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Our colleague Abdullah Hammad was killed last week by Israeli forces as he waited to collect flour from an aid truck in Khan Younis. He is the 12th Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleague to have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. The Israeli-US food distribution scheme forces people in Gaza to choose between starvation and risking their life for minimal supplies. With more than 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme has had the effect of luring desperate people in with aid, only for them to be slaughtered by the Israeli armed forces.
This is part of the genocide that is being committed in Gaza. And the UK government is complicit.
At the beginning of April, we at MSF UK wrote to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, detailing our first-hand observations in Gaza. We described the massive influxes of wounded patients and dead bodies being received by MSF teams in medical facilities across Gaza on 18 March, as Israeli forces unleashed attacks of unprecedented intensity, shattering the short-lived ceasefire. We explained that MSF medical staff and their patients had already had to evacuate 17 health facilities and had endured a massive number of violent incidents, including airstrikes damaging and destroying hospitals and health facilities, tanks opening fire on humanitarian shelters, ground offensives being conducted in medical facilities, and humanitarian convoys and ambulances being fired upon by the Israeli military. We noted that not a single hospital in Gaza was currently fully functional, and that about half of them were no longer functioning at all. And we described the complete siege imposed by the Israeli authorities on Gaza.
We noted that this evidence was consistent with the description of ethnic cleansing and genocide provided by legal experts and human rights organisations. We requested a meeting to brief the foreign secretary further and to hear what concrete actions the UK planned, to hold Israel to account for its atrocities against the Palestinian people.
We did not receive a response.
So on 7 May, MSF wrote an open letter to the prime minister describing the use of starvation and collective punishment as weapons of war by the Israeli government against an entire population. We implored the UK government to uphold its obligations as a permanent member of the UN security council to act under international humanitarian law to protect all civilians in Gaza. We also called on the UK government to publicly condemn the Israeli government for the atrocities it is inflicting on the people of Gaza. We warned that failure to take immediate action and to adopt a clear position on these extensively documented and flagrant war crimes and breaches of international law would leave the UK government at high risk of charges of complicity.
We did not receive a response.
In fact, since 1 November 2023 we have repeatedly contacted the government to provide evidence of atrocities directly witnessed and experienced by our hundreds of colleagues in Gaza, to remind the UK of its power and its obligation to act, and to request an urgent high-level meeting.
We never received clear acknowledgment of the evidence that we have provided, nor have we ever been offered that meeting.
We can only conclude that the UK government just does not want to admit what everybody else can see: that genocide is being committed in Gaza, and it is being committed with the military, diplomatic and material support of the UK.
Eventually, on 23 June, we did receive a letter from the parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer. It was woefully inadequate and did not address any of our points. It said only: “We need further action from the Israeli government now to lift all restrictions on aid, to enable the UN and aid partners to do their work, and to ensure that food and other critical supplies can reach people safely.”
But aid will not stop a genocide. We also need the Israeli government to stop the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity, and to abide by international law and the advice of the international court of justice (ICJ).
Since October 2023, the entire population of the Gaza Strip has been subjected to relentless bombardment by the Israeli armed forces. Gaza’s healthcare system has been destroyed, and medical workers, including our MSF colleagues, are systematically targeted by the Israeli military.
Due to the siege imposed by Israel and the obstruction of humanitarian aid, more than 2 million people are currently on the brink of starvation as part of a calculated strategy aimed at eradicating Palestinian society.
The UK government must acknowledge and respect the rulings of the ICJ, and abide by international law and the advisory of the ICJ regarding the plausibility of genocide. MSF has a responsibility to act with moral clarity and humanitarian consistency in the face of mass atrocities.
The same should apply to the UK government.
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Dr Natalie Roberts is the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières UK
