by Peiyi Yu
語言:
English /// 中文
Photo Credit: Doctors Without Borders
“LEAVING GAZA was surreal. As we left the buffer zone from Gaza, people care little about throwing away half a bottle of soda, or flicking a cigarette, like how things are in a normal world,“ said Dr. Wu. According to Dr. Wu, just about 10 kilometers away from the blockade, only one out of the four sinks at Dr.Wu’s workstation in Nasser Hospital supplied a somewhat stable source of clean water. According to CSIS, Oxfam International, The United Nations Children’s Fund, BBC, CNN, there were barely any sanitation standards for water outside of hospitals because of Israel’s targeted strikes on Gaza’s infrastructure.
This July, Wu Yi-Chun joined Doctors Without Borders’s humanitarian mission to Gaza. New Bloom sat down for an interview with Dr. Wu and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Taiwan chapter director Ludivine Houdet to report Dr. Wu’s experiences in Gaza and the overall humanitarian effort, or rather the failure of it, in Gaza.
This is a tracking board in Al-Awda Hospital after an Israeli attack. Israel attacked Al-Awda Hospital multiple times during its invasion of Gaza. According to Doctors without Borders, the IDF’s attack on Al-Awda Hospital on November 21st, 2023 killed three doctors. Photo credit: Reporters Without Borders
In his normal life, Wu is a plastic surgeon at Shuangho Hospital in Zhonghe, New Taipei City. “He’s calm, flexible, and professional,” said Director Houdet when I asked Houdet about her impression of Dr. Wu. About his motivation to partake in the humanitarian mission in Gaza, Wu answered in brief to my question, “There is a need in Gaza for doctors who have expertise in trauma reconstruction, and my expertise is in plastic surgery and trauma reconstruction. MSF asked if I would like to volunteer, so I volunteered.” In Gaza, Wu’s expertise in plastic surgery transformed into a life-saving straw to reconstruct injuries from burns and shrapnel.
The journey into Gaza was relatively uneventful. After two days of waiting in Jordan, Wu’s convoy drove through the West Bank and Israel proper to the crossing without stopping. At the crossing, his convoy skipped ahead over a field of trucks with cargos, presumably humanitarian aid trucks, and entered Gaza where he was introduced to Nasser Hospital. About his first impression of Gaza, Wu said, “All that you see is broken buildings and rubbles.” What awaited him after was the “sounds of gunfire and explosion continuously 24/7, sometimes very close.” However, Wu noted that his location was never directly attacked in Gaza.
The Photo above is Nasser Hospital taken on November 24th 2023 before IDF’s raid. The photo below is a building outside Nasser Hospital taken on March 13th 2024, after the IDF’s raid. Photo credit: Doctors Without Borders
Nasser Hospital is the largest hospital in Southern Gaza, but compared to Wu’s hospital in New Taipei City, Nasser Hospital appears to be only one-quarter of the size of Shuangho Hospital. According to Al Jazeera’s reporting and footage, Israel raided Nasser Hospital with tanks in February and the hospital was temporarily shut down. Israel claimed that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes, but according to the reports New Bloom reviewed and referenced, including a CNN investigation on Israel’s attacks on Hospitals, the reports did not corroborate Israel’s accusation. According to Health Cluster, a healthcare humanitarian organization, Nasser Hospital saw a rudimentary reconstruction starting in April. By the time Dr. Wu arrived in July, Nasser Hospital had recovered at least part of its ability to function.
Dr. Wu in a sky blue surgical drape and his colleagues at the Nasser Hospital. Photo taken in July 2024 with an unknown specific date. Photo credit: Doctors Without Borders
2024 marks the most bloody year for humanitarian workers to date. According to Middle East Eye and Middle East Monitor’s reporting, since the start of Israel’s Gaza invasion, at least one thousand medical workers have been killed, including 8 MSF affiliates. According to Houdet, Israel’s attacks were “indiscriminate.” Houdet described, “Sometimes the ambulance carries a patient into the hospital, sometimes it carries your colleague, and sometimes you find out that it’s your family. One minute ago you were helping the patient and the next minute you’re attacked and became a patient yourself.” Among the MSF victims, Wu worked with Hasan Suboh who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on October 24th, 2024. Wu recalled, “He was very hospitable and resourceful. He saw that I was wearing a pair of broken flip-flops and offered to fix it for me. I didn’t know that flip flops can be fixed, but he fixed it with a screw.”
According to Wu, the originally 50-bed large trauma unit was expanded to 70 beds after Israel’s invasion started, but on a “normal” day there were barely any empty beds at any time in the unit. By rough estimation, Wu claimed that “half of the patients were minors, and half of that half were small children.” According to Wu, facing a shortage of manpower, equipment, and medical supplies, doctors have to use outdated procedures from 30 years ago to adapt to the circumstances.
“There were one to two mass casualty events every week when I was there, and most of the mass casualty events occurred because of bombing,” said Wu, calmly recalling the first time he handled a mass casualty event, “If you really want me to describe what is a mass casualty event, it’s like a new year’s eve countdown, very crowded and very chaotic. In retrospect, a number that I heard afterward was that more than a hundred people died in two to three hours. Many patients couldn’t even enter the crowded hospital, so they are not tallied in the statistics. There are no hospitals in this world that can handle that kind of trauma.” His shocking experience reverberated in the MSF office when he debriefed the MSF team in Taipei. Houdet told me about her specific impression of Wu’s debrief, “Of course, there is blood in hospitals, but there is not supposed to be blood in the corridors.”
The constant shortage of medical supplies was also devastating. According to Wu, his colleague’s batch of medical supplies was withheld for 8 weeks, and he didn’t stay long enough to verify if the supplies eventually arrived. When I asked Houdet if MSF was able to deliver their medical supplies into Gaza, Houdet answered, “It takes four to five weeks, on average, from the moment a shipment arrives on Egyptian territory to the moment it enters Gaza. If a single item in a shipment is rejected at Nitzana (the Israeli town where Israel scans and examines cargoes entering Gaza through Rafah crossing), the entire shipment is rejected and returned to Rafah, where the lengthy process begins again.” One of MSF’s rejected items was an oxygen machine. According to The Guardian, items rejected by Israel include sleeping bags, tent poles, water purification pills, pens and pencils, etc.
According to a report from ProPublica, Israel has been jeopardizing the humanitarian effort in Gaza. However, the severity of Israel’s responsibility is often misunderstood. Houdet explained, “Israel is the occupying power. Israel is responsible for organizing and coordinating the overall humanitarian efforts in Gaza.” In fact, as the occupying power, Israel orchestrated all humanitarian activities–or the lack of it–in Gaza through an agency called Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). MSF and all other organizations have to coordinate their activities in Gaza under COGAT’s command. Israel has complete control over Gaza’s border, and there is no humanitarian relief that is able to operate independently beyond Israel’s supervision.
COGAT has been operating as part of Israel’s war machine under Israel’s Department of Defense. All of COGAT’s leaders are Israel Defense Force officers. Before becoming the commander of COGAT, Ghassan Alian was a brigade commander. Three days after Hamas’ terrorist attack, Ghassan Alian declared on October 10th, 2023, “Human animals should be treated accordingly. Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage.” Ghassan Alian’s declaration repeats ex-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s speech the day before, which is cited as evidence in ICJ and ICC’s genocide and crimes against humanity charges.
COGAT, the organization that is responsible for orchestrating humanitarian relief, is orchestrating an artificial humanitarian disaster–which many have called a genocide. On the one hand, COGAT permitted organizations like MSF to carry out limited humanitarian efforts in Gaza. On the other hand, Israel’s stranglehold on humanitarian supplies has induced an artificial famine. According to the UN, famine has spread across the Gaza Strip in July. According to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s letter to the Israeli officials, and MSF sources on the ground corroborated with statements from other humanitarian organizations, there were no humanitarian supplies entering Northern Gaza for at least 50 days since October 6th, 2024. By early December 2024, a pound of flour costs 24 USD on the black market and prices vary depending on the area. While Hamas and Israel accused each other of allowing the looting of humanitarian supplies, the Israeli agency, COGAT, has the final say on the amount of humanitarian aid permitted in Gaza, and has the obligation to arrange necessary security details to prevent looting.
On October 28, 2024, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed legislation to terminate all communication with the UN agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Among its many functions, UNRWA delivers almost all of the UN’s humanitarian reliefs in Gaza. If the law is implemented, UNRWA will be banned from entering Gaza as it will not be able to report its activity to COGAT. According to Houdet, currently, there is no organization that is able to replace UNRWA’s operational capacity in Gaza.
Although Israel and Hamas are likely to agree on the first phase of a three phase ceasefire before Donald Trump’s imminent inauguration, the terms of the second and third phase of the ceasefire remains to be negotiated during the first phase of the ceasefire.
From leaked documents obtained by Drop Site News, the first phase of the likely ceasefire agreement includes permitting 600 humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza per day. After 15 months of onslaught, most of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced more than once. Israel’s bombing has collapsed most of the buildings, and a large population now lives in makeshift tent cities. As winter besets, according to MSF, it is becoming exceedingly difficult for ordinary families to stay warm, let alone provide necessary medical care for newborn infants in the cold weather. It remains to be observed if Israel will fulfill the humanitarian aid quota mandated by the ceasefire agreement, or continue to subjugate humanitarian supplies to COGAT’s malicious scrutiny as before.
After the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza, Taiwan and Israel’s diplomatic ties strengthened. The Taiwanese parliament and the Israeli Knesset established the “Taiwan-Israel Congressional Association” in February 2024. At the initiating ceremony of the Taiwan-Israel Congressional Association, virtually all attending legislators were DPP legislators. On April 15th, 2024, for the first time in history, then-President Tsai Ing-wen met with the Israeli congressional envoy and expressed her wishes to “deepen the relationship on the common values of democracy.”
Dr. Wu at MSF Taipei Chapter HQ. Photo taken on December 12, 2024. Photo credit: Doctors Without Borders
Established Taiwanese media including CNA, PTS, The Reporter, United Daily News, and Radio Taiwan International, also reported on Israel’s war on Gaza without investigating apparent war crimes committed by Israel. As a concluding note, Dr. Wu urged the Taiwanese public, “Although Gaza seems far away, Gaza and Taiwan have many similarities. We should diversify where we consume our news and understand the circumstances in Gaza with empathy.”