‘When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to possess and drives out the many nations larger and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not save alive anything that breathes…Do not intermarry with them…Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons…Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their idols in the fire, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God who has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession…’ –Book of Deuteronomy
Mondoweiss
Israel’s attacks on Gaza have surpassed three months, fostering the most dangerous place in the world to be a child as death and destruction fills every corner of the besieged enclave.
According to Jason Lee, Save the Children’s director for the occupied Palestinian territory, children are much more vulnerable to explosives. They will also need much more time and effort to recover from the injuries they cause.
‘Small children caught up in explosions are particularly vulnerable to major, life-changing injuries. They have weaker necks and torsos, so less force is needed to cause a brain injury,’ Lee said in a statement.
‘Their skulls are still not fully formed, and their undeveloped muscles offer less protection, so a blast is more likely to tear apart organs in their abdomen, even when there is no visible damage.’
Lee added that over 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated, citing UNICEF, averaging out to over ten children a day over the last three months.
To make matters worse, many of the injured children had to endure the painful procedures without anesthetic due to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.
As the number of injuries compounds in the Gaza Strip amid the collapsed healthcare system, it is difficult for child amputees to receive the follow-up care they need.
‘When children lose limbs, it’s not the same as when adults lose limbs,’ he said. ‘Crucially, their bones continue to grow, so the amount of operations and surgical interventions that children who have lost arms and legs will… stay with them for many, many years. And there’s a huge amount of pain management as well, which of course, Gaza’s healthcare system currently is not able to provide, James Deneslow, head of Save the Children’s Conflict Time, said as reported by Al Jazeera.
Israel is picking off hospitals in Gaza one by one
Gaza’s healthcare system is barely functioning as it is, and yet the Israeli army is continuing to attack one hospital after the other.
Most recently, the military has been targeting the only hospital in central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which is already at over-capacity. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the hospital has received 99 new injured patients in the last 24 hours alone.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said his staff saw ‘sickening scenes of people of all ages being treated on blood-streaked floors and in chaotic corridors,’ on Saturday.
‘An unidentified child lay dead, partially covered by a sheet, on a bed. Other injured were prostrate on the floor, being stepped over by the health staff and families. A man’s harrowing groans, either from pain or anguish, cut through the emergency ward’s commotion,’ he continued.
The next day, the hospital’s medical staff were forced to abandon their patients after the army issued them an evacuation notice.
According to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), they ‘dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding the hospital as a ‘red zone.”
‘Given the recent history of attacks on medical staff and facilities in Gaza, the team is unable to return. Many local health workers have also been unable to access the hospital to care for the hundreds of patients that remain due to the conflict,’ MAP continued in a statement.
Similarly, Ghebreyesus said on x that he received ‘troubling’ reports from the hospital’s director that ‘over 600 patients and most health workers’ have been ‘forced to leave’ the hospital.
Ghebreyesus added that the current whereabouts of hundreds of patients and health workers from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital ‘are not currently known.’
The lack of information on the medical staff and patients’ whereabouts is especially concerning due to the testimonies surfacing of severe human rights violations in Israeli camps.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has reported ‘systematic torture and inhumane treatment’ of Palestinians detained in Israeli army camps.
Those who spent days in Israeli custody reported to the rights group that the army and Shin Bet members treated them as ‘non-human animals,’ regularly beating them, stripping them naked, subjecting them to electric-shock torture, burning them with cigarettes, and holding them in iron cages.
Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) is continuing to treat those injured by Israeli airstrikes despite fuel and electricity shortages.
In a video posted on X, PRCS volunteers were shown treating an injured man by torchlight at a medical point in Jabalia, northern Gaza.