A newly released report by the international organization Doctors Without Borders “MSF” sheds light on the difficult life of Gaza residents one year after the most brutal Israeli assault on the besieged strip.

The report, which was released on July 8^th, describes how, one year on, and with the continued blockade and siege of Gaza, the situation appears as if the latest round of aggression had just ended. The report speaks of hundreds of Palestinians with devastating injuries from the Israeli assault still fill the waiting rooms of the organization in need for  complex reconstructive surgeries and physical rehabilitation.

Severe burns from home heating and cooking accidents -as result of being forced to live in makeshift or damaged homes- constitute a large portion of the cases treated in MSF centers over the last year, which testifies to the continued suffering of Gaza population one year after the 51-day Israeli aggression.

“Living conditions keep on deteriorating,” says Erwan Grillon, MSF’s head of mission for Gaza and the West Bank. “In our post-operative clinic in Gaza, the majority of our patients were treated for burns from explosions caused by the use of unsafe home heating products or in household cooking accidents in homes damaged during the war. Sixty percent of them were children.”

Chronic suffering under occupation

In over 20 years of service in occupied Palestine, MSF was able to see how the suffering wrought by the Israeli occupation has become normalized, citing an end to the occupation as the only way to ease the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

“Eight-year-old children in Gaza have known nothing but the blockade and war since they were born,” says Grillon, “And they’ve already lived through four offensives, two of which were absolutely devastating and indiscriminately killed a shocking number of civilians. The majority of our patients who still require war-related surgeries and physiotherapy are children under 18.”

Conditions in West Bank are no better; the occupation of the West Bank illustrates another form of oppression that also has widespread public health consequences. According to the report, due to the indignities, threats, and humiliations the Palestinian people in the West Bank are subjected to on a daily basis, MSF mental health programs are filled with patients suffering from psychological disorders which are a result of being subjected to endless harassment, frequent (and unpunished) colonial settler violence against Palestinian individuals and property, night raids, administrative detention, or other draconian acts.

“The stories our teams tell us are such that merely stating the facts should be enough to denounce them,” says Grillon. “On a daily basis we see patients, a third of whom are younger than 13, in a constant state of anxiety and terror because of night-time incursions by Israeli soldiers and settler attacks. We’ve been treating the same families presenting the same symptoms for the past ten years. Nothing has changed.”

Israeli occupation is the problem

“As a direct result of the perpetuation of the occupation and the complete failure of any political process, Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank are trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence that must be addressed frankly and urgently,” says the report, adding that “Governments and international institutions either explicitly or tacitly supporting these policies must likewise consider the human costs of these policies, given the undeniable devastation they have wrought.”

“Employing the rhetoric of self-defence to seize territory and continue a brutalizing occupation, Israel and its international backers have sought to codify a system that is wounding Palestinians day after day, smothering life and hope, and guaranteeing more of the same in the future, .” Says Dr. Mego Terzian, President of MSF France.

Figures

The report states that,

• More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the 2014 Israeli occupation assault, and
• More than 11,000 were wounded, including almost 7,000 women and children.
• More than 12,000 houses were damaged or destroyed during the  assault, as were more than 70 hospitals or health structures.
• Unemployment in Gaza is at record high—more than 40 percent overall and more than 60 percent among the young, and
• 80 percent of the population is at least partially dependent on humanitarian aid.
• Due to settlements, settler-only roads, , checkpoints, and military deployments, Palestinians can only inhabit less than 40 percent of the West Bank.