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Gaza’s Health Workers Continue in the Face of Unrelenting Attacks – Health Workers 4 Palestine
Gaza’s Health Workers Continue in the Face of Unrelenting Attacks – Health Workers 4 Palestine
By Amira Nimerawi and Omar Abdel-Mannan, Health Workers 4 Palestine
The 10th of November marked exactly one year to the day that we held our very first vigil outside 10 Downing Street on a cold November night, hundreds of us standing in solidarity shoulder to shoulder, to remember our colleagues who had been killed in Gaza and to send a message to our fellow health workers in Palestine that we would not forsake them.
On that day, over 90 health workers in Gaza had been killed since October 7th 2023. Now, 12 months on, over 1,100 Palestinian health workers have been killed as a means to decimate the Palestinian healthcare sector in Gaza and extend their genocidal campaign and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Over 300 health workers have been illegally abducted, detained, tortured and some killed by torture, as further means to break the Gazan health workers and system.
Yet the Gazan and Palestinian health workers refuse to be broken. Choosing instead to heal their people in various ways. The health workers of Gaza who have faced countless losses, displacements, constant violence, starvation, fatigue and in some cases detention and torture, choose to go to work every day to care for their communities. These are the very health workers in Palestine who inspired our movement and are in fact the real health care and health justice leaders in this world.
For 12 months, as a movement, we have borne witness to unspeakable horrors unfolding across Gaza’s healthcare system and across the West Bank. It is impossible to list all of these horrors in this short statement, but the constant terror caused by bombardments and invasions into the hospitals of Palestine, the attacks on health workers across Palestine, the mass graves found outside many of Gaza’s hospitals, the abductions of health workers, the amputations without medications, the 5,500 monthly deliveries by women with no access to care, the neonates forced to die slowly due to lack of fuel for their incubators, the roads to hospitals in Jenin deliberately destroyed to prevent access to care, the slicing and dicing, burning alive of patients still attached to IV drips, while their families and carers forced to watch in despair, unable to help, are just some of the crimes Israel has been allowed to commit repeatedly, that we will not forget nor forgive.
It is because of such horrors, that we have tremendous pride, that amidst one of history’s darkest moments, a global solidarity movement and grand awakening of health workers was ignited. Since that first London vigil in November 2023, we rapidly expanded across dozens of UK towns and cities and further ashore across 5 continents, from Sydney to Cape Town, from Toronto to Stockholm. Whilst these vigils have continued across many of our chapters worldwide, many still on a weekly basis, we have grown further into a dynamic organisation that focuses on building advocacy and lobbying campaigns to hold our governments and institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide and aparthied to account. Our guiding star will always be the Palestinian health workers and their needs.
Whilst it pains us that 13 months on, we are still calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, for a halt to the targeting of healthcare, for unrestricted humanitarian aid, we know the road to justice is long. We know that we must remain focused on our ultimate goal of ending the brutal and illegal occupation and ensuring a Palestinian-led rebuilding of the healthcare sector across Palestine. We will not stop in our quest for decolonisation, for an end to injustice for the health workers and people of Palestine and we sincerely hope you will be there with us along this journey. A year on from starting this movement, we recommit ourselves to our initial message of solidarity to the health workers of Palestine and confirm that we will not forsake them.
We would like to thank all of our partners and supporters, who saw our potential to grow as a movement and eventually an organisation, from our very early days. Thank you for your commitment, your expertise and solidarity.
Finally, we’d like to thank the beating heart of our work, the health workers across all of our chapters who have collectively helped to build this movement. For those in particular who have made personal sacrifices, including the health workers who have been into Gaza, we see you and would like to acknowledge those sacrifices.
To everyone, who has remained consistent for more than 12 months, refusing to be silenced, intimidated and bullied. To every one of you who has witnessed the crimes being committed and chosen to stand with your fellow health workers in Palestine, know that all of your actions, big and small, matter. For those who might be feeling some levels of despair, know that this is natural, but we must remain steadfast now more than ever, focused and strategic in our solidarity. Remember these words from a Dr in Gaza: “The blood of our martyrs is being injected into the veins of victory”. It is our lifelong commitment to the martyrs and those living that we continue to push to see a free Palestine in our lifetime.
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