The situation in Gaza is “dangerous”, “catastrophic”, “terrifying”. The adjectives distilled by two of the members of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who know first-hand what is happening on the strip could not be more graphic. As soon as he managed to leave Gaza last week, one of them, the Valencian anesthetist Raúl Incertis, described the siege that Israel exercises on the civilian population of a territory that it bombs incessantly as an “inhuman cage.” This Monday he insisted on that idea again during a telematic meeting with a group of media, including La Vanguardia, in which the general coordinator of MSF in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, David Cantero, also participated.
Incertis's account is heartbreaking as he describes the calamities he observed during the month he spent in Gaza, until Israel finally allowed foreigners and a handful of wounded to leave the strip last Wednesday through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Already in Valencia, this doctor is especially sensitive to the suffering of Gazan children and their mental health. “I worry about the psychological trauma that will be left after this,” he says. “I'm concerned about the immediate health of the children and the subsequent mental health of the children,” he insists. “Children have died in UN centers,” he denounces.
“Everyone is wondering: if they told us to go down to the south, why are they bombing the south,” says Incertis, who describes the frequency of bombings as “impressive,” including those by naval artillery.
The anesthetist arrived in Gaza on October 1 to work at the Al Awda hospital, where he participated in reconstructive surgeries on boys who “throw stones at the Israeli soldiers” on the other side of the border fence and they “respond by throwing special bullets at the ankles.” ”.
After the Hamas attacks on October 7, his life took a turn, like that of the other 21 foreign members of MSF who were in the strip before the attack and who were evacuated with him. “From there until we left, it was a constant rush,” he explains. “We moved four times in three weeks, I think that says it all,” he adds.
In one of the centers where they were during their transit, Incertis counted only twelve toilets in a place where 35,000 people were sheltering. For this reason, the medical organization warns of the probable appearance of epidemics. There are already some cases of chickenpox and many respiratory diseases. “There has been no garbage collection since the start of the war” and the wastewater service is “very poor,” says David Cantero.
Incertis says it did not see any tunnels, like the ones Israel claims Hamas has built under hospitals. The doctor plans to return to Gaza when he can, although at the moment there is a team of dozens of MSF members -specialized in war healthcare- in Cairo awaiting authorization from Israel to enter the strip. The NGO still has more than 300 Palestinian health workers working in Gaza, many of whom have lost their families completely.
Regarding the bombings, Incertis explains Israel's perverse method of warning Palestinians that their building is about to be attacked. “The civilian population is normally notified by text message; Therefore, it is difficult for it to reach those who do not have a cell phone,” he says. The warning generally occurs five minutes before, the residents leave the building and it is bombed; This is the “most common mode.” Then there is the modality that Incertis describes as “psychological terror,” which consists of Israel warning of the attack, people evacuating their homes but ultimately the building is not bombed. The third method that the Valencian doctor summarizes is: “They warn that they are going to bomb the building; “People go to the next building… and then they bomb the next building.”
“The collective punishment to which the population of Gaza is being subjected has to stop,” says David Cantero from Jerusalem, who demands the “massive unrestricted entry of humanitarian aid,” including fuel. “Water, medicine, food and fuel,” he insists. “To date, not a single truck with fuel has entered,” he says.
Without fuel, desalination plants do not operate to obtain drinking water. Without fuel, the generators that power the devices to which many patients in hospitals are connected do not work, and they otherwise face certain death. Gasoline is also needed to distribute the humanitarian aid that until now is entering Gaza in dribs and drabs, but which should amount to hundreds of trucks to alleviate the suffering of the population.
“More than a hundred health structures have been attacked and 150 health workers have died,” says Cantero, recalling that ambulances are also the target of Israeli attacks. “There is no respect” for health professionals. “I have never seen a similar situation like this,” he adds, insisting that it is a “total blockade of people inside and out.”
Cantero says that disinfections are being carried out with vinegar and explains the case of a child who had to undergo an amputation, who was operated on on the hospital floor without anesthesia and in front of his mother.
And regarding Israel's supposedly selective bombings, Cantero ironically asks: "How can you be selective by bombing one of the most densely populated areas on the planet."
The MSF coordinator in Palestine also denounces that attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank occur "every day", as do the "thousands and thousands of arrests" that Israel is carrying out in the other occupied territory.
