Israel Orders New Mass Evacuation, Continuing Attacks on Gaza Health System DemocracyNow!, July. 3 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/3/dr_james_smith_gaza_healthcare_ceasefire
*The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders for eastern Khan Younis and Rafah, where more than 250,000 Palestinians are seeking shelter following multiple previous forced displacements. Monday’s order prompted a flight from European Hospital, one of the few remaining partially functioning hospitals in Gaza, which has now shut down. “The situation is dire,” says Dr. James Smith, an emergency medical doctor who spent nearly two months treating patients in the Gaza Strip before returning to London in June. “We have an obligation as healthcare workers, as public health advocates, to state very clearly … our demands not only for an immediate and sustained ceasefire, but an end to the Israeli occupation.”* *AMY GOODMAN*: In Gaza, an Israeli airstrike Tuesday afternoon on a building in Deir al-Balah inside an Israeli-declared safe zone killed at least a dozen people, including nine members of one family across three generations — grandparents, parents and children as young as 3 years old — this according to the Associated Press. Among those killed was Dr. Hossam Hamdan, head of the burns and plastic surgery department at Nasser Hospital. The family had fled their home in the middle of the night, after the Israeli military ordered new evacuation orders for areas in southern Gaza, including eastern Rafah and Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city. The United Nations estimates up to a quarter of a million people live in the area covered by the evacuation order, which has triggered the third mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza in as many months. Over a million people have fled Rafah since May following Israel’s invasion there, and tens of thousands have been displaced in the past week amidst a new Israeli offensive in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City. Monday’s evacuation order also prompted a frantic flight from European Hospital in eastern Khan Younis, one of the few remaining partially functioning hospitals in Gaza. The facility shut down after thousands of medical staff, patients and displaced families seeking shelter on the hospital grounds evacuated overnight. The Red Cross said some families dragged patients in their hospital beds through the streets for up to six miles to reach safety. More than 37,900 Palestinians have been killed and over 87,100 wounded in Gaza since October. There’s an unknown number of thousands dead in the rubble. . . . *DR. JAMES SMITH*: ... As you’ve mentioned, Dr. Hamdan was killed along with members of his family yesterday in a supposedly safe area. There are, on a daily basis, air and artillery strikes, naval shelling from the Israeli warships off the coastline in Gaza into areas that are supposedly safe areas. . . . *JUAN GONZÁLEZ*: And, Dr. Smith, what will happen to the — from your experience, to the many patients who were not able to evacuate that hospital? *DR. JAMES SMITH*: So, we know from the way that the Israeli military has behaved in its targeting, in its raids on and in the way that it’s besieged other healthcare facilities, that those patients that are unable to leave European Gaza Hospital now face the very grave threat of immediate Israeli violence. We know of patients that have been shot and injured within hospital compounds. We know of patients that have died in their hospital beds elsewhere in occupied Palestine, in the West Bank, of course. We know of Israeli troops that have raided healthcare facilities to assassinate Palestinians in their hospital beds. The risk that those patients face is phenomenally high now. . . . On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 3:50 PM Dayne Goodwin via groups.io <daynegoodwin= [email protected]> wrote: > *The scale of the horrors perpetrated by the IDF in these battles only > emerges through testimonies after fighting ends.* > by Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss, June 30, 2024 > > https://truthout.org/articles/second-invasion-of-al-shujaiyya-shows-israels-brutal-and-futile-gaza-strategy/ > . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30984): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30984 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106967709/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
