Humanitarians Warn Israel Is Rapidly Erasing Northern Gaza: ‘We Feel Hopeless’

Humanitarians, aid groups and Palestinian civilians are desperately trying to tell the world that the Israeli military is essentially wiping northern Gaza off the map, with its weekslong siege involving relentless bombing, the destruction of hospitals and other infrastructure, and the ongoing aid blockade that is worsening both hunger and medical care.

Israeli forces have been carrying out a major ground invasion of the territory’s northern region for 19 days now, walling off Palestinians from the rest of a besieged Gaza. In that time, Israeli soldiers have killed more than 770 people in the north, particularly in the crowded Jabalia refugee camp, according to the Government Media Office.

“Dead bodies are strewn across the streets, with no safe place left. The situation is catastrophic,” Rana Soboh, a MedGlobal nutrition technical advisor who lives in Gaza City, said on Tuesday.

The death toll is likely much higher given that many people are still buried under rubble, while emergency workers struggle to access homes under attack without getting killed themselves. The Palestinian Civil Defense announced on Wednesday that it has “completely gone out of service” in northern Gaza, after the Israeli military detained some colleagues and targeted others with a drone. The emergency rescue group has been a massive resource for pulling Palestinians from under the rubble and putting out fires.

“The Israeli occupation is now completely eliminating all service providers present in the northern Gaza Strip, and ending all humanitarian services there,” said a member of the group, which posted a video showing Israeli soldiers shooting at rescuers trying to respond to a family whose home was bombed in Jabalia.

The unending attacks have led to waves of patients arriving at northern Gaza’s three hospitals: Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and Al-Awda. But Israeli forces have now besieged those facilities, collapsing the region’s health care system as a way to systemically erase the Palestinian population.

“There is death in all types and forms in Kamal Adwan Hospital and North Gaza,” Dr. Mohammed Obeid, a Palestinian orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, said on Wednesday. “The bombardment does not stop. The artillery does not stop. The planes do not stop. There is heavy shelling, and the hospital is [being] targeted too. It just looks like a movie ― it does not seem real.”

As of Tuesday, Soboh said Kamal Adwan was treating 95 critically injured patients, 15 of whom were in intensive care on ventilators. On Wednesday, Obeid said there are 130 critically injured, on top of 30 already dead inside the facility he is working and sheltering with his family after Israeli forces bombed his home five days ago.

“Medical staff are exhausted, and many are injured as well,” he said. “We feel hopeless. I just don’t have words.”

In addition to operating long hours with little food, the medical workers in Gaza are facing the risk of Israeli bombardment. On Wednesday, the military killed Dr. Mohammed Ghanim in an attack on Kamal Adwan. Ghanim was an emergency physician who wrote five entries about his experience working at several hospitals this year as Israel attacked them one by one.

“I hope this war ends soon and that I don’t have to write ‘My Journey #6,’” he wrote.

All the hospitals do not have the medical equipment and supplies needed to treat the wounded patients, and some have been without water for days. The lack of supplies, electricity, hygiene and hospital capacity means several patients succumbed to their injuries.

Humanitarians led by the World Health Organization arrived Monday at Kamal Adwan to help evacuate 14 critical patients and 11 caretakers to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. This was the humanitarians’ fourth attempt to reach Kamal Adwan, after facing hostilities and Israeli checkpoints.

But despite an initial agreement between authorities and humanitarians, Israel denied their request to bring aid like food, fuel, blood and medication, according to WHO. Israel has only allowed a trickle of aid to enter the north, blocking all but four of the 70 attempts by humanitarian groups to deliver aid to the region, according to the United Nations.

“People suffering under the ongoing Israeli siege in north Gaza are rapidly exhausting all available means for their survival,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Israel’s massive air and ground operations combined with the resulting mass displacement and access restriction has also forced WHO to pause the third phase of its polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza. Delaying the administration of a second vaccine dose for children will “seriously jeopardize efforts to stop the transmission of poliovirus in Gaza,” the agency said.

In addition to the bombardment and the health care collapse, Israeli authorities are also ridding the north of Palestinians by forced evacuations to the south ― sometimes by gunpoint, according to Al Jazeera ― and arrests that appear to look closer to abductions.

Al Jazeera showed footage of Israeli soldiers driving away from Jabalia with a group of blindfolded Palestinian men, and the military’s aerial footage shows displaced Palestinians fleeing the area in large numbers while surrounded by tanks and destroyed buildings.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem accused the military on Tuesday of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in northern Gaza, saying that the magnitude of Israel’s actions in the region is “impossible to describe.”

“For a year now, since the war began, the international community has shown utter impotence to stop the indiscriminate attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip,” the group posted on social media. “Now, when it is clearer than ever that Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of gravest crimes under the laws of war, the world’s nations must take action.”