Our Médecins Sans Frontières staff are being killed in Gaza. Why are UK ministers enabling that? | Natalie Roberts

OYour colleague Abdullah Hammad was killed last week by Israeli forces when he was waiting to recover the flour from a truck for aid to Khan Younis. He is the 12th colleague of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. The Israeli food distribution program forces people in Gaza to choose between famine and risking their lives for a minimum of supplies. With more than 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 injured in search of food, this program had the effect of attracting desperate people with help, but to be slaughtered by the Israeli armed forces.

This is part of the genocide that engages in Gaza. And the British government is an accomplice.

At the beginning of April, at MSF UK, we wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Lammy, detailing our first -hand observations in Gaza. We described the massive influx of injured patients and corpses received by MSF teams in Gaza medical facilities on March 18, while Israeli forces triggered unprecedented intensity attacks, breaking the short-term ceasefire. We explained that MSF medical staff and their patients had already had to evacuate 17 health establishments and have endured a massive number of violent incidents, in particular air strikes damaging and destroying hospitals and health establishments, tanks opening fire on humanitarian shelters, offensives on the ground conducted in medical establishments, and humanitarian conveyors and linked by Israeli soldiers. We have noted that no hospital in Gaza was currently fully functional and that around half of them no longer worked at all. And we described the full seat imposed by the Israeli authorities in Gaza.

We noted that these evidence was in accordance with the description of the ethnic cleaning and the genocide provided by legal experts and human rights organizations. We asked for a meeting to further inform the Minister of Foreign Affairs and hear what concrete actions the United Kingdom provided for Israel to account for its atrocities against the Palestinian people.

We have not received an answer.

Thus, on May 7, MSF wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister describing the use of famine and collective sanctions such as weapons of war by the Israeli government against an entire population. We implored the British government to maintain its obligations as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to act under international humanitarian law to protect all civilians in Gaza. We also called on the British government to publicly condemn the Israeli government for the atrocities it inflicts on the people of Gaza. We have warned that not taking immediate measures and adopting a clear position on these largely documented and flagrant war crimes and violations of international law would leave the British government at high risk of complicity.

We have not received an answer.

In fact, since November 1, 2023, we have repeatedly contacted the government to provide proofs of atrocities directly witnesses and experienced by our hundreds of Gaza colleagues, to remind the United Kingdom its power and its obligation to act and request a high-level urgent meeting.

We have never received clear recognition of the evidence that we have provided, and we have never been offered this meeting.

We can only conclude that the British government simply does not want to admit what everyone can see: this genocide is committed in Gaza, and it is committed with military, diplomatic and material support of the United Kingdom.

Finally, on June 23, we received a letter from the parliamentary statement of state for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer. He was terribly inadequate and did not address any of our points. He only said: “We need new measures from the Israeli government now to raise all restrictions on help, to allow the UN and to help partners to do their job and to ensure that food and other critical supplies can reach people safely.”

But the help will not stop a genocide. We also need the Israeli government to stop ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to respect international law and councils of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Since October 2023, the entire population of the Gaza Strip has been subject to relentless bombardment by the Israeli armed forces. The Gaza health system has been destroyed and medical workers, including our MSF colleagues, are systematically targeted by the Israeli army.

Due to the headquarters imposed by Israel and the obstruction of humanitarian aid, more than 2 million people are currently on the verge of famine within the framework of a calculated strategy aimed at eradicating the Palestinian company.

The British government must recognize and respect the decisions of the CIJ and respect international law and the CIJ Council concerning the plausibility of the genocide. MSF is responsible for acting with moral clarity and humanitarian coherence in the face of mass atrocities.

The same should be applied to the British government.