‘We’re all at risk of being targeted’: Doctors evacuate Rafah’s last hospitals
Palestinians bid farewell to their dead relatives at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, 20 April 2024
Ruwaida Kamal Amer reports in +972 on 5 June 2024:
On May 30, the World Health Organization announced that Rafah’s last remaining hospital, the Al-Helal al-Emirati Hospital, had gone out of service. The destruction of the southern Gaza city’s health care system, which comes after more than two dozen hospitals across the Strip have completely shut down as a result of Israel’s assault, encapsulates the human toll of the intensifying Israeli military operation in Rafah.
Far from the “limited” invasion that Israel’s leaders proclaimed, Israeli forces are currently occupying the heart of the city and remain in control of the Rafah Crossing and Philadelphi Corridor, while airstrikes continue to pummel camps for displaced families. Since Israel’s incursion began on May 6, more than 1 million Palestinians have fled Gaza’s last refuge.
In addition to the Emirati Hospital, the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital and the Kuwaiti Hospital have been forced to cease all functions in recent weeks. With several smaller clinics closing too, all that remains to serve Rafah’s sick and wounded is two small field hospitals in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi — one run by the United Arab Emirates, and the other by the International Medical Corps — which are ill-equipped to deal with the scale of suffering among those unable or unwilling to flee the city.
With Israel’s ground invasion continuing to advance toward western Rafah, these remaining clinics may also soon be forced to evacuate. And while a trickle of seriously wounded patients had been leaving Gaza via the Rafah Crossing for treatment abroad, nobody has been able to escape the Strip since Israel occupied the crossing.
Muhammad Zaqout, the Gaza Health Ministry’s director general of hospitals, told +972 that staff at Rafah’s hospitals evacuated “because they feared a repeat of what happened at Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Shifa Hospital.” Israeli forces besieged and raided both hospitals in recent months, in Khan Younis and Gaza City respectively; after their withdrawal, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies were found at both sites.