One year of genocide

Medact Staff & Dr James Smith – Trustee

This week marks a full year of Israel’s sustained military assault on Gaza, and throughout occupied Palestine. Shamefully, a year on, this violence has continued with the explicit support of the UK and US governments and scores of other states.

Our demands on the UK government remain the same: it must use its influence to bring about a ceasefire, and end all arms sales to Israel—anything less would mean unconscionable further complicity in the most deadly militarised violence of the 21st century.

Health impacts of catastrophic militarised violence

A year ago, Medact issued a statement calling for “an end to the bombardment and illegal siege on Gaza before the already-catastrophic toll on life and health worsens”, and another outlining the catastrophic health impact witnessed in just the first 10 days of Israel’s assault: mass death and displacement, the destruction of health facilities, health workers killed, and the use of white phosphorous. Since then, we have witnessed a constant stream of footage showing the human and environmental devastation caused by Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, and now Lebanon.

Adults, children and babies have been subjected to the most horrific violence. The recorded death toll has now reached over 41,600, and this can only be an underestimation of the true number of those killed—with indirect, longer-term consequences, we know it will be much higher.

Israel’s military campaign has wrought devastation in Gaza—which had already endured years of systematic deprivation under Israel’s illegal military blockade and occupation. Gaza now lacks functioning health, sanitation or education systems. Access to food, running water and shelter is extremely limited, while access to life-saving humanitarian aid has been intentionally withheld. Amongst a litany of catastrophic consequences, the first case of polio in 25 years has been diagnosed in a 10-month old who has been partially paralysed by the virus. Palestinians have been relentlessly bombed, sniped, starved, kidnapped, tortured and murdered every day of the last twelve months, with only a brief pause.

Since the early days of the assault, health workers have been unable to properly treat patients due to a lack of essential equipment and supplies, while working around the clock with what they have—even as their own family members have been conveyed injured or dead to health facilities. Surgeons have continued to operate as their hospitals have been bombarded and besieged. As of September 2024, 1,151 Palestinians working in Gaza’s health sector had been killed since the beginning of Israel’s current assault. 

Anyone attempting to provide essential medical and humanitarian assistance in Gaza has been made a target. More than 300 humanitarian aid workers have been murdered by Israel’s military in Gaza—in clear violation of humanitarian law. The majority of aid workers killed have been United Nations staff, with Israel’s current violence in Gaza representing the deadliest period for UN staff in the organisation’s 78-year history. 

Further escalation—the risk to humanity

In recent weeks, Israel has escalated violence in the region by invading Lebanon, bombarding civilian homes from the sky and targeting telecommunications. Within one 24-hour period last week, Israel killed 28 health workers in Lebanon, according to WHO, bringing the total killed to over 100 in the last year according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Iran has responded to the bombings and assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with missile attacks on military bases in Tel Aviv. This escalation raises a terrifying possibility: all-out war between nuclear powers.

There are those in both nations who wrongly believe that maintaining a nuclear arsenal is the only measure able to preserve safety. As we have reported, this could not be further from the truth.

The response of the Western powers

In July, the International Court of Justice’s historic ruling made clear that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip is unlawful, and mandated Israel to “end its occupation, dismantle its settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinian victims and facilitate the return of displaced people”. Over the course of the last year alone, several UN General Assembly resolutions along similar lines have been adopted. The UK has abstained from each of these critical declarations. Crucially, none of this political positioning has resulted in any reduction in the violence.

The UK, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has vocally supported “Israel’s right to defend herself” since October 8th. This argument has been used to permit an occupying power to use disproportionate and indiscriminate military force against civilians, killing and injuring nearly 150,000 people, and destroying essential life-sustaining infrastructure, in actions which have contravened International Humanitarian Law and meet the definition of collective punishment.

Egregiously, the UK has continued to approve numerous weapons export licences, belatedly suspended fewer than 10% while continuing to pursue a £6 billion trade agreement with Israel. Companies such as BAE systems build parts sold to the Israeli military for use in its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, while Israeli military technology company Elbit System’s R&D hub in Bristol develops drone engines, targeting systems and surveillance systems for the Israeli military.

Additionally, RAF jets have flown 100 spy-flights over Gaza, potentially bolstering Israel’s violence against Palestinians in Gaza, though the ministry of defence states that the mandate is  “narrowly defined to focus on securing the release of the hostages”.

While the UK contribution to Israel’s total military imports may only be 1%, it is 1% too much.

UK health workers are holding the government to account

Despite threats to livelihoods and careers, tens of thousands of health workers across the UK have taken action over the last 12 months—mobilising en masse to demonstrate our unequivocal opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel’s eight-decade illegal occupation of Palestine.

These actions have ranged from protests in towns and cities to rallies outside hospitals, the establishment of Health Workers for a Free Palestine and the development of the Palantir opposition campaign, to pickets outside arms factories, support to direct aid initiatives in Palestine—and for some health workers, travelling to work directly alongside Palestinian health workers in Gaza and the West Bank. 

This reminds us that in the midst of catastrophic violence, people of conscience do not sit back and do nothing. Since our founding days as MAPW and MCANW following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, throughout the Iraq war, and over the course of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, healthcare workers have recognised that they have a responsibility to stand up for justice and peace.

Attempts to silence and suppress opposition to the genocide, and our government’s complicity in it, have been pervasive and widespread. Medact has received many reports from health workers who have faced discrimination at work, some of whom have been suspended or dismissed for their acts of solidarity with Palestine. In March or this year, the British Islamic Medical Association (BIMA) reported on a survey: “Over one in ten respondents were subject to action after expressing their views at work, such as a meeting with their supervisor, while others faced disciplinary proceedings, the threat of, or actual referral to their professional bodies.”

But the actions of thousands have shown that our solidarity will not be silenced. As a movement for health justice, we must protect against fatigue by building our sense of shared community, and continuing to do all that we can to end this expanding violence and warfare: calling for our complicit government to pass a total arms embargo, and actively supporting UN General Assembly votes that call for peace and justice.

We recognise these actions as the bare minimum. We must make our voices heard on the streets, in our workplaces, using the democratic processes available to us. As a movement, we will never waver in our solidarity with the oppressed.

Our demands

Israel cannot be allowed to continue to act with impunity. We continue to call on the UK government to:

• Do all it can to apply pressure on Israel to immediately halt all attacks on Gaza
• Implement an immediate and sustained two-way arms embargo on Israel
• Lobby Israel to end its siege, and immediately allow safe corridors for evacuation and for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to alleviate the worsening health catastrophe
• Work to ensure that Israel guarantees the right of return of those displaced, and recognise the inalienable right of return of all Palestinian refugees
• Respect the right to boycott and abandon its legislation to outlaw Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a non-violent movement which seeks to pressure Israel to comply with international law in the face of decades of inaction by the international community.