People's Democracy

THE sheer brutality of the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine has received very little attention from the world media. The media, largely, has glossed over the widespread violations of human rights that are taking place in Palestine. The scale of such violations is evident from the manner in which the Israeli occupation forces, and private militias that support them, are targeting medical relief activities in the affected regions.

This blatantly contradicts the stipulations of the Geneva Convention for the protection of peoples under occupation, as well as other internationally ratified agreements pertaining to the provision of medical aid, emergency food rations, and all medical services to the wounded and sick and the general needs of the populace.

The Israeli army is prohibiting ambulances from moving within Ramallah and transporting the injured. As a result many of the injured were left to bleed to death. The Israeli occupation forces, have intentionally hit certain Palestinian hospitals, such as the Obstetrics Hospital in Ramallah, and shot at doctors and ambulance workers, wounding and killing some of them. The Arab Care Hospital was attacked and searched and the only two ambulances available to medical relief teams were confiscated by the Israeli forces. Israeli soldiers are believed to be using these ambulances in their raids against Palestinians. HDIP, a Health Research Institute, has also been ransacked and destroyed.

Water tanks have been destroyed and the main water supply cut in Ramallah. Electricity and telephones have also been cut, and the injured and ill are unable to receive medical care, while food is in short supply. Medical services are being particularly targeted, with instances of medics being arrested and beaten on the street. To provide some protection to relief workers, members of the Grassroots International Protection for Palestinians (GIPP), which includes nationals from France, Italy and Ireland, are moving around the affected areas with medical teams.

The most brutal assault on medical facilities was carried out by the Israeli occupation forces on The Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committee. Its building in Ramallah has been attacked and evacuated by the Israeli forces. Dr Jihaad Mashal, a UPMRC Director, is under house arrest. Dr Muhammad Scafie, a 45-year-old UPMRC doctor who has diabetes—the head of UPMRC’s First Aid wing -- was used as a human shield when the building was evacuated. Dr Scafie was then taken at gunpoint by the soldiers to all the surrounding houses and forced, to enter the houses after the soldiers had blasted the doors open. He was used as a human shield as the soldiers searched them. An Israeli tank attempted to shell a UPMRC ambulance as it was trying to access a patient, narrowly missing it. The local UPMRC clinic in Qalqiliya has been taken over by the occupation forces and is being used as an interrogation centre.

Even International aid agencies have not been spared. The Red Crescent hospital in Jenin has been bombed, and Israeli tanks have destroyed Red Crescent ambulances and Red Cross cars stationed outside the building. In Ramallah, Dr Nader Eideh the head of the Red Cross maternity hospital reports that Israeli soldiers entered the hospital and took away five staff members.

In Nablus three injured people were unable to be moved and were prevented from receiving medical care. Israeli troops, later, handed the three bodies over to the Palestinians—victims of this barbaric Israeli policy. All ambulances in the city are completely paralysed. The Red Cross arranged with the Israeli military authorities to allow the movement of 4 ambulances; two Red Crescent, one from Medical Relief and one from the UN. However, when the ambulances were moving, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them, destroying the engine of the UN ambulance. The medical staff were then removed from the ambulances; all of them then had their identification confiscated, and were ordered to return to the hospitals and not to move again.

The Nobel prize winning international medical relief organisation Médicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement on April 8, that the obstruction of medical aid for Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories has reached alarming new levels. It said that the MSF has experienced severe restrictions on its attempts to reach the most isolated families. MSF said that the ground situation is in total contradiction to the guarantees offered to its teams by the Israeli Defence Forces in the occupied Territories concerning freedom of movement for medical teams.

The MSF statement further added that it considers this to be effectively a removal of the right to access victims of the current conflict as it is also a removal of the right of the civilians to access medical care. It expressed grave concern about the apparent indifference of the army in such instances -- including not only the behaviour of the soldiers at checkpoints, but also the fact that the army is allowing independent armed militia to intervene, at will, in medical relief work.