Following reports that Israeli officials revoked access to Gaza for at least six international medical aid missions, MAPW has asked the Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong, to act. The medical organisations include Glia Project, FAJR Scientific, the Palestinian American Medical Association.
We wrote to the Minister:
These missions are WHO partners, and play an essential role in provision of healthcare and life-saving medical aid for people in Gaza.
Israel has a responsibility, as an actor to the current conflict and as an occupying power, to provide adequate healthcare to the people of Gaza, and to facilitate humanitarian aid and access.
While Israel continues to fail to fulfil its obligations, and in the context of Israel’s almost complete destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, international missions are crucial. Revocation of medical missions’ access has an immediate impact on people in need, and will increase preventable death, disease, and suffering.
Australia’s responsibility to take effective action on this matter exceeds that of many other nations because of the “warm and close” relationship Australia still claims with Israel, despite Israel’s incessant bombardment of, and deprivation of life’s essentials for, the people of Gaza. That close relationship must be used to help bring Israel’s actions into line with its legal and moral obligations.
We implore you, again, to apply all necessary diplomatic, trade and any other available form of pressure on Israel to ensure that medical missions and emergency medical teams, their staff and equipment, have sustained and unimpeded access to Gaza.
We further implore you, again, to use all available means of diplomatic and other pressure on Israel for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Only through a ceasefire will the right to health and healthcare be properly restored to the people of Gaza.
Read a statement from FAJR Scientific on this issue.