Doctors Without Borders suspends work at Rafah clinic as Israeli army approaches

The international NGO Doctors Without Borders has suspended its work at the Indonesian Hospital in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, as the pace of the Israeli attack on the city accelerates. A spokeswoman for the organisation said on Tuesday that the remaining 22 patients had been transferred to other facilities as their safety was no longer guaranteed.

The organisation outlined the struggles it has faced since the war broke out in Gaza in October. “We were forced to leave 12 different health facilities and suffered 26 violent incidents,” explained Relief Coordinator Michel Olivier Lacharite, “including air strikes that destroyed hospitals, tanks hitting agreed upon shelter centres, and ground attacks launched on medical centres and convoys.”

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 24 out of a total of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are now out of service. Article 8 of the Rome Statute includes “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education… hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected” as a war crime. Israel has attacked all such buildings in Gaza over the past seven months.

The occupation state always claims that Palestinian fighters are using the buildings — in which case protected status would be lost — but evidence for this is absent. If such doubt exists, then international humanitarian law presumes that protected status is intact, and a war crime has been committed.

Doctors Without Borders stated that it is trying to establish field hospitals, but that it cannot replace a functioning health system and cannot handle the influx of wounded civilians.

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