Gaza hospitals a battleground for Israeli attacks.

By Allan Mbotshwa

In an act of flagrant violation of international law, the Israeli forces have besieged the only partially working medical facilities in Gaza, the Al-Shifa, Al Amal and Nasser Hospitals. The once working hospital has transformed into a battlefield that resembles a ghoul with Israel terrorizing, kidnapping and killing medical staff and patients. All hospitals in Gaza are hanging by a thread due to the chronic shortage of essential medical supplies caused by Israel’s ongoing blockade on aid delivery as well as indiscriminate bombings.

A particularly gruesome aspect of the latest raids on hospitals include Israeli forces’ practice of separating Palestinian men of all ages from their families and then subjecting them to all forms of humiliation, torture and extra judicial killings. International law is clear: patients, health workers, and civilians must be protected.

Israel also use captured Palestinian men as human shields, both inside the hospital. Nurses are forced at gunpoint to guide Israeli soldiers through several rooms of the hospital and also positioned around Israeli tanks as human shields to prevent targeting.

Ambassador Tamer Almassri while welcoming the passing of a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that leads to a permanent and sustainable ceasefire, has called for the immediate implementation to preserve the lives of innocent civilians.

Hunger and malnutrition continue to haunt the population of Gaza, especially those remaining in the north. The international community should coordinate efforts to deliver humanitarian, relief and medical aid to the entire Gaza Strip via all crossings to put an end to the famine inflicted upon Palestinians as a result of the ongoing savage aggression.

Ambassador Almassri concludes that the state of Palestine firmly rejects the displacement of any Palestinian citizen, whether in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, stressing that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state and any plans of the occupation authorities to separate the Gaza Strip from the rest of Palestinian land and to seize any inch of its land or reoccupy it are unacceptable and will be resisted.