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Madam President, Excellencies, Colleagues,
As I speak, more than 1.5 million people are trapped in Rafah. People violently forced to take refuge in this strip of land in southern Gaza are suffering the brutality of the Israeli military campaign.
We live in fear of a land invasion.
Our fears come from experience. Just 48 hours ago, as a family sat around a kitchen table in a house housing MSF staff and their families in Khan Younis, a 120mm shell exploded through the walls, sparking a fire that killed two people and injured six other people with serious burns. Five of the six injured are women and children.
We have taken every precaution to protect the 64 humanitarian workers and their family members living in the Strip from these attacks, notifying the parties to the conflict of their homes and clearly marking the buildings with an MSF flag.
Despite our precautions, our shelter was hit not only by a tank shell, but also by intense gunfire. Some were trapped in the burning building as Israeli gunfire delayed ambulances from reaching them. This morning I look at photos showing the catastrophic extent of the damage and watch videos of rescue teams removing charred bodies from the rubble.
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All this has become almost normal: in recent months Israeli forces have attacked our convoys, arrested our staff, demolished our vehicles and hospitals have been bombed and looted. Now, for the second time, one of our personnel shelters has been hit. Is this kind of attack intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence. Our colleagues in Gaza fear that as I speak to you today, they may be punished tomorrow. Madam President, every day we witness unimaginable horror. We, like so many others, are We were horrified by the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, and we are horrified by Israel’s response. We feel the anguish of the families whose loved ones were taken hostage on October 7. We feel the anguish of the families of those arbitrarily detained in Gaza and the West Bank. As a humanitarian agency, we are appalled by the violence against civilians. All this death, destruction and forced displacement are the result of military and political choices that blatantly ignore the lives of civilians. These choices could have been – and still can be – made very differently. For 138 days we have witnessed the unimaginable suffering of the people of Gaza. For 138 days we have done everything possible to implement an effective humanitarian response. 138 days we have witnessed the systematic destruction of a healthcare system that we have built and supported for decades. We have seen our patients and colleagues being killed and maimed. This situation is the culmination of a war that Israel is waging against the entire population of the Gaza Strip. A war of collective punishment, A war without rules, A war on all costs. The laws and principles on which we all depend to enable humanitarian assistance are now eroded to the point of becoming meaningless. Madam President, the humanitarian response in Gaza today is an illusion, a convenient illusion that perpetuates the narrative according to which this war is being waged in line with international law. Calls for greater humanitarian assistance have echoed in this Chamber. Yet in Gaza every day we have less and less: less space, less medicine, less food, less water, less security. We do not speak more than an expansion of humanitarian assistance; let’s talk about how to survive even without the bare minimum. Today in Gaza, efforts to provide assistance are haphazard, opportunistic and completely inadequate. How can we provide life-saving aid in an environment where the distinction between civilians and combatants is ignored? How can we try to organize any kind of response when healthcare workers are targeted, attacked and demeaned for caring for the wounded? Madam President, attacks on healthcare are attacks on humanity. There is no healthcare system to speak of in Gaza anymore. The Israeli army has dismantled one hospital after another. What remains is so little in the face of such carnage. This is absurd. The excuse given is that the medical facilities were used for military purposes, but we have seen no independently verified evidence of this. In exceptional circumstances where a hospital loses its protected status, any attack must follow the principles of proportionality and precaution. Instead of respecting international law, we are witnessing the systematic shutdown of hospital activity. This has made the entire medical system unusable. Since October 7 we have been forced to evacuate nine different healthcare facilities. A week ago a raid was carried out on the Nasser hospital. Medical staff were forced to leave despite repeated assurances that they could stay and continue to care for patients. These indiscriminate attacks, as well as the types of weapons and ammunition used in densely populated areas, have killed tens of thousands of people and they have maimed thousands more. Our patients suffer from catastrophic injuries, amputations, crushed limbs and severe burns. They need sophisticated care. They need long and intensive rehabilitation. Doctors cannot treat these wounds on a battlefield or in the ashes of destroyed hospitals. There are not enough hospital beds, not enough drugs and not enough supplies. Surgeons had no other no choice but to perform amputations without anesthesia on children. Our surgeons are running out of gauze to stop their patients from bleeding. They use them once, express the blood, wash them, sterilize them and reuse them for the next patient. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has left pregnant women without medical care for months. Women in labor cannot reach the delivery rooms. They give birth in plastic tents and in public buildings. Medical teams have added a new acronym to their vocabulary: WCNSF: wounded child, no surviving family. That is: wounded child, no surviving family. The children who survive this war will not only bear the visible wounds of the wounds, but also the invisible ones: those of repeated displacements, constant fear and the testimony of family members literally dismembered in front of their eyes. These psychological wounds have led children as young as five to tell us they would rather die. The dangers to medical staff are enormous. Every day we choose to continue working, despite the growing risks. We are afraid. Our teams are beyond exhausted. Madam President, this must stop. We, together with the world, are watching closely how this United Nations Security Council and its members have addressed the conflict in Gaza. Meeting after meeting Resolution after resolution, this body has failed to effectively address this conflict. We have seen members of this Council deliberate and delay while civilians die. We are appalled by the United States‘ willingness to use its powers as a permanent member of the Council to thwart efforts to adopt the most obvious of resolutions: the one calling for a ceasefire. immediate and sustained fire. Three times this Council has had the opportunity to vote in favor of the ceasefire that is so desperately needed and three times the United States has used its veto power, most recently on Tuesday last.
A new US draft resolution apparently calls for a ceasefire. However, this is misleading at best. This Security Council should reject any further resolutions that impede humanitarian efforts on the ground and push this Council to tacitly support the continued violence and mass atrocities in Gaza. The people of Gaza need of a ceasefire not when “practicable”, but now. They need a prolonged ceasefire, not a “temporary period of calm”. Anything short of this is gross negligence. The protection of civilians in Gaza cannot depend on resolutions of this Council that exploit humanitarianism to hide political objectives. The protection of civilians, civilian infrastructure, health workers and health facilities falls first and foremost on the parties to the conflict. But it is also a collective responsibility, a responsibility that falls to this Security Council and its individual members, as parties to the Geneva Conventions. The consequences of throwing international humanitarian law to the winds are will have repercussions far beyond Gaza. It will be a lasting burden on our collective conscience. This is not just political inaction: it has become political complicity. Two days ago, MSF staff and families were attacked and died in a site that had been they said they would be protected. Today our staff returned to work, once again risking their lives for their patients. What are you willing to risk? We ask for the protections promised by international humanitarian law. We ask for a ceasefire from both the parties. We ask for space to transform the illusion of aid into meaningful assistance. What will you do to make this possible? Thank you, Madam President.