Gaza: Between the health sector’s collapse and the specter of famine

As Israel’s assault on Gaza enters its fifth week, the health sector in the strip has entered the stage of complete collapse as people with chronic illnesses have begun to die, according to what a medical source told Al Jazeera today, and a number of cancer patients have also passed away due to not receiving treatment.

The Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson announced today that a third infant who had been on an assisted breathing machine in the nursery of the Shifa Medical Complex, which has been surrounded by Israeli military forces and bombed multiple times in recent days, has died due to the hospital running out of fuel needed to power its electrical generator. The health condition of infants at Quds Hospital is no less serious, as they are facing dehydration due to a lack of milk, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

Occupation forces have been heavily bombarding Shifa for the past three days, while also bombing the United Nations compound in Gaza City on Saturday. Both facilities have been used as shelter for Palestinians displaced by the relentless Israeli bombing.

Occupation forces turned the exit corridors leading out of Shifa Hospital into a trap to kill Palestinians attempting to flee to the south from the ongoing bombardment in the north of Gaza, targeting 40 of those displaced as they left the complex, according to Health Ministry Director General Mounir al-Bursh.

Palestinian Health Ministry Director of International Cooperation Marwan Hasswan Abou Saada told Mada Masr that the Israelis called and offered to evacuate the children, but the hospital informed them that there was no place for them to be taken in Gaza.

 “The Israelis are lying as usual when they say they are ready to evacuate infants from Shifa Hospital because there is no hospital in Gaza that can receive them after Nasr Children’s Hospital was bombed and hospital staff were forced to evacuate,” Abu Saad said.

Yesterday, Retuers quoted an Occupation military spokesperson as saying that the Israelis are ready to participate in the evacuation of infants from Shifa Hospital based on a request submitted to them by those responsible for the complex.

In a statement today, Gaza’s government media office said that the Occupation targeted and seriously wounded a worker at Shifa Hospital while he was trying to operate the electric generator after a power outage. The statement added that one of those who had been sheltering in Shifa after being displaced was killed yesterday after trying to flee from the complex. 

The Occupation is committing an “organized crime” against the Shifa medical complex, the statement added, noting that drones are firing at anything that moves inside the hospital’s courtyards, which has led to the injury of a number of people inside.

Mohamed Zaqout, the director of Gaza’s hospitals, said today that medical teams are unable to bury the bodies of the dead due to the fact that the Occupation is targeting anyone who moves in the courtyard of Shifa Hospital, even though the hospital has made several requests to bury the dead.

According to Zaqout, the condition of other hospitals is not much better than what is happening at the Shifa medical complex, as the Occupation military bombed the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Mahdi Maternity Hospital and forced the staff of Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital and Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital to evacuate. With no other alternative, the staff of both hospitals took patients in need of medical care out into the streets.

Zaqout also noted that he had lost contact with the medical officer supervising the work of the hospitals. 

In response to the assault on Gaza’s hospitals, Hamas suspended negotiations regarding the release of prisoners, according to Reuters.

Days after the Occupation filmed the scene of the mass displacement of residents from the north of Gaza to its south, thousands of people are still trapped inside their homes or in nearby neighborhoods where they fled to escape Israeli bombing.

Ali Hassan, 38, is hiding with his parents in the house of one of their relatives in the Nasr neighborhood of northern Gaza, which is surrounded by Israeli military vehicles. Hassan told Mada Masr that his parents are elderly and their health condition prevents them from walking from Gaza City to Khan Younis or Rafah in the south, as the Occupation has demanded.

Facing a similar situation, Mahmoud Abu Maslama appealed to the Red Cross on Facebook to communicate with his father and aunt, who are stuck in their house to the west of Shifa’s residential tower, which is close to Shifa Hospital. According to those who have made similar appeals seen by Mada Masr, the International Committee of the Red Cross has not responded to appeals to help coordinate evacuations from places being subjected to bombing or sites of fighting between the resistance and the Occupation.

The Israeli bombing campaign is continuing in various areas in the southeast of the Gaza Strip, despite the Occupation’s claim that these are “safe areas,” according to a survivor of one of the Israeli bombing campaigns in the area, who added that the south of Gaza is already suffering from significant shortages in food and water and is unable to treat the wounded or transport the bodies of the dead “strewn in the streets.” The survivor says that the conditions of those displaced to the south are tragic, as they have had to resort to using the clothes they’ve carried with them to fashion makeshift tents to escape the sun.

Maysara Qeshta, who lives in an area close to the Rafah border crossing, says that the threat of famine is closing in on the south of Gaza hour by hour, with the increasing number of displaced people arriving from the north. “Food has become almost nonexistent in shops,” he tells Mada Masr. “We have the Mall of Arabia, one of the largest malls in the south, and there is nothing in it at the moment.” 

The nightmare of famine is “eating people’s heads,” Qeshta says, as “people are thinking all day long about what they are going to do. What are you going to eat? What are you going to do tomorrow as long as you are able to save yourself a meal today?”

“The idea that people might die of hunger is a terrifying idea,” he adds. “I am confident that there are people who have died of hunger in Gaza. I mean, imagine people in a war and also suffering from famine. By God, the aid that comes in is not enough for anyone. I mean, you see the trucks, and you know all the time that it is a show when you hear it on the news that aid entered.”

Louay Zourab, who lives in Rafah, tells Mada Masr that the bakeries are close to halting operations entirely. “We have bakeries that operate one day, and then three days pass without them operating,” he tells Mada Masr, noting that the situation is becoming more desperate as the number of displaced people increases.

Zourab says that the scenes of the displaced from northern Gaza spending the night in the streets with their families and children are “tragic.”

“You go down to the street and find people strewn here and there, and there is no water or food to be found. They basically just arrived in the south – that is it – for the sake of having arrived. But there is no place or anything else for them. By God, it is a sad sight,” he says.

While visions of a coming famine are in the minds of those in the south Gaza, people that Mada Masr spoke to in the north say that famine has already gripped them.

“The markets are completely empty, except for some onions and tomatoes,” says Naila Moussa from Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the strip, adding that lentils and rice have become “like a rare currency.”

“Things have reached the point where even those who have money cannot find anything to buy,” she says. “All day, we make do with one meal. And a meal does not mean a meal. No, just a few bites. And our kids, how will they survive this? Where do they go? We give them contaminated water to drink. Are we also not supposed to feed them? We wonder whether we should die from hunger, thirst or airstrikes?

Moussa says that going out of the house to search for food and water is a dangerous risk. “Those who go out, they die. We don’t know what happened to them. May God protect them. We’ve never had this happen to us this way.”

In terms of military operations, the Qassam Brigades continue fighting the invasion of the Occupation forces around Gaza City. According to videos published by the resistance, they have destroyed vehicles and injured Occupation soldiers.

Local sources and journalists in the area told Mada Masr that clashes between the Qassam Brigades and Occupations forces have slowed the Israeli troops from advancing toward Shifa Hospital over the last four days.

The Qassam Brigades announced that they targeted an Israeli special forces unit holed up in a building north of Beith Hanoun and another on foot in the Khuzaa area east of Khan Younis with anti-personnel weapons. The resistance added that it continued to fire at sites where the Occupation has amassed troops and settlements around Gaza, in addition to cities in the occupied interior. 

Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obaida said yesterday that the resistance had destroyed 160 military vehicles since the start of the Occupation’s ground incursion into the Gaza Strip. He added that snipers had targeted Israeli soldiers and that Qassam had ambushed a number of Occupation forces.

The Occupation military acknowledged that it has suffered 361 casualties, 46 of whom have been killed since the beginning of the ground invasion.

The Israeli ground invasion has moved into central Gaza. Videos published by the Occupation show that its forces have reached the center of Gaza City, in close proximity to Shifa Hospital. There has been no official comment from the responsible Palestinian authorities regarding the advance, but local sources told Mada Masr that this was the first time Occupation forces had reached the heart of Gaza City since Israel withdrew from the strip in 2005.

The sources explained that clashes can be heard intermittently in areas where the Occupation is advancing, and it is not clear what the coming hours will bring, but it is clear that the Gaza Strip has entered a new phase of confrontations between the resistance and the Occupation.

In the West Bank, Occupation soldiers have carried out raids on several cities and towns, notably on the Jenin refugee camp. In the city of Tulkarem, the resistance carried out two “shooting operations,” one on the Beit Hefer settlement and the second on the Nitzani Oz gate.

In Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah against committing a “serious mistake” and thus putting the residents of Beirut in conditions similar to “the situation of the residents of Gaza.” However, Hezbollah continues to target the border area between Lebanon and Israeli-held territory, firing as far as five kilometers into the interior, while the Occupation forces continue to respond by bombing southern Lebanon.

Today, Hezbollah launched a number of attacks against Israeli settlements on the borders of southern Lebanon, an escalation on the part of Hezbollah, as shown by the type of targets, the most prominent of which was “a logistical force belonging to the Occupation army,” as Hezbollah announced. The Occupation military said that six Israelis were injured in the attack, including one who is in critical condition and five in a serious condition. This was followed by another attack targeting an Israeli truck and the firing of mortar shells toward Israeli positions. This evening, the Qassam Brigades announced on its Telegram channel that it “carried out a missile strike toward northern Haifa from Lebanon in response to the Occupation’s massacres against civilians in Gaza.”

Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in front of the Israeli Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv yesterday, demanding the release of their prisoners from the grip of the resistance. A separate demonstration was held demanding an end to the war, the first protest of its kind since October 7.