DaysofPal- The Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza has accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting the Strip’s health sector as part of a broader policy of “systematic destruction” and genocide. In a statement issued Thursday, the GMO warned that the number of hospitals targeted by Israel has risen to 38 and that continued forced evacuations of medical facilities are crippling Gaza’s already devastated healthcare infrastructure.
“As part of the continued systematic violations committed by the Israeli military against the health system in the Gaza Strip, occupation forces repeatedly issue evacuation notices to hospitals, clinics, and medical centers, the most recent being Sheikh Radwan Clinic,” the GMO stated.
The office described this policy as a systematic crime aimed at completing the destruction of the healthcare system and furthering what it called the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
These attacks, it asserted, reflect an intent to deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and to enforce mass displacement and forced evacuation on the civilian population.
Just hours before the evacuation order to Sheikh Radwan Clinic, Israeli forces bombed and destroyed the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, one of the last operational medical centers in the southern part of the Strip.
The GMO reports that there are currently 38 hospitals that have been directly bombed, arson-damaged, destroyed, or forced to close. Dozens of additional health centers have been damaged or rendered non-functional by ongoing Israeli attacks.
“The deliberate and systematic targeting of healthcare facilities, including hospitals, clinics, and medical staff, constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity under the Fourth Geneva Convention, international humanitarian law, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” the statement said.
The Media Office underscored that international silence and inaction have emboldened Israel to persist in what it described as genocide against more than 2.4 million besieged Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The GMO placed direct blame on Israel, as well as its key allies, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, for enabling and sustaining these “repeated and systematic crimes.”
It called on the international community to take urgent and concrete action, including deploying UN investigation teams to document violations, prosecuting Israeli leaders in international courts for war crimes, protecting the remnants of Gaza’s health sector, establishing safe humanitarian corridors for medical aid, and evacuating the wounded and critically ill for treatment abroad.
“The continued targeting of hospitals and clinics poses an existential threat to hundreds of thousands of civilians, placing the international community before a critical moral and legal test that demands urgent action, not delay or denial of responsibility,” the statement concluded.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also issued a warning on Thursday regarding the worsening health conditions in Gaza, emphasizing that there is not much time left to save lives in the besieged region.
This comes as the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, said that Israel knows what is happening inside Gaza and shares the UN’s assessment of the scope of the famine risk.
The organization added that the health system is suffering severely and faces an acute shortage of medicines, medical supplies, and equipment. As the main provider of medical supplies in Gaza, its stocks are running low, threatening to interrupt many essential health services. Shipments are waiting minutes away, but the blockade prevents them from entering, forcing hospitals to ration what supplies they have left.
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