[News] Gaza hospitals shut down as deadly siege tightens
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Feb 6 16:03:40 EST 2018
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-hospitals-shut-down-deadly-siege-tightens
Gaza hospitals shut down as deadly siege tightens
Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 6
February 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emergency generators have run out of fuel in at least 19 health
facilities in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s deadly decade-old siege on the
territory tightens.
The health ministry in Gaza announced Tuesday
<https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/2006366212974563> that the
generators have shut down in 16 primary care clinics and three major
hospitals, but that medical staff have been ordered to stay at their
posts and do what they can to assist patients.
On Tuesday, the UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA warned
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/un-electricity-crisis-brings-gaza-verge-disaster>
that “emergency fuel for critical facilities in Gaza will become
exhausted within the next 10 days,” unless donors step in to prevent a
“humanitarian catastrophe.”
But for patients and medical personnel on the frontlines, the
catastrophe is already happening, and it is only the latest chapter in
the forced collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system.
At the al-Nasr children’s hospital, head of intensive care Dr. Raed
Mahdi said that the lives of dozens of children in his unit are at risk.
According to the health ministry, Mahdi said
<https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/2006296176314900>
overcrowding and pressure on medical staff and supplies had reached a
crisis point at his hospital as children were being transferred there
from other facilities that had lost all power.
At the Muhammad al-Durra hospital in eastern Gaza, named for a
Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in 2000 at the start of the
second intifada, doctors said at a press conference
<https://www.facebook.com/pg/MOHGaza1994/posts/?ref=page_internal>
Monday that entire departments had already shut down and some patients
were being turned away.
Speaking at the press conference, Jamal al-Durra, Muhammad’s father,
appealed <https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/2005903876354130>
for urgent international intervention, saying that to allow the crisis
to continue would be to “kill my son a second time.”
“The imposed fuel crisis threatens dialysis services for 400 patients
with kidney failure in the Gaza Strip,” the Palestinian human rights
group Al-Haq also said Monday
<http://www.alhaq.org/documentation/weekly-focuses/1182-gaza-dialysis-patients-face-death-and-denial-of-medical-transfer-causes-death-violates-right-to-life-and-amounts-to-inhuman-cruel-degrading-treatment->.
Due to the chronic power crisis, dialysis in Gaza is already a dangerous
business
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/power-cuts-put-lives-gaza-kidney-patients-danger>.
Al-Haq added that Gaza hospitals are currently unable to carry out 200
operations per day “due to the corruption and subsequent waste of
hundreds of units of blood because of the lack of cooling required – a
consequence of the deliberately imposed electricity shortage on Gaza.”
Hospitals closing
Due to Israel’s ongoing restrictions
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-using-electricity-blackmail-gaza>
on Gaza’s electricity supply, the population of two million people, half
of them children, currently receive electricity for no more than eight
hours each day. At times that supply has plummeted to just three or four
hours.
“Hospitals have already begun to close. Without funding, more service
providers will be forced to suspend operations over the coming weeks,
and the situation will deteriorate dramatically, with potential impacts
on the entire population,” the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator
Roberto Valent said. “We cannot allow this to happen.”
“Gaza’s health system is on the verge of collapse as hospitals in the
besieged territory are expected to face a total power blackout by the
end of February,” Ashraf al-Qidra, the Gaza health ministry spokesperson
warned
<http://www.alhaq.org/documentation/weekly-focuses/1182-gaza-dialysis-patients-face-death-and-denial-of-medical-transfer-causes-death-violates-right-to-life-and-amounts-to-inhuman-cruel-degrading-treatment->.
On 23 January, the Palestinian Authority health ministry in Ramallah
allocated almost $300,000 to buy emergency fuel, but that supply would
only be enough for 10 days and, according to Al-Haq, “will not resolve
the structural electricity crisis imposed by Israel.”
Deadly delays
While collapsing the healthcare system inside Gaza, Israel is also
making it harder for Palestinians to seek life-saving treatment outside
the besieged territory.
The number of Palestinians allowed in and out of Gaza, both through the
Erez crossing, controlled by Israel, and the Rafah crossing with Egypt –
which has been closed for years except with rare exceptions – fell
sharply last year.
The exit of Palestinians from Gaza through Erez fell by 50 percent in
2017, compared with 2016, according to OCHA
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/palestinian-access-gaza-strip-declined-sharply-2017>.
On average there were just 7,000 exits per month in 2017, compared with
more than 500,000 per month prior to the year 2000.
Israel’s approval rate for medical exits via Erez fell to 54 percent,
down from 62 percent in 2016 – the lowest rate since 2006, according to
OCHA.
“The decline is occurring alongside a gradual increase in the absolute
number of referrals and related permit applications to West Bank
hospitals in the wake of stricter constraints via the Rafah crossing,”
the UN agency noted.
In November, Hamas authorities handed over control of the Palestinian
side of the Erez crossing to the internationally backed Palestinian
Authority, in the wake of a reconciliation deal signed the previous month.
“To date,” however, “this development has had no apparent impact on the
passage of Palestinians from Gaza through the Israeli- and
Egyptian-controlled crossings,” OCHA said.
In most cases, unsuccessful applications were due to lengthy delays or
lack of response, rather than outright denials.
“In situations such as cancer treatment, delays can have
life-threatening implications for patient health,” OCHA stated.
Sometimes, delays have been caused by the Palestinian Authority in
Ramallah: over the summer its leader Mahmoud Abbas imposed sanctions on
Gaza, including delaying approval of medical referrals to hospitals in
the West Bank, as part of his effort to bring Hamas to its knees by
exacerbating civilian suffering.
Some of these delays proved deadly
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-mahmoud-abbas-letting-children-die-gaza>.
Al-Haq this week called on the PA “to remove all impediments to access
to healthcare for children traveling from Gaza, and to ensure urgent
cases are immediately prioritized, for all cases within its competence.”
Israeli denial
But there is no doubt where the overall responsibility lies.
As the belligerent occupier, “Israel has continued obligations to ensure
the maintenance of civil life in the Gaza Strip, which includes the
supply of basic services and infrastructure to the civilian population,”
according to Al-Haq.
The group says that “that denial of travel permits leading to delays in
accessing treatments, not only violates the rights to health and the
right to life, but may also constitute inhumane, degrading treatment”
that violates international law.
Yet on Monday, Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman declared
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/lieberman-contradicts-idf-there-s-no-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza-1.5790605>
that there is “no humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
That contradicted the assessment even of Israeli army chief Gadi
Eisenkot who told Israel’s cabinet a day earlier, as /Haaretz/ reported,
“that the Gaza Strip is on the verge of collapse due to the worsening
humanitarian crisis.”
“Feigned and simplistic”
Last week, Israeli diplomats presented a “humanitarian rehabilitation”
plan for Gaza at a meeting of donors in Brussels.
“Israel expects the international community to cover the costs of the
plan’s implementation, an estimated $1 billion,” the Israeli human
rights group Gisha observed <http://gisha.org/updates/8600>.
The group dismissed Israel’s plan as “feigned and simplistic,” noting
that Israel’s crushing blockade on Gaza is what has caused the “dire
humanitarian conditions.”
“The alarming state of Gaza’s infrastructure, its chances for economic
development and the living conditions of its two million residents are
largely dependent on Israel,” Gisha stated.
But Lieberman, the defense minister, made clear Israel will continue its
policy
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-using-electricity-blackmail-gaza>
of denying basic humanitarian services to civilians in Gaza as a form of
political blackmail – a war crime.
Among other political goals, Israel is holding two million people
hostage in an effort to get information on several Israelis held in
Gaza, including the bodies of two of its soldiers killed during its 2014
invasion.
“As long as there’s no progress regarding the [Israeli] captives and
missing persons, we can’t move forward with all sorts of initiatives for
[helping] the Strip,” Lieberman said. “As far as its rehabilitation, it
can only be on one condition – demilitarization [of Gaza].”
Gisha has also documented <http://gisha.org/updates/8545> how Israel
tightened its closure of Gaza in 2017, including a host of new
restrictions “introduced with little to no justification provided as to
their purpose and, it appears, no consideration of the impact they would
have on the lives of Gaza’s residents.”
--
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