Strikes, raids and incursions: Seven months of relentless attacks on healthcare in Palestine

While the past seven months have been devastating for communities in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and in Israel, from a medical humanitarian perspective, the violence faced by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank far pre-date 7 October. It is important to recall that there was already a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza strip, caused by Israel’s 16-year blockade of the enclave.  

On 6 October 2023, MSF was running medical humanitarian activities in Palestine, specifically in Hebron, Jenin, Nablus, Masafer Yatta, and the Gaza Strip. On that day, our colleagues were tending to patients in Gaza wounded by so-called butterfly bullets, fired by Israeli snipers at people as they protested in the days and weeks prior to the war that engulfed the region on 7 October. We were also treating 87 patients for long-term injuries (down from an original patient cohort of almost 900), sustained in the Great March of Return escalation in 2018 and 2019.

Our medical staff were also continuing to treat patients wounded in the war of 2021, sparked by the seizure and settlement of property in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, and resulting in the gravest escalation since 2014 with thousands of Palestinians displaced, massive levels of destruction, and hundreds killed.

The attacks of 7 October and the collective punishment that followed represent a paradigm shift in the way MSF has been able to operate in Palestine. Without operations in Israel, the first thing our colleagues witnessed on 7 October were Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, immediately following Hamas attacks estimated to have killed some 1,200 people with the taking of 253 hostages. On 8 October, MSF offered support to the Israeli Ministry of Health, which ultimately was not accepted.