Wellington Healthcare Workers Demanding Overdue Government Action On Renewed Brutal Israeli Attacks On Gaza

Local healthcare workers supporting Palestine are demanding the government respond to yet another major attack on Gaza hospitals and arrests of hospital staff.

After Israeli troops attacked and set fire to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza on Friday, they arrested and tortured its Director, Hussam Abu Safiya, and removed hundreds of the hospital’s surviving staff and patients, for what Israel calls being ‘terrorist operatives’.

Aotearoa Healthcare Workers for Palestine (AHW4P) is demanding the New Zealand government break its complete silence on Israel now entering its third new year of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza.

AHW4P Chairperson, Nurse Practitioner Serena Moran says Israel has killed more than a thousand healthcare workers, in 1250 attacks on hospitals in Gaza since October last year and removed many healthcare workers for subsequent torture – some tortured to death.”

“Dr Abu Safiya is still recovering from injuries he received in an Israeli attack last month. He was stripped in the freezing cold and taken to an undisclosed location without charge.”

“Dr Abu Safiya has tirelessly advocated for his patients’ rights, and these gruesome events starkly illustrate how governments of the western world are complicit in a gross violation by Israel of international law, specifically Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention,

which states “the wounded and sick must be respected and protected in all circumstances” and that “healthcare workers should not be subject to any form of coercion or violence.”

“Israel is targeting the hospitals – along with aid workers and journalists - in its destruction of Gaza, which the UN, the International Court of Justice and now Amnesty International have called a genocide,” Serena Moran says.

“Israel has now destroyed the last remaining functional hospital in the whole of northern Gaza. Other ruined hospitals can’t treat the overflow from Kamal Adwan.”

The World Health Organisation has demanded an immediate cessation of Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza and unhindered access to healthcare, following further Israeli attacks on al-Ahli Hospital and al-Wafa Centre, both in Gaza City.

Moran says the Israeli government is still claiming its attacks on hospitals are defensive only, “But it’s impossible to ignore the Israeli ‘General’s Plan’ to depopulate northern Gaza through military attacks, disease and starvation.”

“The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is openly calling for Israel to expel half of Gaza’s Palestinian population within two years,” Moran says.

“The Israeli policy makers want to finish the job of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which Israel started in 1948”.

“Our government knows this but still says nothing. Yes, it’s criticised Israel’s illegal settlements on illegally occupied Palestinian Territory. But our government has no objection to Israel killing and driving Palestinians off that land to make new settlements possible.”

Moran says northern Gaza is the focus of current Israeli ethnic cleansing, it is not safe for anyone anywhere in Gaza.

“During Christmas week, three newborn babies in the Al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’ tent city in the south froze to death because Israel has shut off supplies of winter protection to the refugees there.”

“Our government must both speak out and sanction Israel. Anything else is condoning this barbarity.”

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