“We have never seen what is happening in Gaza before. We are witnessing the live slaughter of thousands of people who have no escape. We are taking them to the limit of what is imaginable.” Ricardo Martínez, an aid worker for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), has just returned to Spain after spending almost a month in the hell of the Gaza Strip. As Logistics Manager of an MSF emergency team of 14 people, he managed to enter the Palestinian territory on November 15 and left on Saturday, December 9.
In conversation with EL MUNDO, he recounts the “catastrophic” situation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans who cannot escape either from the bombs or from the lack of the most basic things. They can no longer even have decent medical care due to lack of medical resources and supplies.
“Our initial intention was to go to the North because if the situation in the South is terrible, the North is a black hole where no one knows what is happening,” he says. Finally, they were unable to cross the Wadi Gaza, the river that divides the Strip. “It is impossible to cross that line, the tanks dominate the terrain and the attacks are continuous.” It’s an open war zone. As Ricardo has been able to verify in situ, the little humanitarian aid that crosses the Rafah crossing (border with Egypt) no longer reaches the North, nor the food trucks that enter through that route.
As the commissioner of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, reported yesterday, trucks with food are intercepted shortly after entering Gaza by dozens of hungry people who “stop the trucks, take the food and They eat them immediately, which shows how hungry and desperate they are,” Efe reports.
Ricardo Martínez has visited the hospitals in the south and center of the Strip: Al Aqsa, Jan Yunis, the Kuwaiti hospital, the Emirati one… And the situation is Dantesque: “They are no longer health centers, they are towns where thousands of people”. Of the 36 hospitals that operated in Gaza, only 11 now provide services. And there is not a single maternity hospital, despite the fact that it is estimated that there are some 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza.
For this reason, MSF is preparing a maternity hospital in Rafah with 18 beds and a Pediatrics unit at least for the most complicated cases.
Hospitals are considered safer than the rest of the buildings, which is why they are becoming refugee camps: hundreds of families are crowded into their hallways, waiting rooms or stairs, looking for a safe place to survive. Sometimes, there is only one service for every 300 people.
Ricardo Martínez has been in the conflicts in Sudan, Chad, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Angola… But he remains impressed with what he has just experienced in Gaza. He has seen the elderly, women and children die, many times having to undergo surgery practically without anesthesia, since the medication is rationed so that it reaches the greatest number of patients.
This 52-year-old aid worker says that more than 60% of the Strip’s population can no longer eat anything one or two days a week. At first, they suffered bombings, death and destruction. Now, to all of this, which continues, hunger and disease have been added.
“Official figures say that there are 18,700 dead from the Israeli attacks, but there are many more,” he points out. In hospitals, the lack of follow-up of the sick and operated on “is causing hundreds of deaths due to subsequent infections in the wounds or gangrene.”
The number of people who die from diseases transmitted as a result of overcrowding or the lack of hygiene and sanitation conditions in Gaza are also not counted.
“The streets are full of tons of uncollected garbage that children rummage through, of rats, of flies that are spreading diseases,” he continues, “and the lack of drinking water forces thousands of people to drink from unsanitary wells that are exponentially multiplying diarrhea, gastrointestinal diseases and other illnesses.
After almost two and a half months of siege, Gazans are losing hope. And this is how they transmit it to foreign aid workers. “The Palestinians are a proud, affable, generous people; now, they ask us what they have done, why the West wants to exterminate them, they think that the world has forgotten about them.”
HUMANITARIAN PAUSE
Ricardo lived firsthand the seven days of truce that Israel and Hamas gave each other since November 24. “The night before was terrible, a hell of cannon shots and bombs like never before. At 7:00 a.m., everything went out and a new day dawned full of hope after hell.” The children ran out to play, to shout, to sing among the rubble. “It was exciting to see how everyone came out to the streets to welcome the ceasefire,” he recalls.
Those seven days, the Gazans took advantage of to bury their dead, since many had been dead for days due to the bombings without being able to be picked up. “They took the opportunity to visit their relatives, to try to enter their demolished houses and save their personal belongings… But everyone knew that it was a mirage, that the war would fall on their heads again.” This happened again on December 1st. “At 7:00 in the morning on the 1st, once again punctual and criminal, the bombs returned.”
Ricardo plans to travel to Chad in January and return a few weeks later to Gaza. There he has left many friends with whom he remains in contact on WhatsApp. “Omar [brother of one of his surgeons] has just asked me from MSF to geolocate his house in the North to see if it is still standing; and I am afraid to look at it,” he laments. He cannot forget the children and the friends he has left there: “The Gazans say they prefer to die quickly rather than die under the rubble.”