Israel’s war on Gaza’s hospitals

Guest post by Roberto Iannuzzi, originally published in Italian on his Substack.

In the early hours of December 27, the Israeli armed forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya at the end of a siege, lasting almost a week, of what was the last functioning healthcare facility in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Surgical wards, laboratories and emergency units were burned. Patients were forcibly removed. The Israeli army stated in a communiqué that it was operating inside the hospital following “preliminary intelligence information about the presence of terrorists, terrorist infrastructure and the carrying out of terrorist activity there” — the same official justification used for all the other hospitals previously destroyed in Gaza. For 15 months, the healthcare facilities of the Strip have been turned into theatres of war. Medical supplies have been blocked at the borders, and the most basic life-saving drugs are being withheld.

The deliberate destruction of the hospital facilities in the Strip was condemned by a UN inquiry, which stated that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”.

Following the evacuation of Kamal Adwan hospital, several members of the staff were arrested, including the director of the facility, Hussam Abu Safiya, who in the previous days had made every effort to seek help from international public opinion, including through an editorial published in the New York Times.

Accused of being linked to Hamas, Abu Safiya is said to have been detained in the infamous Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert, where, according to various investigations and reports, Palestinian prisoners are subjected to horrific mistreatment and torture.

The assault on Kamal Adwan hospital sparked further strong condemnation from top UN human rights experts, detailing countless crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza, such as killings, torture, sexual violence, forced deportations, indiscriminate attacks on essential civilian infrastructure for the survival of the population, targeted attacks on journalists and humanitarian workers, restrictions on aid entry, and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.

There is great concern for the fate of Abu Safiya, given that other medical personnel have previously been subjected to abuse and torture in Israeli detention centers, and some have even lost their lives.

Appeals and denunciations so far have in no way hindered the extremely violent ethnic cleansing campaign that Israel has been conducting for almost three months now in northern Gaza.

Much of the area, including the settlements of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya, has been depopulated and razed to the ground, suggesting that Israel intends to turn it into a buffer zone closed to Palestinians even after the war is over.

The residents of this area have been deprived of food and water, and subjected to incessant bombings from land and air. Terrifying quadcopters (small killer drones) are decimating the civilian population.

At the beginning of the offensive, there were still 400,000 residents in northern Gaza. According to the latest UNRWA data (the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees), only about 10,000–15,000 remain. The rest have been forced to flee south.

Over the past year, reports have accumulated from the UN and organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), stating that what Israel is doing in the Strip should be classified as “genocide”.

These corroborate the provisional verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), issued last January, which deemed “plausible” the genocide charge brought by South Africa against Israel. Since then, conditions in Gaza have worsened dramatically.

According to MSF, Israel is intentionally “destroying the social fabric” of the Strip. Continuous forced evacuations have forced Gaza’s inhabitants to live “in unbearable conditions,” packed into makeshift tents made of scrap materials, without food or water, in terrible sanitary conditions.

But perhaps the most unsettling aspect is that these well-documented denunciations have had no effect internationally. The UN Security Council is paralysed by American vetoes, while European governments remain silent except in rare cases, as does the rest of the international community.

According to a recent investigation, EU foreign ministers even rejected a report drafted by the EU Special Representative for Human Rights, Olof Skoog, which urged member states to suspend arms exports to Israel based on growing evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli armed forces.

If the International Criminal Court (ICC) were to convict Israel, European countries that continue to send arms to Tel Aviv could be accused of complicity in such crimes.

In the meantime, faced with the enormity of what is happening, the West, which until recently boasted of defending human rights, human dignity and fundamental freedoms, remains silent. Western public opinion is numb, indifferent and poorly informed.

Western governments are, in fact, complicit in what is happening. The West is trampling on the international law it has always claimed to represent and defend.