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Citation
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Smith J, Kwong EJL, Hanbali L, Hafez S, Neilson A, Khoury R. BMJ Glob. Health 2023; 8(10): e014269. |
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Abstract
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The latest escalation of more than 100 years of violence in occupied Palestine has caused phenomenal levels of yet more suffering. This violence must end. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that at least 3785 people are known to have been killed in besieged Gaza, 79 people killed in the occupied West Bank and 1400 people killed in Israel over the course of 12 days, since 7 October 2023.1 As of 19 October, approximately one million Palestinians and people of other nationalities have been internally displaced, many of whom are seeking refuge in overstretched designated emergency shelters and hospitals, several of which have been hit by Israeli airstrikes.1 This represents an increase in the number of internally displaced people in Gaza of more than 2000% in just 12 days.1 30% of all housing units in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable.1 Additionally, Palestinian workers from Gaza who were working in Israel have been beaten, detained and forcibly transferred to overcrowded facilities in the West Bank.2
The WHO has reported that at least 12 Palestinian health workers have been killed on duty in Gaza between 7 and 15 October, while the Palestinian Minister of Health Dr Mai Al-Kaila released a statement on 14 October stating that a total of 28 health workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.3 4 Casualty lists made available to the authors suggest this number could be almost twice as high. Four of those killed were Palestinian Red Crescent Society paramedics, whose marked ambulances were targeted in east and north Gaza on 11 October despite advance coordination with the Israeli military.5 UNRWA has also reported violence against its staff, confirming that at least 14 essential humanitarian personnel have been killed, as of 18 October.6 In Israel, an emergency medical technician working for Magen David Adom was killed on 8 October.7 ,1
These most recent, egregious healthcare-related attacks follow a long history of Israeli violence against health workers, the destruction of health infrastructure, the systematic obstruction of access to healthcare,8 and the implementation of eliminatory settler colonial strategies by the Israeli occupation that aim to increase morbidity and mortality (such as the de-development of Palestinian health and other essential services,9 exerting full control over--and now withholding--the water and electricity supply to the Gaza Strip10 and the deliberate targeting of limbs leading to traumatic limb loss and disability),11 in occupied Palestine.12
With this in mind, it is impossible to divorce the violence of recent days from the long history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This history is marked notably by the 1948 Nakba that involved the violent displacement of more than 700 000 Palestinians from over 400 villages and towns by Israeli settlers,13 14 and the preceding British colonial occupation of Palestine. Since 2007, a complete blockade has been enforced by Israel around the Gaza Strip, while the West Bank has been under occupation by Israel for more than 55 years following the Six Day War in 1967. As Israel has maintained its occupation of the land and has continued to oppress and dispossess the Palestinian people, Israeli politicians have enabled the construction of hundreds of illegal settlements in the West Bank and provided military protection to settler-led pogroms, property destruction and violent--often deadly--attacks...
Language: en |