By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

The UN special rapporteur on health accused world leaders of bankruptcy for failing to stop the genocide in Gaza.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, urgently appealed on Friday to world leaders to exert all efforts and use their power to stop the ongoing genocide on the besieged Gaza Strip.

“We just need all of the world leaders to summon the economic, political, diplomatic power that they have to make sure that this genocide ends,” Mofokeng said at a news brief in New York.

Nonetheless, the special rapporteur slammed world leaders for their complicity in the ongoing genocide through the support they continue to extend to Israel.

“Preparative justice will require a profoundly different approach and solidarity, as well as a caliber of world leaders who unfortunately up to now continue to display their moral, political and diplomatic bankruptcy,” she said.

“And they must carry this genocide with shame,” the special rapporteur stressed.

Health System Obliterated

In the over thirty-minute press brief, Mofokeng presented an extremely grim account of the health conditions in the strip due to Israel’s continued aggression in the besieged enclave, stressing that this has been “a war on the right to health from the beginning.”

“The health system in Gaza been completely obliterated and the right to health has been decimated at every level,” Mofokeng continued.

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The UN official stressed that the right to health in the Gaza Strip has become “untenable” due to Israel’s continued aggression, pointing out that Palestinian health workers are “exhausted, harassed, killed, [and] impeded from fulfilling their tasks as first responders.”

She added that the dire conditions under which health professionals are working in Gaza oblige many of them to operate on patients without anesthesia or basic medication,

‘Medicide’

“All of us continue to bear witness to the very practice of medicine being under attack,” she said, while describing Israel’s deadly attacks on the health care system as “medicide.”

She commended the work of the healthcare workers in Gaza by saying that “they are the oath takers, the ones who refused to leave and stayed caring for their patients, knowing their own fates.”

The UN official revealed that she is coordinating with other UN experts to achieve investigation and accountability of those in charge of the crimes being committed in Gaza.

“We are unlocking new levels that we can never undo,” she said, while warning of the danger of the impunity Israel keeps enjoying.   

Mofokeng ended her press brief by calling for an immediate ceasefire.

“I am ashamed and deeply sorry that the world has failed you,” she said choking back her tears.

Addressing the people of Gaza she said that “justice will prevail and you will return to rebuild your beloved Gaza.”

Horrors of Genocide

Along with three other UN rapporteurs, Mofokeng said in a press conference, as part of the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on September 16 that the world has witnessed the horror of genocide for the last eleven months in the besieged Gaza Strip.

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Mofokeng stressed in her intervention that the nearly one-year genocide in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation army has witnessed record attacks on the health system in the besieged enclave including those on hospitals and health workers, which resulted in the destruction of the entire health infrastructure.  

She revealed that out of the 36 existing hospitals in Gaza, only 17 are partly functioning, emphasizing that Israel continues to violate international law by targeting Palestinian civilians including children and health personnel.

Gaza Genocide Continues

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 42,847 Palestinians have been killed, and 100,544 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.

Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.

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Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety. 

(The Palestine Chronicle)