Palestinians walk near rubble and destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 10.Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Sana Bég is the Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Canada
“When Karam was brought into the emergency room, I didn’t notice it was my son. He had no human features on him. There were no clothes left on him. His body was completely black. His eyes were closed.”
These were the words a Palestinian father shared with my colleague after he saw his wounded son in the emergency room at Al-Aqsa Hospital in January, after an Israeli air strike hit their Gaza home.
The boy and his sister were among the only surviving family members after the strike. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Ministry of Health staff at the hospital performed six rounds of plastic surgery on the boy’s severely burned body.
For over a year, my colleagues in Gaza and the West Bank have shared countless stories like this. Brutal violence has left fathers unable to identify their sons, children unable to look in the mirror after life-changing wounds, and it has left breastfeeding mothers and their babies exposed to a multitude of health risks. Meanwhile, world leaders are publicly demonstrating an apparent numbness to the lives of the tens of thousands of people who have been killed and injured during this war. Their unwillingness to put their full diplomatic weight toward a ceasefire – the one action that can uphold humanity in this war – is unconscionable.
Instead, over the past year of war, world leaders resigned themselves to measures that kept Palestinians alive longer, rather than truly protecting the preciousness of their lives and humanity.
For example, after the Ministry of Health reported that an infant boy was diagnosed with type-2 poliovirus in August, the WHO and Israel agreed on a three-day “military pause” to allow polio vaccinations for children. Little was said at the time about why polio – a disease that did not exist in Gaza for the past 25 years – re-emerged at all: as a consequence of a war that attacked and destroyed the water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as the health system and vaccination services. It is pitiful that the re-emergence of a once-eradicated disease only compelled world leaders to enforce a three-day “pause,” only to once again subject Palestinians to repeated bombings and deprivation in the weeks and months ahead.
Similarly, this summer, when faced with the reality of catastrophic levels of food insecurity and suffering in Gaza, world leaders responded with several inadequate plans to improve the flow of humanitarian assistance. Instead of realizing an end to war or allowing sufficient food and supplies into Gaza, world leaders could only muster several bizarre alternatives, including the now-scrapped U.S. plan for a floating pier to deliver more aid to the Gaza Strip, and initiatives to airdrop aid despite the significant safety and logistical challenges associated with these measures.
These futile attempts to address the horrific impacts of war have allowed the war itself to continue with the same disastrous effects. Both Israel and Hamas have routinely conducted battles near medical facilities, endangering patients, medical staff and caretakers. Attacks against health care have become commonplace. Today, the situation is worse than ever.
One year later, what life has managed to be preserved in Gaza despite all odds continues to be tormented by disease, displacement, hunger and the enduring effects of trauma. Our psychological support teams struggle to define what they are seeing as post-traumatic stress disorder. There is no “post,” they tell us – it is ongoing, unending, acute stress and trauma ravaging peoples’ minds.
These shameful consequences of one year of inaction are laid bare for all to see. The past year has clearly illustrated hypocrisy by the U.S., Britain, Germany, Australia and other nations, as they speak in favour of a ceasefire while still providing military and diplomatic backing for Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza.
Canada has an important role to play in the current catastrophe – one where it must show the political will and moral courage to demand that Palestinians deserve more than to be relegated to being the living dead, that they deserve a life of dignity, to be resilient, vibrant and have hopes and dreams similar to ours. Canada has already repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but these words are not enough. Ottawa must now use its full diplomatic power to put pressure on the United States and other allies providing military and financial support to Israel to ensure their support is not used to destroy Palestinian lives, attack hospitals and block humanitarian assistance when it’s most needed.
For the countless Palestinians who are clinging to life as I write, we can and must do better.