Israel’s total war on healthcare in Gaza is designed to deprive Palestinians of their means of survival
Soldier and ambulance
Ghassan Abu-Sittah writes in The New Arab on 12 May 2025, last update 13 May 2025 :
n the last minutes before dawn, seven emergency response vehicles travel through Al-Hashashin, north of Rafah in Gaza. They’ve been called out to recover and treat casualties from Israeli fire overnight. The convoy stops and pulls over, its personnel get out to begin their work: “It looks like an accident”, one man says, as they reach the site of Israel’s overnight attack.
Within minutes, without warning, they are under fire.
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Regardless of method, the effect of their killing is the same: Palestinians are deprived of those with the means and the expertise of saving lives. In murdering individual doctors or launching a total war on healthcare in Gaza, Israel intends to deprive Palestinians of the means of their survival.
These acts of genocide intend to erase Palestinian life and the evidence of its existence. Gaza’s hospitals, some of them older than the State of Israel itself, were filled with world-leading Palestinian healthcare specialists. Despite the siege, this system was built to the highest degree of excellence in care. These hospitals, despite the war against them, continue to treat and rehabilitate those whom Israel has attempted to murder.
The success of these facilities and the resilience of their doctors and emergency staff are a thorn in Israel’s side. The aid workers tirelessly, courageously recovering wounded or dead Palestinians, or the doctors and hospital staff who refuse to leave their patients — they are a nuisance and a problem for Israel. In a war of extermination, they are marked for killing.