Open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon: MSF Calls for an Enduring Ceasefire in Gaza

Your government's position of supporting only “steps towards a ceasefire” is wholly inadequate. Every day that your government does not exert maximum pressure to demand a ceasefire is a day of complicity in the atrocities being inflicted in Gaza. You must demand that the Israeli government stop the deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians now and allow crucial humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Enough is enough!

My colleagues and I, like so many people around the world, were aggrieved and shocked by Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians. As the horrors of that day emerge in more detail, we can only understand further the pain and the rage Israelis must feel. But now, after eight weeks, words fail us to describe the absolute horror being inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel. Now that the seven-day truce has collapsed, Israel has resumed the incessant, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.

Israel has repeatedly shown its blatant and total disregard for the protection of Gaza’s medical facilities. We are watching as hospitals are being turned into morgues and even ruins. They are being hit by strikes, tanks and guns, encircled and illegally raided, killing patients and medical staff. The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented 178 attacks on health care, including 22 fatalities and 48 injuries of health workers on duty.

Medical staff, including our own, are utterly exhausted and beyond despair. They have had to amputate limbs from children suffering from severe burns without anaesthesia or sterilised surgical tools. People are dying of pain. Due to forcible evacuations by Israeli soldiers, some doctors have had to leave patients behind and faced an unimaginable choice: their lives or those of their patients. There is no fathomable justification for such atrocious acts.

Three of our MSF staff have been killed, many more have lost family members. Numerous other colleagues have been injured. Other fellow humanitarian organisations have reported dozens of their staff killed. These potential war crimes need to be independently investigated by those who are mandated to do so, to ascertain whether that is the case, as soon as possible. We appeal to the Government of New Zealand to help hold the perpetrators of these atrocities to account.

MSF recently deployed a new international emergency team to Gaza to support our Palestinian colleagues in bringing medical and surgical capacities in health facilities. Regrettably, their activities have been severely limited due to the scale of casualties, destruction of infrastructure, lack of essential supplies such as fuel and the ongoing insecurity. We want and ought to be able to do so much more. Today this is just impossible due to the siege and unrelenting generalised warfare being unleashed by Israel.

Gaza, under an Israel-imposed blockade since 2007, is indeed the world’s largest open-aired prison. From the start of its military campaign, the Israeli government enforced a “complete siege” on Gaza, banning the entry of water, food, fuel and medicinal supplies for the 2.3 million civilians trapped in the enclave. Added to this, unyielding restrictions have been put on humanitarian access and are preventing much needed aid from reaching anyone who needs it. Subjecting an entire population to collective punishment is a war crime as per International Humanitarian Law (IHL). We are witnessing the fundamental principle of humanity being openly disgraced.

Despite Israel’s claims, its all-out assault is not being waged just on Hamas. It is being waged on all of Gaza and its people at any cost. Even wars have rules, but Israel is clearly trading them in for its own military strategy based on disproportionality. In the early days of this unbearable offensive, the spokesman for Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) announced that the “emphasis” of this flagrantly excessive reprisal was to be on “damage and not accuracy”. It is safe to say Israel’s actions have spoken louder than their words.

Gaza, under an Israel-imposed blockade since 2007, is indeed the world’s largest open-aired prison. From the start of its military campaign, the Israeli government enforced a “complete siege” on Gaza, banning the entry of water, food, fuel and medicinal supplies for the 2.3 million civilians trapped in the enclave. Added to this, unyielding restrictions have been put on humanitarian access and are preventing much needed aid from reaching anyone who needs it. Subjecting an entire population to collective punishment is a war crime as per International Humanitarian Law (IHL). We are witnessing the fundamental principle of humanity being openly disgraced.

Despite Israel’s claims, its all-out assault is not being waged just on Hamas. It is being waged on all of Gaza and its people at any cost. Even wars have rules, but Israel is clearly trading them in for its own military strategy based on disproportionality. In the early days of this unbearable offensive, the spokesman for Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) announced that the “emphasis” of this flagrantly excessive reprisal was to be on “damage and not accuracy”. It is safe to say Israel’s actions have spoken louder than their words.

Northern Gaza is being erased from the map. The health system has collapsed. More than 17,000 people have been killed, half of which are children, according to Gaza’s health authorities. That’s one out of every 200 people in Gaza. Tens of thousands are injured. Families are digging their dead loved ones out from under the rubble. At least 1.7 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. These civilians have been forcibly ordered to move south but Israel is also bombing that area. Nowhere is safe.

In recent days, our emergency teams in Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, have reported massive influxes of wounded after renewed intense bombing and airstrikes, including on overcrowded squalid refugee camps where people are barely surviving on the sparse humanitarian aid available. If the bombs do not get them, infectious diseases and starvation will.

A sustained ceasefire is the only way to stop the killing of thousands more civilians and allow for the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. MSF also calls for the establishment of an independent mechanism to oversee the adequate flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza.

We call on the New Zealand Government to be part of the solution and exert all means in your power to prevent further carnage. To not stand, lockstep, with the US and UK who failed to support the UNSC resolution last Friday, demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, and demanding that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians in Palestine and Israel.

It is time to choose whether you will continue to unconditionally support Israel, to turn a blind eye to their atrocities in Gaza and fail to hold them accountable for their flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law, or, use your diplomatic leverage to pressure the State of Israel to commit to an immediate and sustained ceasefire, to stop the inhumane and indefensible treatment of civilians in Gaza.

We urge you to take bold action to uphold our shared humanity.

Yours sincerely,

	Jennifer Tierney      Executive Director      Médecins Sans Frontières Australia
	Katrina Penney    President      Médecins Sans Frontières Australia