Aid groups struggle to prepare in Rafah as Israel expands evacuation orders
The Rafah crossing is the only crossing to be handled for humanitarian aid in the United States, which is why we’re so desperate for a cease-fire
She stated that a ceasefire would enable them to finish their mission, allow new help to come in, and allow for our safe return home.
Johnston said everyone was desperately hoping for a cease-fire. (Israel says it is rejecting a sustained ceasefire because it needs to eliminate Hamas’s military capability.)
It’s been running out of pain medicine and blood pressure medicine. These people aren’t comfortable or alive. She said that it’s horrifying what they’re seeing.
Monica Johnston, who works as a burn nurse in Portland, Ore., was back in the intensive care unit at the Rafah hospital on Thursday after a gastrointestinal infections left her dehydrated and nauseous.
He told reporters that the crossing isn’t usable for humanitarian assistance, so it will cause more suffering. It’s time for the Israelis to open that crossing to humanitarian assistance.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Friday said the U.S. wants the Rafah crossing, the only one able to handle large numbers of fuel trucks, opened immediately.
Israeli Military Operations and the Rafah Border Collapse: Dr. Usman Shah’s Eyes Feel Like They Couldn’t Leave
The head of the U.N.’s relief operations told a French news agency that there was a need for fuel each day.
The Israeli military on Friday in an apparent response to the concerns said it had transferred more than 52,000 gallons of fuel to be made available to international organizations in Gaza through Kerem Shalom crossing into southern Gaza.
“The whole aid operation runs on fuel,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. The lights can’t be on in hospitals and vehicles can’t distribute aid because of that. So if the fuel is cut off the aid operation collapses, and it collapses quickly.”
Following Israel’s incursion into Rafah this week, the Israeli military briefly shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing and seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, choking the flow of desperately needed food, fuel and medical supplies at a time when experts believe parts of Gaza are already experiencing a famine and several have died from malnutrition.
Scenes of horror are described in clinical descriptions as U.S. medical volunteers struggle with the effects of Israeli military operations and border closures after seven months of war in Gaza.
“They tried to suture up the hole in the heart — they couldn’t,” Dr. Usman Shah, from California, explains to Dr. Ammar Ghanem about a patient wounded in an explosion. The Syrian American Medical Society vice president made a video about his discussion with Shah on Friday and he is in charge of the intensive care unit.
A group of U.S. and U.S. doctors have been in Rafah for 10 days as part of a mission organized by the Palestinian American Medical Association. Now, nearing the end of the mission, with Israel closing the main border crossing, they are unable to leave.
Shah, dressed in blue scrubs, relates in an even voice how the jaw of one of the patients crumbled under his hand when he touched him. In the only visible sign of distress, he massages his temple and briefly closes his eyes as he tells the story.
Emergency Medical Assistance in Gaza During the March 7 Border Closure: The Status of the World Central Kitchen and the International Aid Organization (OXF)
Ghanem says conditions have worsened considerably since the border closure on May 7, with many of the local physicians and nurses unable to come to work because they have had to evacuate their families.
“Unfortunately here I have to prioritize patient lives. When I say ‘prioritizing patient lives’ I mean I know that term but I never used it before until I came here,” he said in an interview with NPR by video call from Rafah.
In one of two videos sent to NPR from the hospital Ghanem points out to a colleague one of his most difficult cases – an 18-year-old woman with a skull fracture so severe that brain material was visible. He said they couldn’t have the strong drugs that could keep her stable.
He said they stopped treatment for a woman suffering from acute pancreatitis after two days because she required continued oxygen that might support several other patients.
Ghanem, who did not want the hospital identified for security reasons, estimated that two to three patients a day die in the intensive care unit because of lack of supplies or equipment.
Part of the problem is that items critical for hospitals are banned by Israel which says they can be used by Hamas for military purposes. Some water hygiene materials are included in the list of dual-use items.
The list does not cover all items that are reportedly banned. Save the Children said it had had shipments rejected by Israel because they contained sleeping bags. An Israeli legal center, Geisha, has compiled a list of items that have been reported by organizations to have been rejected, including fishing rods and plastic sheets for tents.
Israel pledged to allow more aid and improved coordination after seven workers were killed in Gaza by the U.S.-based World Central Kitchen.
A statement issued this week by seven major international aid organizations, including Save the Children and Care, said those pledges have not been fulfilled.
“Humanitarian actors see no significant improvement from Israeli authorities in addressing the dire challenges to prevent life-saving aid for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents,” the statement read.
The areas that have been ordered to be evacuated are close to the city center. The military will act with great force against terror groups in those neighborhoods as it goes after the Hamas battalions in Rafah.
Ghada al-Haddad, a Gaza-based communications officer for Oxfam, said families were pitching makeshift tents on sidewalks and in graveyards. There is no clean water or Sanitation at the beach, where she said other people have moved.
Oxford professor Dr. Nick Maynard, a surgeon from England who traveled to Gaza three times on medical missions since the start of the war, said most of his time over Christmas was spent operating on major explosive injuries to the chest and abdomen. He said on a last trip that complication due to malnutrition in trauma cases had gone up.
“I operated on many patients in the last two weeks who had awful complications from their abdominal surgery related to inadequate nutrition and particularly those with the abdominal wall breaking down,” he said. “They end up hanging outside.”
Maynard said that two of his patients, a teenage girl and a young woman, died due to malnutrition and survivable injuries.
“We’re at a tipping point right now,” said Dr. John Kahler, co-founder of MedGlobal, a U.S.-based medical aid organization. He said that Palestinian children only got about 80% of the calories they needed before the war. The effects of consistent deprivation are showing now seven months into the war.
“It’s at that time that the immunological system begins to break down,” he said. “It’s at that time where infections and complications of malnutrition will start.”
The Israeli-Israeli War on Gaza and the Crossing into Rafah During the Oct. 7 Attack: U.S. Embassy in Gaza
According to several Western and Israeli officials, Egypt has complicated matters by making it difficult for aid to be sent to Kerem Shalom, which is near the border with Israel.
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The Israeli military accused Hamas of using the people of Gaza as human shields and said it was carrying out operations in specific areas of eastern Rafah. The military told people to go to the areas of al-MAwasi and Khan Younis.
The military launched its ground assault into Rafah Monday night, erecting Israeli flags along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The main crossing for aid and fuel in Gaza has been closed because of the operation.
Hamas, which carried out the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war, says cease-fire talks that took place in Cairo this week have come to a standstill. The group accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wanting the war to continue in order “to achieve his personal goals and political ambitions.”
“If we don’t start getting food … on Sunday, we will begin to run out. It means there’s nothing left in the warehouses to distribute,” Scott Anderson, senior deputy director for UNRWA in Gaza, tells NPR.
The WFP and the Rebuilding Alliance in Gaza are trying to establish new cooking stations in areas of Gaza where people are fleeing to, according to the program manager of the alliance.
“With the ongoing invasion and the increasing number of refugees, we contacted the WFP and told them we can manage for two to three weeks max,” he says, referring to the amount of food they have on stock.
The needs of people increased this week so El- Madhoun has doubled what they had prepared to 60,000 meals a day. Meanwhile, the price of food for basics like potatoes in the market is skyrocketing and vegetables and fruits are in short supply, he says.
Aid groups are rushing to establish field clinics and kitchens in the area of al-Mawasi, which the Israeli military identified as an “expanded humanitarian zone.” They are trying to build health care services in that area.
“Life in Rafah right now is a nightmare. There is bombing and shelling constantly, nearly every 10 minutes,” says Moses Kondowe, team lead for Gaza for Project Hope, which is working to move its field clinic in Rafah to Khan Younis.
Many women and children were killed this week when a number of homes in the town of Rafah were hit by nearly daily airstrikes.
A U.S.-Israeli probe of a violation of international humanitarian law in a “seattle-shot” of Gaza
On Friday, the U.S. State Department said in a report that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had violated international humanitarian law while carrying out operations in Gaza.
