Hospitals should be safe spaces, but 'in Gaza, nowhere is safe': Oxfam expert
Mouhamad Rachini | CBC Radio | Posted: October 18, 2023 6:33 PM | Last Updated: October 18, 2023
At least 500 people were killed in Al-Ahli Hospital blast, according to Gaza's Health Ministry
Bushra Khalidi has to hold back tears as she thinks about her family, friends and colleagues dealing with the dire situation in the Gaza Strip.
"People are calling us to find out the news because they can't follow what's going on," said the West Bank policy lead for Oxfam, a non-profit international development organization.
"People keep asking me, when are the borders going to open? When is aid coming in? I mean, it's harrowing calls with colleagues and family," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.
Earlier Tuesday, a blast at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed at least 500 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital, which is run by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem and was packed with both the wounded and those seeking shelter.
The Israeli military denied involvement in the explosion and blamed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad for it. U.S. President Joe Biden also blamed "the other team" for causing the blast.
Khalidi, who is currently in Ramallah in the West Bank, spoke to Galloway about the explosion, the situation in Gaza and the need for both humanitarian access and a ceasefire. Here's part of their conversation.
Can I get your reaction to this explosion at a hospital yesterday? It comes in the midst of a crisis that seems to escalate by the hour or by the minute. When you heard this news, what went through your mind?
Absolutely heart-shattering. The blame game on media has been also heart-shattering, just knowing the sheer amount of loss that happened with that attack, whoever or whatever party did it.
I think the question that we really need to ask ourselves is why were … people crammed in a hospital that was asked to evacuate a couple of days ago by the Israeli army? I think that's what we need to be trying to answer.
The hospitals were clear in the north that they were unable to evacuate because they were sheltering people that had nowhere else to go. They also had to treat patients that could not be actually physically evacuated out of the hospital.
Hospitals under international law are supposed to be safe places for people to seek shelter in, but in Gaza, nowhere is safe to go, clearly.
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If hospitals were already at the brink of collapse yesterday, I think that the entire Ministry of Health has today collapsed in Gaza.
What are your colleagues in Gaza telling you about how dire the situation is?
It's not just my colleagues, it's also my friends and my family that are there. There's no water in a place where it would be very easy to put the water back on for people.
People have lost their dignity, you know. They've lost their hope. They are telling me all they want is to have a shower. I mean, the situation is just unfathomable.
I think that the images and what we have been seeing speaks for itself. There's the smell of bodies everywhere. I mean, the shelters are … [at] a risk of infectious disease. All of the wastewater treatment plants have stopped operating, meaning that every single centimetre cube of sewage is being poured into the sea.
There's no water and there's no bread and there's no electricity and there's no internet, and they're completely isolated from the world.
The U.S. president is in Israel now and there are calls on him to do something to address the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding. What specifically needs to be done now to to alleviate the anguish that you've just described?
We need humanitarian access and we need a humanitarian ceasefire.
We have been clear in our calls. The international community has been clear in its calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire so that we can get medical teams inside Gaza and know that they can operate on patients and civilians safely.
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We need food, we need water, we need electricity. These are the immediate, urgent needs. But more than that, we need a political solution.
This is professional for you, but it's also I mean, as you said, it's very personal, and I just wonder how difficult it is for you to see this from a distance.
I think work allows me to see it from a distance. I've been in the sector for over 15 years, so I'm very familiar.
This has been a recurrent reality for us as Palestinians, but it's very difficult to hear your colleagues and your friends and your family on the phone completely hopeless and helpless and powerless and who have completely lost their sense of self-respect almost.
This is more about a call for humanity. We need immediate global attention and we need aid, but we need a political solution that goes beyond aid.
I'm sorry, I'm actually out of words. It's the first time somebody asked me this question and I just can't emphasize enough the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe that has happened.