Palestine: MSF reiterates call for an immediate ceasefire as conflict rages on in Gaza a year later
For almost a year now, Israel has carried out relentless slaughter in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Since the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, killing up to 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, Israeli forces have pursued an all-out war on people in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 41,500 people, and wounding over 96,000. People have been repeatedly displaced by conflict in Gaza and forced into smaller and smaller areas under bombardments and increasingly inhumane conditions.
For a year, Israel, Hamas, and their respective allies have catastrophically failed to reach a deal on a sustained ceasefire in Gaza, while the risk of a full-blown regional conflict is now increasing. Israel must immediately stop the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza and urgently facilitate the delivery of aid to alleviate suffering inside the Strip, including through the reopening of vital border crossings, in compliance with the measures requested by the International Court of Justice.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical staff have treated patients daily with wounds caused by massive bombings. People have extensive burns and crushed bones and have been dismembered. Since the beginning of the war, MSF teams have treated over 27,500 patients for violence-related injuries, with more than 80 per cent of the wounds linked to shelling.
Israeli bombardments of densely populated areas have repeatedly caused injuries on a massive scale. Our teams have been forced to perform surgeries without anaesthesia, witness children die on hospitals floors due to a lack of resources, and even treat their own colleagues and family members,” says Dr Amber Alayyan, MSF medical programme manager. “Meanwhile, the healthcare system in Gaza has been systematically dismantled by Israeli forces.”
MSF teams were already treating the effects of Israel’s 17-year occupation, blockade, and recurrent attacks on people in Gaza, including treating patients for long-lasting injuries, mental health conditions, and severe burns, inflicted before 7 October. Since that date, though, while needs have soared as a consequence of Israel pummeling the Strip, access to healthcare has been reduced to shreds.
Today, only 17 out of out of 36 hospitals are partially functional. Warring parties have conducted hostilities near medical facilities, endangering patients, caretakers, and medical staff. Six MSF colleagues have also been killed.
From October 2023, staff and patients from MSF have had to leave 14 different health structures, due to severe incidents and ongoing fighting. Thousands of people lose access to lifesaving medical care each time a medical facility is evacuated. This will affect people’s health, not just in the immediate term, but in the coming weeks and months.
The absence of enough humanitarian supplies in Gaza compounds the lack of access to healthcare. Israeli authorities have routinely imposed unclear, unpredictable criteria for authorising supplies entry. Once supplies cross into the Gaza Strip, they often do not make it to their destination, due to an absence of safe and accessible roads, ongoing fighting, and looting of food and essential supply items.
“As the medical needs in the Strip increase, our capacity to respond continues to be limited; we just cannot get enough humanitarian and medical supplies into Gaza,” says Dr Alayyan. “The field hospitals we set up as a last resort as simply a bandage to fix the devastation caused by the war and the destruction of the healthcare system. Their setup has been hampered and delayed by restricting our ability to procure materials and equipment. As it stands, the medical facilities that remain operational cannot cope with the vast needs.”
As the availability of medical care has shrunk, so too have the options for people to seek out desperately needed healthcare in Gaza.
Repeated evacuation orders have displaced 90 per cent of people into so-called safer zones, which Israel has nonetheless bombed over and over again. People are now urged to stay within a tiny patch of 41 square kilometres , with limited shelter, food and water.
There is an increased risk of disease due to overcrowding. Out of the two million people in the Gaza Strip, at least 12,000 people desperately need to be medically evacuated . The medical evacuation of those in need and the right of Palestinians simply seeking safety for themselves and their families to leave the Strip must immediately be facilitated, without prejudice to their right of return.
While destructive actions have marked the past 12 months, they have also been defined by shameful inaction.
“For one year, Israel’s allies have continued to provide their military support to Israel, as children are killed en masse, tanks fire on deconflicted shelters, fighter jets bomb so-called humanitarian zones,” says Chris Lockyear, MSF Secretary General. “This has been accompanied by a consistent public narrative dehumanising people in Gaza and failing to distinguish between military targets and civilian lives. The only way to stop the killing is with an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”
Time and again, political allegiances have been put before human life. While Israel´s allies publicly speak on the importance of a ceasefire and the need to facilitate humanitarian aid into Gaza, they continue to provide arms to Israel.
The United States, in particular, while recently espousing calls for a ceasefire, has frequently worked to obfuscate, block, and undermine ceasefire efforts through its role in the United Nations Security Council.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is fuelling regional tensions, which are reaching disastrous heights. Israeli attacks have surged in the West Bank and now in Lebanon, with already devastating consequences for civilians.
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About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.
In South Africa, the organisation is recognised as one of the pioneers of providing Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in the public sector and started the first HIV programmes in South Africa in 1999. Until today, the focus of MSF’s interventions in the country has primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and TB in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape).
In Tshwane, we run a migration project, and we offer medical and psychosocial care to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, who struggle to access public health services under South Africa’s increasingly restrictive.
Previously we offered free, high-quality, confidential medical care to survivors of SGBV in Rustenburg.
To learn more about our work in South Africa, please visit this page on our website (www.msf.org.za). To support MSF’s work:
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