Palestinian Red Crescent president warns Gaza suffering must not recur

“This must not happen again,” Dr Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Palestinian Red Crescent, said at a public meeting at the National Museum of Iceland on Thursday, mbl.is reported.

Al-Khatib made the remarks after showing footage of the organisation’s staff providing aid in extremely difficult conditions in the Gaza Strip. The video showed workers displaying great courage, risking their lives and entering dangerous situations amid the destruction caused by Israeli attacks. They had helped save thousands of people who were injured or ill.

“You know, life is not supposed to be like this,” Al-Khatib said.

He said he, like many other Palestinians, felt that the international community had failed them over the years. Although people could be proud of those carrying out humanitarian work, he said the situation itself was unacceptable.

Al-Khatib warned that it would be a troubling development if the world began to regard such footage as normal, or if Palestinians were reduced to statistics.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand killed or injured,” he said, referring to the situation in Gaza. “This should not be the norm, and this must not happen anywhere else in the world.”

Wars were being fought in many parts of the world, Al-Khatib said, but they should not be conducted in this way. Civilians and aid workers were supposed to be protected under the law, he said, but that had not happened.

“Those of us in the humanitarian sector always say that there are no humanitarian solutions to political problems. We can do our best to prevent suffering, but finding solutions is the work of politicians, and politicians as a whole have failed us,” Al-Khatib said.

He said politicians had not found a solution to the problems facing Palestinians. The Red Cross had done its best over the past 60 years to give Palestinians hope through its assistance, he said, but that was not enough.

Health clinics had been closed in the West Bank, while there were shortages of funding, medicines and hygiene supplies both there and in Gaza. Both areas were facing severe humanitarian and economic difficulties, he said.

Al-Khatib said being unable to access healthcare could mean the difference between life and death. In villages and cities in the West Bank, various obstacles had been introduced, including new iron gates guarded by soldiers.

He said that several months ago, a four-month-old baby had needed to reach hospital, but an ambulance was not allowed to enter the village and nobody was permitted to touch the iron gate. The Palestinian Red Crescent tried everything in its power to obtain help in opening the gate, but without success.

“We asked the family to bring the baby to the iron gate. They brought the baby under the gate, but when it reached the hospital, it was dead,” he said. He added that many women had been forced to give birth in ambulances because the vehicles could not get through.