At least 200 healthcare workers have been detained from Gaza during the war, which has been the deadliest for doctors in recorded history.
The killing of senior Palestinian doctor Iyad Rantisi, recently revealed to have happened back in November after he was taken into detention by Israeli forces, has predictably triggered outrage.
Yet the murder of detained doctors is only one of various components to Israel’s systematic assault on the health sector in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Dr. Iyad Rantisi was killed at the Shikma Prison, six days after being kidnapped from the Gaza Strip at a checkpoint that he was trying to pass, attempting to flee south in order to avoid Israel’s intense bombing campaign.
Held without a charge, he was transferred to the Israeli jail which is infamous for its Shin Bet interrogation facility.
While the specific cause of his death has not been revealed, the assumption is that he was likely tortured to death.
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Dr. Rantisi was the director of the women’s hospital segment of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, he was only 53 years old.
Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, another prominent Palestinian physician and surgeon, was also kidnapped from Gaza and later tortured to death while in Israeli custody.
He had led the orthopedic surgery department as its chief at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
As both of these murders of Palestinian doctors happened last year, but have only recently been confirmed, it is feared that many other doctors and healthcare workers who have been kidnapped from Gaza may have also suffered the same fate.
It is believed that at least 58 Palestinian prisoners have been killed in Israeli prison facilities since the start of the war on Gaza in October, yet only 18 have been identified.
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When it comes to the targeting of the health sector in Gaza, the case is crystal clear. According to Doctors Without Borders, 493 healthcare workers in the first seven months of the war alone, while their own facilities and employees had personally experienced dozens of violent attacks.
Only weeks into the war, after the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, had ordered his forces to completely shut off all aid, electricity, water and fuel, the many hospitals in Gaza began shutting down due to a lack of fuel.
By the end of May 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Rescue Committee both reported that only a third of Gaza’s hospitals maintained a partial operational capacity, the rest were completely shut down or destroyed.
Prior to this, in northern Gaza didn’t possess a single operational hospital in December, according to the WHO.
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Israel also made the Shifa Hospital the focus of the first phase of its ground operation in the Gaza Strip, receiving US backing in its lies about the largest medical complex in the besieged coastal territory being a Hamas base.
Israel inflicted various massacres against healthcare workers, patients and refugees sheltering in the Shifa Hospital, with the last invasion of the complex inflicting irreparable damage and leaving behind a mass grave of 300 crudely buried bodies that was discovered in April.
After laying waste to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Israeli military set its sights on the city of Khan Younis in December and would go on to make Nasser Hospital the center of its campaign, in an area that they claimed was “the real Hamas headquarters”.
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It predictably turned out that the allegations about the Nasser Hospital, also one of Gaza’s largest medical complexes, were completely false and when the Israeli occupation army withdrew they left behind another mass grave containing over 320 bodies.
At least 200 healthcare workers have been detained from Gaza during the war, which has been the deadliest for doctors in recorded history. Horror stories of torture, assassinations and injuries inflicted upon doctors in Gaza are seemingly never-ending.
The besieged territory’s healthcare sector has, by almost all metrics, collapsed, and the work of nurses and doctors is continuing under near-impossible conditions.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
It’s as if they want to be found guilty of genocide. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-the-protection-and-integrity-of-medical-personnel-in-armed-conflicts-and-other-situations-of-violence/ https://www.icrc.org/en/document/protection-hospitals-during-armed-conflicts-what-law-says And putting out lies about medical facilities should be regarded as declaration of intent to “(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” Genocide Convention Article 2