Israel, Gaza Strip | Norwegian doctor: This is how Israel practices ethnic cleansing

Al-Shifa Hospital is located in the north of the Gaza Strip, and is the largest in the Palestinian Strip. Complex operations and treatments were performed here.

During the Easter holiday, Israeli forces blew up the hospital's main buildings.

Nettavisen cautions: Strong images in this article.

In a Facebook post this week, Norwegian doctor Waseem Zahid expressed his anger against the destruction:

“Al-Shifa Hospital was the most important treatment institution in Gaza, comparable to the importance of the trauma unit at Olivall Hospital in Oslo. This is how Israel practices ethnic cleansing. When you destroy a country to this extent, removing all the infrastructure, destroying hospitals, you make the country impossible “Live in it. Then you force people to leave.”

Doctors Without Borders is among those who confirmed that Al-Shifa Hospital is now in ruins. The World Health Organization says the hospital can no longer function as a hospital in any way.

On Monday, Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital area after a two-week raid. Many people were killed and injured.

Israel: – Hamas chooses death over life

The Israeli army claims that it killed and captured many Hamas fighters and describes the operation as a success.

– Hamas chooses death over life. Nowhere is this more evident than at Al-Shifa Hospital, where they chose to turn the maternity ward into a terrorist hideout, the IDF wrote in a social media post on Monday. There they shared a video explaining the action taken against Al-Shifa Hospital:

The Israeli military claimed on Tuesday that no civilians were injured inside the hospital complex, but Al Jazeera News and international news agencies such as Reuters can report that dead and mutilated bodies were found in the rubble of the hospital building.

On Tuesday, another message sparked strong international condemnation. An Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from the Central World Kitchen in Deir al-Balah in Gaza. The Israeli army said that this attack was the result of a misunderstanding.

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– Maximum needs

– Gaza is an area with severe needs for health services for the sick, wounded, pregnant women and the elderly. Zahid says that there is now a large gap between supply and demand for such services.

He compares it to the hospitals he worked in himself:

– If a small bedpost there is blocked, for example due to a water leak, there will be noise and chaos in the ward. It's a country like Norway, where we have all the resources and low hospital occupancy. In Gaza, there are thousands of wounded and many hospitals no longer exist. “It's almost impossible to imagine,” says Zahid.

The situation for those affected is worse than ever. Here with us, I think many feel hopeless because of what they see and hear from Gaza, the doctor tells Netavisen.

Demand a ceasefire

His appeal to the Norwegian authorities and heads of state around the world is that attacks like the one targeting Al-Shifa Hospital must be condemned in clear terms.

– The major powers must take what you say seriously. They say they want peace. They must put more pressure on the parties involved. Israel must cease its hostilities and enter into a ceasefire.

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– Slaughtering the civilian population

Regarding Hamas’s responsibility for the development in Gaza after the terrorist attacks that occurred on October 7, Al-Zahid believes that in the current situation it is not useful to go back in time and point out mistakes:

– The situation now is that we have a large number of civilians being slaughtered. Five-year-old girls who explode into smithereens are not to blame. “We can have different opinions about who started it all, but it is not productive now to go that way,” he says.

Zahid says he is disappointed that the International Court of Justice's decisions did not receive broader international support.

– This was a missed opportunity. He says that the matter here was an official decision that could have been used to put pressure on Israel, but then the major countries of the world would have had to offer their support.

Another Norwegian doctor, surgeon Erik Vos, who himself worked at Shifa Hospital, told NRK Dagsrevyen on Monday that this was like the bombing of Rikshospitalet and Ullevål hospitals.

WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in a statement on Tuesday that destroying Al-Shifa Hospital is like ripping out the heart of the health system in Gaza.