those are even more serious in the sense they indicate a kind of a campaign against civilians … a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population”.
‘Who’s going to live and who’s going to die’: A surgeon’s choice in Gaza
Dr Bara Zuhaili, a surgeon who worked in Gaza and was last there in July, says he can’t understand why Israel’s army keeps attacking hospitals in the Strip.
“Each hospital in Gaza has been invaded at least once, potentially a couple of times, so I cannot understand the rationale … The one reason that only comes to my mind is they’re just forcing the civilians to exit the area,” Zuhaili told Al Jazeera.
“I have been in multiple different hospitals in Gaza. I haven’t seen any military presence whatsoever from the Palestinian side,” he added.
The doctor described the severe difficulties he faced when treating Gaza’s victims.
“Every time mass casualties were coming in the ER we had very limited supplies, and me and my colleagues would look at each other and have to make a decision within split seconds – who’s going to live and who’s going to die,” he said.
Doctors work at the trauma ward in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza
‘Nothing justifies the continuation of the wars’
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says “ethnic cleansing” is taking place in northern Gaza. He made the comments after meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in London.
“We are at the moment now where nothing justifies the continuation of the wars. Guns have to go silent,” said Safadi. “We see ethnic cleansing taking place and that has got to stop.”
