Situation in Gaza ‘Beyond Catasrophe’: MSF

 "The situation is really beyond being described as a catastrophe anymore. Catastrophe is a very simple word now, soft word. It's really worse than calling it a catastrophe," Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza, told Anadolu in an interview on Saturday, with the enclave left without a functioning health system and widespread famine setting in.

Stating that the health sector has been systematically dismantled over 22 months of Israeli bombardment, with most hospitals destroyed or out of service, Mughaiseeb added: "I'm not saying now collapsed health system. No, there is no health system anymore in Gaza."

He also noted that the remaining field clinics and makeshift wards are overflowing with wounded and critically ill patients.

Hospital occupancy rates have soared to 300%, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, leaving patients on bare floors and halting many surgeries due to shortages. Only 15 of 38 hospitals are partially operational, most heavily damaged by Israeli strikes.

Abu Mughaiseeb said a trickle of recent aid trucks has done little to stem a worsening famine in Gaza.

“There is no food, no medicine, no real humanitarian aid,” he said. “There is no food, no medicine, no humanitarian aid."

"The children who are dying from starvation, they have underlying disease,” he said.

"They could be treated and they are not supposed to die. I mean if they had food, they will live. If you have the special supplement proteins and milk, they will live," Mughaiseeb further stated.

A UN-backed food security assessment has already confirmed famine in northern Gaza and expects it to spread further south by the end of September.

The MSF official also condemned Israeli- and US-backed distribution schemes that replaced UN operations, calling them unsafe.

"It's not a distribution point, it's really a death distribution point,” he said, describing how civilians are often attacked near distribution points.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reports more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 15,000 injured by Israeli army fire while waiting for aid since May.

On Israel’s plan to reoccupy Gaza City, Abu Mughaiseeb warned it would force nearly two million displaced Palestinians into an unlivable corner of the enclave.

Calling it “a mad plan," he said: “I mean, there will be a lot of people killed. There will be a lot of blood. Innocent people will die.

"They are speaking about a humanitarian zone. There is no humanitarian zone. I mean, how you can absorb 2 million people, and to build for them tents, and provide them with healthcare and food?”

"I don't know really, this is really madness."

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed Friday that he had approved the military’s operational plan to seize Gaza City – part of a broader government strategy to reoccupy the enclave and disarm Palestinian resistance groups.

Israel has killed over 62,600 Palestinians in a brutal onslaught in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former war minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.