Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – Physicians for Human Rights in Israel accused the occupation army of systematically and deliberately destroying the health care system in the Gaza Strip, and considered it a war crime.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera Live, Lina Qassem – head of the organization’s administrative body – revealed the dimensions of the damage and destruction caused to the health system, explaining that the Israeli army destroyed about 140 health institutions, including 30 hospitals, and also caused 53 medical centers to go out of service.
Lina said, “Israel systematically destroyed the health system in the Gaza Strip, and from the first day of the war it tried to delegitimize this system by claiming that Hamas used health facilities to fight,” explaining that “Israel was unable to provide any evidence for its claims.”
Lina Qassem questioned Israel’s claims regarding the use of hospitals by Hamas, and explained that there is a large gap between these allegations and the evidence provided by Israel, especially since Israel did not allow a neutral third party to verify this.
The official at Physicians for Human Rights stated that the health disaster that occurred in the Gaza Strip is unprecedented in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or in any other conflict in the world, and that Israel used attacks on hospitals as a means of war, which represents a complete violation of international law. And to the Geneva Conventions.
The Israeli organization held the Israeli government responsible for the crime of destroying the health sector in Gaza, and also called on the United Nations and the relevant authorities to investigate it as a war crime and a violation of international law.
Lina Qassem stressed that Israel’s targeting of the health system was not limited to institutions only, but also affected human cadres: “350 journalistic workers were killed, 500 others were injured, and about 100 were arrested, which practically led to paralysis of the entire system.”
She pointed out that the Israeli army’s call for medical institutions to evacuate their patients and staff before attacking them is “unrealistic, and the army should have taken responsibility for the evacuation.”
