Doctor: 150 evacuations a day doesn’t ‘even scratch the surface’
Dr Mohammed Tahir, chief of surgery at Fajr Global, a US-based NGO, says the opening of the Rafah crossing will “be a lifeline for the people of Gaza”.
It’s particularly important in the context of medical evacuations for “tens of thousands of injured people, who create a huge healthcare burden on the existing healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, which has already been depleted”, Tahir told Al Jazeera.
Many patients waiting to be evacuated are “polytrauma patients” suffering from multiple wounds and medically neglected because of the destroyed healthcare system, he added.
More than 1,000 patients died waiting for evacuation between the end of July and November 2025, he said.
Tahir added 150 patients allowed by Israel to evacuate daily through Rafah “does not even scratch the surface” of what is needed. “This is just a token,” he said.
That would take 5 months to evacuate 22,000 patients, assuming they all leave by themselves only...
18 months for 80,000 people to return... If only 50 are allowed to enter a day, 4.5 years.
Compared to El Paso, Texas, over 11,000 pedestrians cross the US-Mexico border there daily.
Israel outlaws medical charity MSF in Gaza after it refuses to give staff list
Israel says it is terminating the humanitarian operations in Gaza of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, after it refused to provide a list of its Palestinian staff over concerns for their safety and a lack of assurances on how the information would be used.
The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism is “moving to terminate the activities of Medecins Sans Frontieres in the Gaza Strip”, it said.
The decision follows “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”. The international medical charity will cease its work and leave Gaza by February 28.
The move by Israel has been widely criticised by relief organisations. They said it risks further endangering aid workers. Israel’s military has already killed more than 1,700 healthcare workers since the start of its invasion of Gaza in October 2023.
The death toll includes at least 15 MSF employees.
Doctors Without Borders staff protest against Israel’s killings of healthcare workers in Gaza
