Introduction by Croakey: As Israel blocks the delivery of fuel and aid through the Rafah crossing into Gaza amid military operations, health and humanitarian agencies are expressing extreme concern for more than 1.4 million people who remain in Rafah, including 600,000 children.
The World Health Organization said on 8 May that it has no intention of withdrawing from Rafah despite escalating fears of a full-scale Israeli military operation. WHO is coordinating the work of 20 emergency medical teams in Gaza, comprising 179 internationals from 30 countries, working alongside 800 local staff.
Below we publish two articles from civil society leaders in Australia.
Lyn Morgain, Chief Executive of Oxfam Australia, calls for the Australian Government to immediately end the export of weapons and weapons-parts where the Israel Defence Forces is the end user of the export.
Dr Sue Wareham, President of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War Australia (MAPW), urges an end to the “terrible silence” from so many health and medical professionals and organisations on this conflict.
Also see related posts from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons annual scientific congress in Aotearoa/New Zealand this week, and an invitation to a panel discussion in Sydney and online that will feature a keynote speech from the former Medical Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Palestine, Dr Natalie Thurtle.
End siege, demand ceasefire, stop arms
Lyn Morgain writes:
As an Australian concerned about the unfolding crisis in Rafah, it can be easy to feel impotent. The degree and depravity of the violence is very difficult to comprehend or process and we are all to some extent shocked by the ferocity of the recent conflict.
The imagery is rightly disturbing and the mobilisations occurring across Australia are testament to the fact that a great many people of conscience will simply not walk past this. Those in the health sector feel acutely the human carnage that has been a feature of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) bombardment and siege.
So, is Australia doing enough and are our representatives representing our views adequately?
We at Oxfam would say there is a great deal more that can and should be done.
Many Australians have families and communities directly affected by these atrocities. Breaches of International Humanitarian Law that are occurring daily are being recorded and shared, often real time.
Australians with family in the region are living with the trauma of this conflict every moment of every day, as they fear the inevitable.
Even for those who do not have family directly affected, this is an appalling catastrophe of human civilisation and many of us experience that viscerally.
So, what can be done?
Foremost we must do everything in our power to demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to the siege of Gaza. As humanitarians, we know that without this we have no way of rebuilding the fragile systems which aim to protect and save the lives of the innocent.
We at Oxfam have asked that the Australian Government offers increased humanitarian assistance to Gaza. We have welcomed the funds already pledged but also draw attention to the fact that we require an immediate increase in funding.
The scale of this conflict is unprecedented and there is so much work to be done. We especially encourage the Government to provide funds directly to Australian NGOs, like Oxfam, with an established presence in Gaza.
We cannot afford to feel impotent when we have a largely safe and prosperous democracy within which to make these requests. If not we, then who?
As I write, my colleagues in Gaza are posting videos of people – women, children and the elderly running wildly in the streets, scrambling for safety in Rafah. In the background, one can hear screaming as bombs rain down indiscriminately. The fear and despair, because there is now no safe place for them or their babies, is palpable.
My colleagues, themselves displaced, have been working tirelessly to maintain the most basic of systems. Because they know how to do that. Despite losing homes and families. They are rigging solar panels on bomb sites. Using low-fi technology to produce clean water and sanitation.
Today with the bombardment of Rafah, a place of last resort, I feel deeply concerned for the welfare of my colleagues.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was explicit. There was at the time of the finding, an imminent risk of genocide. Weeks have passed now, and conflict continues unabated.
Our colleagues in the United Nations and other agencies have made it clear, that in addition to the terrible trauma of catastrophic injuries, the blockade, as predicted, has now produced full blown famine.
Millions of lives now are at imminent risk. This is in direct contravention of International Humanitarian Law and the expectation of the ICJ that everything be done to avoid the calamity now unfolding.
A young man I was speaking with yesterday asked me with real sorrow, what could be done? My simple answer to his sad question was, that at ultimately, we need the blockade to end and the bombardment to stop.
To that end, it is clear that the Australian Government must immediately end the export of weapons and weapons-parts where the IDF is the end user of the export.
It’s a simple fact, that war like this cannot occur without the arms trade that supports it.
People of conscience here in Australia who cannot accept what they are seeing, must demand an immediate cessation of these arrangements.
It is the business of war that must be our focus. We must demand our government ensures this blood is not on our hands.
Speak up!
Sue Wareham writes:
Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) continues to be appalled and dismayed by both the health situation in Gaza and the lack of action to protect the rights of the Palestinian people to healthcare.
Never in living memory have we seen healthcare under such catastrophic attack as we are witnessing in Gaza.
Attacks on healthcare have become a tragic aspect of recent wars, but never before in modern wars has the destruction of healthcare become so comprehensive, so systematic as is happening in Gaza.
This should shake our health professional organisations to their very core with alarm bells ringing at full volume, but instead there is barely a whimper. Mild statements about the need for medical neutrality and similar are made as genocide unfolds.
As Israel plans to invade Rafah, the people who have fled there seeking safety face renewed horrors. About half of them are children.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said this week that “Hundreds of thousands of children who are now cramped into Rafah are injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities…..Many have been displaced multiple times, and have lost homes, parents and loved ones.”
A month ago, a small group of eminent paediatricians and child health experts in Australia appealed for the war on children in Gaza to stop.
They called on the Australian Government to take “urgent, decisive political actions”, including to openly and actively support the International Court of Justice orders that Israel provide all necessary food, medical care and other essential needs for the people of Gaza.
That appeal has been met largely by a terrible silence from fellow medical professionals, and silence from our Government.
From the Government, there has been no declaration of measures that will be taken to ensure Israel complies with its legal obligations to provide food, medical care and all other essential needs for the people of Gaza.
There was silence and lack of action from our Government even after mass graves of hundreds of people, including children, were found recently in the courtyard of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Such silence would be unthinkable in other wars.
Far greater pressure is needed on the Australian Government to comply with our own legal obligations under the Genocide Convention to act for the protection of the people of Gaza.
Health professionals have a profoundly important role in demanding this, but thus far the voices of our profession have largely been either absent or too-little-too-late, even as everything we stand for is under attack in Gaza.
From #RACS24
The health crisis in Gaza was on the agenda of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons annual scientific congress in Aotearoa/New Zealand this week.
Other commentary
Read the statement by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Statement by Amnesty International on 7 May
MSF statement (7 May) warning that an escalation of the ongoing military operations in this southern Gazan city would be catastrophic.
BMJ: Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza
Invitation to a panel discussion in Sydney and online
Join the Network of Women in Emergency Medicine as they present ‘Every Storm Runs Out of Rain – Reflections on Continuance from the Edge’, a keynote speech from the former Medical Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Palestine and Australian Emergency Physician, Dr Natalie Thurtle.
This talk was cancelled by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine in November 2023 due to content on Palestine being considered too political.
The keynote speech will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr Natalie Thurtle; Jennifer Tierney, Executive Director MSF Australia; Dr Sarah Abdo, Specialist in Endocrinology; Mary Freer, Compassion Revolution; Rita Jabri Maxwell, lawyer; and others.
The discussion will be moderated by Dr Ruth Mitchell, Neurosurgeon and 2017 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (as part of her work with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons).
The panel’s focus will be on how medical organisations and individuals can and should navigate the conversation with regards to health and healthcare workers in Palestine. What are our legal, ethical and registration-related responsibilities, and what are our responsibilities to not erase our colleagues in Palestine? How do organisations weigh corporate risk when permitting content experts to speak at their events? How do we speak to each other less violently, and hear, without tone-policing? How do we accept and hear protest?
As clinicians, we may not walk past, disengage, other and ignore, so how does the discourse mature and become effective?
Join online or in person 16 May 7pm at ATLAS community and culture centre, Marrickville, Sydney. Proceeds from the sale of tickets go to MSF.
Every Storm Runs Out Of Rain Tickets, Thu, May 16, 2024 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite
Previously at Croakey
- Gaza medical staff working under ‘profound psychological strain’ as further threats loom
- World medical leaders call for Gaza ceasefire amid mass graves horror
- New publication documents the terrible toll on women in Gaza
- Senior doctors and child health experts appeal for an end to the war on children in Gaza
- New report details how Gaza is being destroyed
- “Silence becomes complicity”: MPs and other health professionals urged to take stand on Gaza
- “The question is no longer whether Palestinians will starve to death in a famine, but how many will do so”
- World leaders put on notice over Gaza, amid “war on children”
- As children starve to death in Gaza, health and medical academics urge colleagues to speak up
- Australian academics call on their universities to demand ceasefire, amid fears about famine, disease and scholasticide in Gaza
- “To those speaking out for the people of Gaza – thank you for not looking the other way”: Dr Sophie Scamps
- As Australia and other countries put pressure on Israel, health and medical organisations describe horrific conditions in Gaza
- As humanitarian nightmare escalates in Gaza, and the world enters “an age of chaos”, we must work harder for peace
- As global leaders and aid groups speak up about “catastrophic crisis” in Gaza, health professionals are under pressure to remain silent
- Health workers and agencies document the war’s wide-ranging impacts on people in Gaza
- From Gaza: finding words for the unimaginable
- Health leaders join growing calls for permanent ceasefire in Gaza and Israel
- As the people in Gaza experience a “living hell”, medical and humanitarian leaders step up pressure for a permanent ceasefire
- This doctor is urging medical leadership on ceasefire in Gaza and Israel, as United Nations warns of threat to global security
- Amid catastrophic health threats in Gaza, health leaders urge a permanent ceasefire
- Amid ongoing health catastrophe in Gaza, why the silence?
- As Gaza hospitals become “scenes of death, devastation, and despair”, global community urged to act for peace
- Doctors who work with refugees urge medical organisations to speak up for a ceasefire in Gaza
- “Worse every day”: toll mounts in Gaza, including for children and health workers
- “This cannot go on” – a cry for an end to intolerable suffering
- Medical organisation publishes open letter expressing “extreme concern” at Australia’s failure to support ceasefire in Gaza
- Health sector urged to speak out for ceasefire in Gaza
- Calls for ceasefire amid catastrophe in Gaza – “every child everywhere deserves peace”
