On 23 March eight members of the Palestinian Red Crescent, six civil defence workers and one UN employee were shot dead by the Israeli army near Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, then buried in a mass grave. They were all clearly identifiable: wearing reflective clothing, they were travelling in three ambulances in the organisation’s colours, a fire engine and a UN-marked car.

Since the beginning of the October 2023 war, more than 400 humanitarian workers and 1,300 health professionals have been killed. Gaza is the deadliest place on earth for aid workers. Article 8 of the Rome Statute, the treaty upon which the International Criminal Court (ICC) was founded, defines ‘intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance [or peacekeeping] mission’ as a war crime. The 1949 Geneva Convention requires that belligerents protect civilians caught up in conflicts, and explicitly mentions the need for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent to be able to ‘offer its services’.

The murders on 23 March are part of Israel’s systematic attack on the Palestinian healthcare system. Hospitals are targeted for bombing and water and electricity cut off, preventing the few operational medical facilities from functioning and thereby causing more deaths among the wounded. Arrest warrants issued by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber for Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his then defence minister Yoav Gallant stated that the two were ‘intentionally limiting or preventing medical supplies and medicine from getting into Gaza, in particular anaesthetics and anaesthesia machines’, forcing doctors to ‘operate on wounded persons and carry out amputations, including on children, without anaesthetics’.

This destruction of the healthcare system is making life in Gaza impossible. The enclave has been under a total blockade since 2006 and is now ravaged by (…)

Full article: 1 766 words.

(1) “En Grèce, les médias se mettent en quête de bonnes nouvelles” (Greek media in search of good news), Agence France Presse, Paris, 28 December 2012.

(2) Out of a total of 5.2m in 2010, according to official statistics.

(3) The agreement signed in May 2010, which imposed austerity on Greece in return for its financial “rescue”.