LONDON: Six health academics from around the world have accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting healthcare workers in Gaza and Palestine.
In an editorial published in BMJ Global Health, a British Medical Journal-owned peer-reviewed publication, the six focused on the deadly blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, describing it as “one of the most horrific attacks on a healthcare facility in our collective history,” and suggesting the devastation was caused by an airstrike.
The editorial alleged that Israeli forces intentionally target people’s limbs to cause more suffering and death in the occupied territories.
Both Israel and Hamas have denied responsibility for the hospital blast, and the cause remains unclear.
The editorial states: “These most recent, egregious healthcare-related attacks follow a long history of Israeli violence against health workers, the destruction of health infrastructure, the systematic obstruction of access to healthcare, and the implementation of settler-colonial strategies that aim to increase morbidity and mortality in occupied Palestine.”
Reports of the deaths of 20 health workers in Israeli airstrikes, as well as violence against staff working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency were also highlighted.
The authors claimed recent healthcare-related attacks are part of a broader pattern of Israeli violence against health workers.
These strategies include the destruction of Palestinian healthcare and other essential services; “exerting full control” over water and electricity supplies; and the “deliberate targeting of limbs, leading to traumatic limb loss and disability.”
The authors called for an “immediate deescalation of the threat posed by Israel to the lives of millions of Palestinian people.”
In a follow-up to the editorial, a spokesperson for the BMJ said the journal is making changes to the article, including replacing “airstrike” with “missile strike,” and acknowledging that the origin of the missile is yet to be determined.
