Israeli campaign fails

The murder of Hani al-Jaafarawi, the head of Gaza’s ambulance services, was part of Israel’s systematic campaign to destroy civil services provision in Gaza. It has targeted and killed medical personnel, Palestinian Civil Defense workers, ambulance drivers, rescue teams, police forces, civil engineers, utility workers, aid convoy drivers, and civil society leaders, with the aim to create chaos and lawlessness in Gaza and to demoralize the population. The official justification used by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) for the targeted killings of these professionals is that they are with Hamas by working for government institutions in Gaza. This rationale is fake. Working under a government does not infer support for its political agenda or possible membership in any political party that leads it. We cannot assume that every Israeli employed by the Israeli state supports the war crimes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so why should we believe anything about Palestinian public employees and their political sympathies? Two days before al-Jaafarawi’s murder, an Israeli air strike killed four municipal employees and one passer-by in the center of Gaza City. The workers were preparing to repair water pipes to help restore water supplies. The water infrastructure has been a frequent target of the IOF, as the deprivation of this basic service has led to mass suffering and the spread of disease among Palestinians, which, of course, helps Israel’s genocidal designs. Efforts by engineers and communications workers to break the Israeli-imposed internet blackout in Gaza have also repeatedly resulted in deaths. In January, an Israeli tank attacked a team sent to repair a switchboard generator in Khan Younis, killing two of them. The Israeli military has also repeatedly targeted health facilities and workers, killing or kidnapping some of Gaza’s best medical specialists and top hospital supervisors. According to the United Nations, by August, 885 medical workers had been killed in Gaza. Some were targeted in their homes and some in the hospitals where they had stayed behind to take care of patients as Israeli forces carried out raids. Others were tortured to death like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh,  a senior orthopedic surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, and Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi,  head of obstetrics and gynecology at Kamal Adwan Hospital. The decimation of Gaza’s health sector and the mass killing of doctors and other medical professionals mean that Palestinians who are chronically ill, newly infected with a disease, or injured by Israel’s incessant bombardments do not have access to proper healthcare. This again helps Israel’s genocide. As many videos of the aftermath of air strikes reveal that wounded are usually brought to severely under-resourced and dysfunctional medical facilities and placed on the ground in a pool of blood as the few medical workers available struggle to do emergency care. Israel’s wholesale destruction of every public service that sustains life in Gaza has brought the Palestinian population to the brink. The Israelis have not left a sewage pipe, a water pipe, a water desalination unit, bakeries, communication towers, or homes. They ran over the greenhouses and trees, they bombed the mosques and schools. They bombed anything and everything, total destruction, no one was safe, no doctor, no university professor, no child, no woman, no lawyer, no journalist, and no place or facility, UN or otherwise, was safe. They tell Palestinians that they have to leave Gaza if they want to stay alive. Israel’s aim in wiping out any semblance of civil order and service provision is, of course, to sow despair among Palestinians and subdue any impulse they may have to resist occupation, subjugation, and dispossession. Israel is committing war crimes by wiping out Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and services. However, these actions cannot force Palestinians to renounce their claim to their homeland.