British doctor warns Gaza aid restrictions amount to bogus excuses

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 14 November 2024

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By Lemma Shehadi

LONDON - Israel's reasons for restricting medical aid into Gaza have been dismissed as “bogus” by a UK surgeon, who called on the British government to take more assertive action to end the military onslaught.

Prof Nizam Mamode worked for a month across August and September at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, where the vast majority of casualties he treated were women and children. He experienced “one to two mass casualty events” a day, in which between 10 to 20 people were killed and up to 40 injured. “If this isn’t a genocide, then I don’t know what is,” he told The National, adding that Israel was “deliberately killing civilians”.

“There is no escape for people. They can’t really leave. There is a deliberate targeting of medical infrastructure and healthcare workers,” he said.

Prof Mamode served for years as the clinical lead for transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, a major NHS hospital in London. He met MPs from the International Development Committee on Tuesday to tell them of the dire hospital conditions in Gaza.

Britain faces pressure from UK-based charities and legal organisations to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, as well as on the sale of components for F-35 fighter jets, which are made in the US and then sold to Israel.

The government has also been criticised for abstaining from September's UN General Assembly vote seeking to enforce an International Court of Justice opinion, which deemed Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories illegal.

Prof Mamode urged the government to take concrete measures to stop Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “We really can’t keep saying 'this is terrible'. We have to do something about it,” he told The National. “It’s mind-boggling to me that those in power can’t see or don’t want to see what’s going in Gaza.”

The UK would regret its support for Israel in the future if it continued. “If the UK government doesn’t do something soon, it’s going to be ashamed of itself when it looks back,” he said.

Medical aid

The committee scrutinises the UK government’s international aid spending. It held its first hearing on Gaza since the Labour government came into power in early July.

It comes as a US-imposed 30-day deadline for Israel to “surge” more aid into Gaza after more than a year of war expires on Tuesday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says progress on letting aid in had been “insufficient”.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said Israeli restrictions on aid were “impossible to justify”. He condemned Israel's move to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which risked “jeopardising the entire international humanitarian response in Gaza”.

Prof Mamode said the shortages of medical equipment, which he witnessed before the 30-day deadline was imposed, were “phenomenal”. “We ran out of swabs, sterile gowns, catheters, all the devices you need are all gone. You can’t do many investigations because they don’t have the reagents,” he said.

He has served as a doctor in many other conflicts, including at the time of the Rwandan genocide but has never seen anything like Gaza. “It’s astonishing,” he said. “I’ve never come across a conflict zone where there are deliberate restrictions on medical supplies and medical aid for healthcare workers trying to deal with civilian casualties.”

Suspected use of autonomous drones

At the hearing, Prof Mamode regularly cried as he told MPs of casualties being brought in donkey carts. Children were being attacked by drones and he regularly removed “small cuboid pellets”, including from the neck of an injured child who was about three years old, he added. She died days later.

He suggested there was new evidence that autonomous drones were being used in attacks that left people with several wounds in the shoulders and groin. “We thought it was prima facie evidence of an autonomous or semi-autonomous drone because a human drone operator would not be able to fire with that degree of accuracy that quickly,” he said.

Drone shots were “more destructive” than ordinary gunfire. “If you're shot in the chest with a bullet, if it misses your heart and goes out the other side, you'll probably survive,” he added. “With the drone pellets, what I found is that they would go in and they would bounce around, and it would cause multiple injuries.”

After hearing evidence about Israeli snipers shooting medics, including one through her Palestinian Red Crescent badge, MP Sarah Champion, who chairs the committee, criticised the failures of the outside world to contain the war.

“I am personally ashamed the international community has not done more to stop what you are describing Any attack on medical workers is a despicable, horrifying act.”

Worsening access

Access to medical aid when he went into Gaza in August was worse than at the beginning of the year, Prof Mamode said. “In January, [medical] people were bringing in external fixators to fix fractures, and other bits and pieces,” he told The National.

But he was unable even to carry thyroid medication for a patient as part of an aid convoy. “If those were found on you, and they [the Israeli military] realise this isn’t for you [because] you don’t have a thyroid condition, not only do you get sent back but the whole convoy gets sent back,” he said.

“Their excuses for not letting the aid in are bogus excuses. There is no excuse for saying medical aid workers can’t bring in supplies.”

Among Prof Mamode’s patients was seven-year-old boy Amir, who was shot at by a drone after being hit by a bomb.

“They dropped a bomb and he was lying on the ground afterwards,” the doctor said. “He heard a drone, turned his head and saw it hanging above him, and it shot him. He ended up with his stomach lying out of his chest.”

Amir sustained other injuries to his liver, spleen and bowel. But Prof Mamode and his team were able to treat him successfully and he returned home within a week.

But Amir is one of a handful of lucky ones. One girl had “both legs and one arm blown off, left eye was in pieces, severe abdominal injuries”, Prof Mamode recalled. “She almost died on the table. We operated on her and she survived for 12 hours … and died.”

Many of his patients didn’t survive and those who did often succumbed to disease due to poor hygiene in the hospital. “The risk of infection in the wards was huge. Basic hygiene products like soap and shampoo are not allowed in. For what reason, I don’t know,” he said.

Lethal disregard

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as “human shields” by conducting operations from residential areas and building “command and control” centres in hospitals. The accusation was echoed by Mr Starmer last October when he was in opposition.

Prof Mamode described the claims as “nonsense”, adding that most of his casualties came from densely populated areas where civilians were sheltering in tents or buildings.

“There’s no front line,” he told The National. “In a conventional war, you have two groups of soldiers battling each other, and civilians will get caught up in that. In this situation, the Israelis will destroy a whole apartment building and say there were Hamas fighters there.”

Instead, Israel was attacking tents and buildings simply on the suspicion that a Hamas member could have been there, he added. An aid convoy was shot at five times while Prof Mamode was in Gaza.

Gaza 'resembling Hiroshima', UK MPs told by witness

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 13 November 2024

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LONDON - Eyewitnesses and experts addressed British MPs in a session on Tuesday, where they described the situation in Gaza as "catastrophic".

Doctors and medical staff on the ground in Gaza painted a grim picture for UK members of parliament on Tuesday, describing the dire healthcare crisis gripping the besieged enclave.

During a meeting with MPs and the International Development Committee, they shared firsthand accounts of overcrowded hospitals, severe shortages of medical supplies, and relentless violence impacting civilians.

Professor Nizam Mamode, a former transplant surgery specialist who had spent time in the Nasser Hospital, which Israeli forces raided and besieged in February, spoke of his experience in Gaza.

He told the MPs that the scenes he witnessed "resembled Hiroshima and Nagasaki," with devastated landscapes and buildings reduced to rubble.

"Most people in Gaza have been forced to move six or seven times," he said.

"There are constant drones, which existed before October last year - this has been a feature of Palestinian life for some time - but now they instil fear" he added.

Mamode was in Gaza from mid-August to mid-September and said much of what he saw was distressing.

"There were clear, deliberate, and persistent acts, where after a bomb would drop, drones would come and target civilians and children… 60 percent of the people we treated were women and children," he said.

"The bullets the drones fire are small cuboid pellets, which I fished out of children. The youngest I operated on was a three-year-old who had a major injury to the artery in her neck. We used our last material we had in the hospital…she died about three or four days later from infection" he added, stating there was no question the attacks were intentional.

Mamode said even basic medical equipment, such as swabs, sterile gloves and paracetamol were unavailable in Gaza.

"Medical aid was sitting at the border and not allowed in. We were not allowed to bring in any medicine except for personal use, and that’s a policy which is a deliberate restriction," he said, adding that wounds often had maggots in due to a lack of hygiene and essentials such as soap.

During the session, witnesses said conditions such as Hepatitis A spread were widely in Gaza due to a lack of vaccinations and hygiene.

Speakers also noted that many medical workers had minimal experience or training, as numerous specialists had been killed or were detained by Israeli forces.

Speakers highlighted that malnutrition and disease were among the most significant challenges faced by Palestinians in the enclave, while those with pre-existing conditions, such as cancer, saw their health deteriorate - described as the "uncounted costs of war."

Mamode noted that UN convoys were directly fired at by Israeli forces, emphasising that a significant number of aid workers had been "deliberately targeted".

"There was a deeply troubling pattern of victims with three or four gunshot wounds to the shoulder or groin, indicating the use of a semi-autonomous drone… one seven-year-old boy came in with his stomach exposed; whether he is still alive, I don’t know," Mamode said, describing the patients who arrived at the hospital where he was working.

'Catastrophic consequences'

During the session, Sam Rose, the senior deputy director for UNRWA affairs in Gaza, highlighted the dire situation in Gaza caused by Israel's bans and restrictions on the organisation'ss operations.

"The impact [of the ban] will be devastating…when people live in the squalor they are living in, diseases spread massively, like we have seen with polio recently," he said, noting that no other organisation in the Gaza had the capacity to carry out the assistance UNRWA was providing.

Rohan Talbot, the director of advocacy for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said that Gaza would slip into "total system collapse" if UNRWA was banned.

"It would be impossible for other organisations to fill the gap that UNRWA has left, as it is the backbone of humanitarian aid, in terms of clinics, logistics and food distribution," he said.

"Our priority needs to be to protect UNRWA as there is no viable alternative," he added.

The speakers said that allowing aid into the Strip would make a significant difference and save many lives.

The session concluded with speakers expressing that many Palestinians feel abandoned by the international community and emphasizing the urgent medical needs in the Strip, including essentials like antibiotics, swabs, gowns, catheters, specialized imaging equipment, and dialysis machines.

Monday's session marked the second time British MPs held a hearing to receive evidence on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others since 7 October 2023. The war, described by many as genocide, has devastated entire neighbourhoods and plunged the strip into a deep humanitarian crisis.

Intolerable conditions in northern Gaza ‘beyond imagination’

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 09 November 2024

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GENEVA - The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory appealed on Tuesday for an end to the war and suffering in Gaza during his first visit to the area since Israel launched its latest military operation in the north a month ago.

Muhannad Hadi spoke to UN News from the Al-Mamouniya School in Gaza City run by the UN agency that assists Palestine refugee, UNRWA.

Like the rest of UNRWA’s schools that are still standing as war continues, it now serves as a shelter for displaced people seeking safety in the besieged enclave where nowhere is safe.

An ‘unbearable’ situation

“This is not a place for humans to survive,” he said. “This must end. This misery must end. This war must end. This is beyond imagination.”

Mr. Hadi stated that what he saw was “very different” from what he saw in northern Gaza in September.

“At this school, I have seen families and people living on top of each other. It is unbearable here. I can't imagine how those people are surviving,” he said.

“There were 500 people in this school in September, and now there are more than 1,500 people. There is no access to bathroom. There are shortages of food. The situation is unbearable. Sewage water is everywhere. Waste is everywhere. The place has garbage everywhere.”

‘Just water and lentils’

From a window on the second floor of the damaged school, mountains of garbage can be seen piling up in the yard – a symbol of the immense health hazards and harsh conditions that the people inside face.

Critical supplies including food are scarce in northern Gaza. As Mr. Hadi walked around the school, whose structure had been damaged by the bombing, he met a man who was preparing lentil soup for his family.

Mr. Hadi was told that the lentils had been provided by UNRWA and that the small pot the man carried was supposed to feed 12 people. 

"It's just water and lentils; no garlic or onions,” he remarked, noting that “one chili pepper pod costs 10 shekels today."

‘We want to have fun’

The senior UN official also visited a temporary learning space called Al-Nayzak on Al-Jalaa Street. Tents have been set up on the destroyed thoroughfare to provide a minimum education and a safe place for local children to deal with the horrors they have endured since the war erupted last October.

At the temporary school, 11 teachers - men and women - provide courses in Arabic, English, maths, science and psychosocial support to 510 students.

Mr. Hadi played with young children, aged between three and five years old. Many were supposed to be in kindergarten, but the war has deprived them of the opportunity to learn in real classrooms.

He met a girl who said she lost her parents and home in the war, and now lives with her cousins who have also become orphans. Her school used to be located near the Al-Nayzak learning space, but like most schools in Gaza it was destroyed by shelling.

The girl told him that they cook rice at home when given the opportunity, but often rely on humanitarian organizations to provide them with meals. When Mr. Hadi asked her what she wanted to do when the war ended, she replied, "We want to have fun and enjoy ourselves, and go where we want to go."

The top UN humanitarian official also visited the headquarters of the Atfaluna Association for Deaf Children, where students taught him sign language.

The association provides lessons in English, Arabic, maths, science, physical education and the arts to 35 children, some of whom are learning how to deal with their new disability after losing their hearing due to heavy shelling.

Stop the war

Mr. Hadi told UN News that he had heard horrific stories from people he met in northern Gaza and stressed the need to stop the war. 

“What people are going through here, no one can tolerate. Those are the victims of this war. Those are the ones who are paying the price for this war - those children around me here, the women, elderly,” he said.

The heads of 15 UN and international humanitarian organizations recently affirmed that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

The officials said humanitarian workers were not safe to do their work, and that Israeli forces and insecurity prevented them from reaching those in need.

Since the war began in October 2023, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and 100,000 injured, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.

The UN estimates that more than 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes within the enclave, many of whom have fled from one unsafe place to another multiple times.