The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) warns that the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) destruction of what remains of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has gone beyond collapse and inability to provide the bare minimum healthcare services and has reached a critical and irreversible stage. PCHR emphasizes that the humanitarian catastrophe is alarmingly deteriorating as the IOF escalate their crimes, targeting the very foundations of Palestinian existence in the Gaza Strip. This is happening amid the international community’s disturbing silence, persistent inaction and continued evasion of their legal obligations, particularly those of the High Contracting Parties to the four Geneva Conventions. Notably, Switzerland, the depository state of the Conventions, continues to explicitly procrastinate the convening of an emergency meeting of the State Parties despite months having passed since the proposed date last March.
According to PCHR’s monitoring, the entire healthcare system is on the verge of total collapse due to the full halt of fuel and electricity supplies. This means the suspension of total essential and lifesaving medical services, including the cessation of surgeries, shutdown of radiology equipment and laboratories, and stoppage of oxygen plants- posing an immediate threat to the intensive care units and neonatal incubators. Moreover, treatment for cancer patients, heart patients and other critical cases requiring specialized and advanced medical interventions has been almost totally suspended. If the current situation continues like this, civilians will be left without any access to life-saving healthcare services.
In this context, the administration of al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza declared the complete suspension of dialysis services, threatening the lives of 250 patients, mostly children, women and elderlies.1 It should be noted that 41% of the kidney failure patients– out of a total of around 1200 patients, died over the past 22 months due to being denied regular access to treatment within a besieged and isolated healthcare system. This harrowing percentage only reflects a very small part of the reality as each patient in the Gaza Strip. Today every patient in Gaza from newborns to cancer patients faces the threat of a slow death due to the full collapse of the healthcare infrastructure.
In parallel, the Gaza Strip is facing an alarming and serious outbreak of Infectious meningitis, particularly among children in overcrowded shelters. This outbreak is driven by the widespread contamination from sewage water and accumulated garbage surrounding the displaced people’s tents and near their gatherings, creating ideal conditions for disease transmission. The MOH has reported hundreds of meningitis cases among children amid a severe shortage of antibiotics necessary for the treatment of this type of disease. The MOH has raised serious concerns over the potential spread of other diseases such as cholera, Intestinal infections and respiratory diseases, particularly among children. The crisis is getting more complicated with the presence of main hospitals like Naser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and al-Ahlai Baptist Hospital in Gaza City within areas subjected to IOF’s evacuation orders. This has rendered access to essential healthcare services for patients and the wounded extremely difficult, stripping them of their right to treatment. All of this is unfolding while the window to push back starvation in Gaza is closing fast.2
Dr. Ragheb Warsh al-Agha, Head of the Pediatric Department at Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, stated that hospitals have recorded 337 meningitis cases, including 259 viral infections. He added that the number of infections is rising significantly on a daily basis amid the collapse of the healthcare system and scarcity of clean water and personal hygiene supplies, which in turn exacerbates the spread of infectious diseases in shelters that lack even the most basic public health standards. He pointed out that the conditions in these shelters are unsanitary and instead promote the rapid spread of epidemics, warning of a complete loss of control unless urgent measures are taken to provide the necessary antibiotics to treat the disease, along with emergency support for healthcare facilities.3
These documented facts constitute, in essence, a direct implementation of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention, particularly Article II, which refers to “deliberately inflicting on a national group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The systematic destruction of hospitals, the denial of medical treatment to patients, the prevention of fuel entry, and the spread of epidemics in residential areas are not incidental or unforeseen consequences of the Israeli military aggression, but rather a deliberate policy aimed at physically, environmentally, and psychologically eradicating the Gaza Strip population and undermining their existence on their land. PCHR stresses that the targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system, the forced evacuation of hospitals, and the denial of access to them constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, and amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The international community’s silence and inaction are considered forms of indirect complicity allowing Israel to persist in these atrocities with complete impunity.
PCHR considers what is going on in the Gaza Strip as a full-fledged war crime and a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and States that have thus far failed to fulfill their legal obligations bear responsibility for the continuation of these atrocities. This international inaction, particularly on the part of the High Contracting Parties and Switzerland in particular as the depositary state, amounts to explicit complicity. It fosters a culture of impunity and provides political cover for Israel to continue committing its crimes. If a meeting of the States Parties is not convened amid this unprecedented humanitarian and health collapse, then when will it be? And when will these states assume their legal, political, and moral responsibilities? Israel would not have dared to commit such crimes without this alarming absence of accountability and the silence that amounts to indirect complicity in the crime.
Therefore, PCHR calls for an urgent and unconditional international intervention to allow the entry of fuel, medicines, and medical supplies immediately into the Gaza Strip; to provide clean water, hygiene, and sanitation supplies within shelters and hospitals; and to dispatch emergency medical missions to protect what remains of the healthcare system and halt this comprehensive collapse. PCHR also urges the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention to take immediate action to hold Israeli authorities accountable for these crimes, which constitute grave violations and acts of genocide against the besieged civilian population.
