In an article titled "Gaza's health system is 'on its knees' as Israel pushes into Khan Younis," The Washington Post reports that the mass displacement of nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza has led to overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions that are rapidly giving rise to disease.
"Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry and other medical workers said they were recording new cases of acute hepatitis, scabies, measles and upper respiratory infections, mostly among children," the Post reports. "Infectious diseases are spreading fast, said Imad al-Hams, a physician at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, as people crowd into tiny slivers of land to escape advancing Israeli forces."
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1734272475901673636
In a recent interview with CNN, Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Marie-Aure Perreaut described conditions in Gaza as "apocalyptic", saying living conditions at the Al-Aqsa Hospital she's working from "can barely be described as living conditions anymore."
"The healthcare system is completely collapsed at the moment," Perreaut told Al Jazeera.
The UN World Food Programme reports that half of Gaza's population is now starving due to Israeli siege warfare and the collapse of civilian infrastructure. In northern Gaza that figure goes up to nine in ten.
All of this aligns perfectly with Israeli policies of massive forced evacuations, attacking healthcare facilities, and laying complete siege to the Gaza Strip.
A doctor named Hafez Abukhoussa writes the following in a new article for Time titled "What I've Seen Treating Patients in Gaza's Remaining Hospitals":
"Gaza's health care system has almost completely collapsed as a result of Israel's ongoing bombardment. Hospitals and ambulances have been repeatedly attacked. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, more than 250 medical workers have been killed so far, including two of my colleagues from Doctors Without Borders, who died while performing their duties in Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza. Of Gaza's 36 hospitals, only 11 are still functioning in any capacity, according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals in the north like Al-Shifa are barely functioning at all, as basic medicines and fuel have run out. My colleagues have been performing amputations by flashlight and without anesthesia. When Israeli soldiers raided Al-Shifa a few weeks ago — a move the head of the WHO called 'totally unacceptable' — doctors and staff were forced to abandon patients too sick or injured to evacuate. Some of those who refused to leave, including the hospital's director, were arrested, alongside dozens of others. At Al-Nasr Children's hospital, soldiers ordered staff to leave the patients, including four premature babies who required oxygen, who were later found dead."
https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/1731398197589778727
It also aligns perfectly with the suggestions made last month by an influential Israeli national security leader named Giora Eiland, a retired major general for the IDF.
"The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics," Eiland wrote. "We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers."
https://twitter.com/Mondoweiss/status/1729863335422959966
"They are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the 'civilian' officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population that enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th," Eiland wrote, adding, "Who are the 'poor' women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers."
"Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism," Eiland adds. "Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."
Comment: What a total psycho!
When people talk about genocide in Gaza, they're not just talking about the thousands of civilians who've been killed in Israeli airstrikes. The policies Israel has been deliberately putting in place have the potential to kill many, many more people than that in the coming months, and if Netanyahu and his goons get their way, that's exactly what will happen.
Reader Comments
Regarding this article, can you make an open air prison Hell less "inhabitable"?
There are things much worse than death, and they're all here in this fake duality on earth, all those innocent children and women in Gaza, who died under a US-made bomb, some of which may have avoided abrahamic religion mind traps, returned to the source and pure peace.... the only thing that prevents me from going out of my mind with anger.
Leaders are all those who promote self over Community.
Whether in business with a corporation or an institution the power resides in a non living entity,namely itself.
It is not alive, it has no feelings or thought to reflect on those feelings.
In other words, a demon.
It is time for living ,feeling,thinking and alive people to take the power away from the undead and return our Parliaments to Good people acting on their instincts to DO THE RIGHT THING.
Political Parties are Demons too, Undead and available to the most ruthless exploitation by Institutions and Companies.
Since 1872, in the UK, all MPs have had to form a Limited Company in order to be paid. The Incorporation act stopped the People electing their leaders as people and we have been corporate ever since.
It is now time for People to stop being intimidated by the non-living.
i wonder if a map of the bunker buster bombs used in Gaza would correlate with the Ben gurion canal route? Excavate with explosives. The Livermore laboratory suggested using 520 nukes to help excavate the the canal path.... [Link]
We are way past that seemingly enlightened age, with any thought of Israel being allowed to continue it's decades old war.
By the lack of humanity in its conduct,...and the same applied to Palestine as to Israel and Israel to Palestine how could either side trust the other ever again.
It will need the combined efforts of several countries to stop Israels current attack and the matching stand off with the USA. Nato Powers are not able to intervene because they are also guilty of enabling genocide.
Not Neutral anymore.
USA and allies have written themselves out of the peace.
Wise or otherwise?
Stated aim of Israel is to do to the Palestinians what the Hebrews did to the Amalek, wipe out and kill all the living to the last chicken and goat.
The probability is ,that, having shown no mercy at all the next attack on Israel will be overwhelming and with no Warning or Quarter given
Remember I hope that we understand that their are enough well motivated crazies on all sides right now,and join me in the unsettling thought that ,boy, are we all in trouble right at this moment now, regardless of sides or reason.
Your not wrong to be unsettled by this.