
Breadcrumb
While much of the world turned its gaze toward Israel’s conflict with Iran, the Israeli government continued its, far less reported, campaign of destruction and annihilation against the Palestinian people.
The erasure of Gaza and its healthcare system and the quiet strangulation of the occupied West Bank are all unfolding in real time. And yet global attention and condemnation have grown disturbingly faint.
Israel’s war with Iran has served as a convenient smokescreen – one that has effectively buried discussions of what UN experts and human rights groups have concluded is genocide, and obscured the ethnic cleansing being perpetrated against Palestinians.
Since March, Israel has allowed almost no aid into Gaza. Instead, it directs desperate Palestinians to militarised ‘distribution points’ – death traps where over 500 people have been killed and thousands injured.
There’s nothing humanitarian about this system. It is a lethal scheme that takes lives while pretending to protect them.
At the same time, the Israeli military continues to systematically target and destroy Gaza’s healthcare system.
Nasser Hospital, the last functioning major hospital in southern Gaza, is currently operating at 150% capacity. Staff at the hospital are performing surgeries by flashlight, treating sniper wounds to the head and chest, and are being forced to make space in corridors and balconies for patients they cannot turn away. Israeli tanks sit within range. Forced displacement orders have surrounded the facility. If Nasser Hospital is forced to shut down, south Gaza’s healthcare system will collapse completely.
Already, the Israeli military has attacked this hospital three times. Its destruction would be a continuation of the annihilation of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, which a UN commission has found amounts to the crime of extermination.
The fuel that powers Gaza’s hospitals, water systems, and food production is expected to run out in days. As I write this, only 140,000 litres remain in the north and just over 270,000 litres in the south – nowhere near enough to sustain life. Israel’s total blockade on fuel is part of a strategy that UN officials say is “created to kill”.
I speak to my colleagues in Gaza daily; their voices tremble with exhaustion and despair. They tell me how medical staff are collapsing from hunger, how malnourished children are arriving at hospitals with injuries they will not survive and how doctors are forced to make unthinkable choices about who receives the last vial of anaesthetic. I will never forget the tone of one of the doctors who told me over the phone that he cannot sleep at night knowing he has to make decisions on who receives medical care and who is left to die due to the dire shortages of resources.
These atrocities have been happening in the dark – literally. Over the past two weeks, Gaza has endured severe communications blackouts after Israeli military airstrikes damaged a major communications network. And that is no coincidence. Atrocities are committed most easily when there are no eyes to witness them, no voices to name them. Which is precisely why the world must keep watching.
In the occupied West Bank, where I live, Israel has intensified its repression. Roads are sealed, villages blockaded, and armed settlers, emboldened by state backing, are attacking Palestinian communities with impunity. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and the West Bank is now a patchwork of disconnected areas
Travelling from city to city has become an almost impossible mission. What used to be a 15-minute drive now takes hours, zigzagging through military checkpoints and avoiding settlers. Farmers can’t reach their land. Teachers can’t get to classrooms. Ambulances are routinely turned back at gunpoint. This isn’t about security – it’s about fragmentation. It’s about breaking our will and about making life unbearable so we leave.
Yet world leaders have all but abandoned the Palestinian people. And those responsible continue to enjoy diplomatic protection, as well as arms shipments, from countries like the UK.
It is time for Keir Starmer and David Lammy to stop allying with these atrocities. That means immediately stopping arms sales, supporting full accountability for all perpetrators of violations of international law, and taking all possible steps to end Israel’s total blockade and unlawful occupation.
The international community cannot allow Gaza to become a forgotten graveyard. Mass killings of Palestinians have become normalised and an entire population is being systematically erased. The atrocities are not over; they are accelerating. To ignore this is to endorse it.
There is still time to act, but it requires moral clarity and political will. That means demanding the immediate protection of Nasser Hospital and all Palestinian healthcare facilities, as well as accountability for attacks. And it means pressuring governments, including in the UK, to end military support for Israel’s war on Palestinians.
The moment we stop paying attention is the moment impunity takes root. We must not look away. Because if we do, Gaza will be wiped off the map – and those who failed to act will be complicit.
Aseel Baidoun is Acting Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), based in the occupied West Bank and originally from East Jerusalem. She has more than 10 years of experience in advocacy and communications in the humanitarian and health sector, and has worked for several international organisations including the World Health Organisation and Save the Children.
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.