“This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence (...) Whether these attacks on humanitarian workers are allowed is a political choice. Israel faces no political cost; On the contrary, their allies allow this brutality, with impunity, and provide even more weapons that kill civilians indiscriminately.” This is how the general secretary of Doctors Without Borders International, Christopher Lockyear, began a press video conference from Geneva before a hundred international journalists. It occurred in the wake of the death of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers two days earlier, but remembering that 208 humanitarian workers have already died in attacks, five of them from MSF; just “a fraction,” Lockyear said, of the nearly 33,000 dead since Oct. 7 in Gaza.
Coordination with the Israeli army? The three WCK cars were attacked by a drone, and “without political will,” Lockyear said, “the drones don't get the message.” “Part of the responsibility is coordination, but what we need is for the way this war is being fought to change; “The nature of the conflict we work on is the real factor.”
“The level of brutality is terrifying,” Lockyear insisted. Along with him, Dr. Amber Alayyan and Marie-Aure Perrault Revial, coordinators of activities in Gaza, spoke of bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds (almost a ton) dropped on urban areas that cause 99% of the injuries in southern Gaza. , of children hit by snipers and quadropter drones, of amputations that would not be necessary under other conditions, of respiratory infections, acute malnutrition and nursing mothers who cannot feed their babies, of chronically ill people who cannot be evacuated...
The Al Aqsa hospital, where the bodies of the seven WCK collaborators were taken, receives one hundred bodies a day. Before the war it had 200 beds, now it has to care for 600 patients. “There are so many people sheltering in hospitals that there is no room left to care for patients,” said Dr. Alayyan, concluding that “no health system in the world can handle all this.” For MSF, all these months have meant “thinking every day which hospital could be attacked” and making plans in this regard, noted Marie-Aure Perrault, and acknowledged: “We cannot, we are not capable, they do not allow us to deliver any significant humanitarian aid.” ”.
Twelve trucks with medical aid were turned away by Israeli authorities last week, “and it is very difficult to understand why,” according to Lockyear, who believes that “the image of humanitarian aid is being used, an illusion is being created,” because If before the war 500 trucks a day entered Gaza, now there are only 90. “The narrative of counting trucks and airdrops are not indicative of a success but rather the recognition of a failure.”
