As Israel’s intensified assault on Gaza City increases risks for civilians and medical facilities, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has announced it is suspending its operations in the city, citing what it called an “unacceptable level of risk” to its staff and humanitarian activities.
The decision comes amid a deteriorating security environment that highlights the scale of the catastrophe facing Gaza’s health sector under a war that has become a campaign of genocide.
In a statement, the organisation said it had been forced to halt vital medical activities after the clinics it supports became encircled by Israeli forces.
The statement quoted Jacob Granger, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, as saying that humanitarian needs are enormous, while the most vulnerable, including newborns in care centres, people with severe injuries and patients requiring continuous treatment, have been left unable to move.
Granger stressed that the situation has made the continuation of medical work impossible, further compounding the severity of the humanitarian disaster.
The suspension of medical activities comes amid a large-scale assault launched by the Israeli army on Gaza City on 11 August, after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan to occupy the city on 8 August.
Israel has dubbed the operation “Gideon’s Chariots 2”, employing artillery bombardment, indiscriminate gunfire, the demolition of homes with explosive robots, as well as ground incursions and forced displacement, with the health sector becoming a direct target of these attacks.
This development is part of a broader, systematic war of extermination that Israel has been waging against the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 with direct US support. It has so far killed 65,549 Palestinians and injured 167,518 others, most of them women and children, while 442 people, including 147 children, have died from famine caused by siege and starvation.
MSF’s suspension of operations underlines that Gaza’s health system can no longer withstand the onslaught and that defenceless civilians have been left to face their fate without protection or treatment, one of the starkest images of the war on the Strip.
Deliberately disrupting medical services, blocking humanitarian aid and targeting health facilities are all acts that amount to crimes of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention and constitute a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which oblige an occupying power to protect civilians and ensure their medical care.
