2023-11-14 16:30:11
The impossible evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza
Evacuating patients from al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip is an “impossible task”, the WHO said on Tuesday, arguing that these people were very vulnerable and had nowhere else to go. Thousands of people remained trapped on Tuesday at the site of Gaza’s main hospital, amid fighting between Hamas and the Israeli army, which considers the location strategic for the Islamist movement.
A Palestinian injured at Al-Shifa hospital. — © Abed Khaled / keystone-sda.ch
This weekend, the Israeli representation in Geneva accused the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of having criticized Israel’s calls to evacuate the hospital. “For a month, we have been asking civilians and patients to evacuate the facility, which houses Hamas headquarters. Our goal is to prevent civilians from being trapped in an active combat zone,” wrote the Israeli representation on the social network X.
“Yet the WHO, ICRC and OCHA have consistently criticized our call, allowing Hamas to use the hospital, its patients and staff as human shields. The international community could have facilitated the transfer of patients, but it did nothing except denounce Israel and give Hamas carte blanche,” she added.
“Very vulnerable, very sick”
On Tuesday, a WHO spokesperson, Margaret Harris, explained that the patients in the hospital could not be evacuated because they “were very vulnerable, very sick”. “Moving them was therefore an impossible task,” she continued, reaffirming that it would have “killed” them.
She also argued that these patients cannot go to hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip because they are fewer in number and “completely overwhelmed”.
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