About the Project

Israel launched a new assault against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip which began officially on October 7, 2023. In this assault, Israel’s occupation army, with full political coverage, targeted all infrastructure installations in Gaza, especially the health sector which was singled out in a systematic and unprecedented manner, indicating the existence of a preconceived Israeli plan to destroy the heath infrastructure in the northern part of the Strip to make it unlivable and to drive its population southwards (the plan had originally envisaged their expulsion to Egypt but when this fell through it was decided to drive that population to central and southern Gaza). This deliberate and systematic targeting campaign vented itself in the indiscriminate bombing of urban quarters and high-rise residential towers in order to butcher the largest number of civilians and to systematically destroy all health facilities, with a view to forcing the population to head southwards where health facilities and medical emergency services had already far exceeded their absorption capacities. 

This Israeli targeting of Gaza’s health sector in this systematic, open and unprecedented manner, preplanned through the media, and armed with ludicrous and false pretexts, was designed to paralyze the Gaza Strip, especially its northern region, to demolish it utterly, and drive its population outside occupied Palestine. This aim was openly declared by a number of Israeli officials and is found in the document issued by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, dated October 13, 2023, which spells out a preconceived plan of expulsion devised by the occupation regime.

 The reports issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health indicated the scope of this barbaric assault on the health sector, especially following the deliberate bombing of the Baptist Hospital on Tuesday, October 17, 2023, where a massacre took place, killing more than 471 martyrs by the Ministry’s reckoning, among whom were women and children. There are 34 hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The Ministry runs 13 of them directly while UNRWA provides health care to more than 70% of the Strip’s population. The Gaza strip also has a number of clinics belonging to the Ministry and there are a number of charities that provide primary heath services inside residential quarters. 2 It is well known that the medical corps in Gaza has extensive war experience specially since the Gaza Strip has been the target of several Israeli assaults since its siege began in 2006. Nevertheless, much data and figures to do with the health sector need to be assessed and examined to determine whether hospitals can continue to operate when the war ends, especially since more than one hospital has ceased to function, and the constant depletion in the ranks of the medical corps throughout the war due to non-stop work. Documenting what has happened and what continues to happen to the medical sector is an urgent necessity, first, for purposes of scientific research now and in the future, and, secondly, to make available precise and vital information relating to all that is occurring and link them together. This will constitute not merely a record useful now and in the near future but will also be like a collective memory to be exploited in future by researchers who deal with the history of Palestine and of the Gaza Strip and its population. These latter have suffered unspeakable miseries and tragic loss as a result of this ongoing and criminal assault. 

The Institute for Palestine Studies has, since its foundation in 1963, conducted and published scientific research to do with the question of Palestine, in total independence, and to the highest academic standards. Hence, and from the very first day of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, the Institute has exerted all efforts (in addition to its daily tasks and customary research programs) to follow and document what is happening on the ground at the political (in the Palestinian, Israeli, Arab, regional and international spheres), legal, operational, social, demographic, economic and other levels. This is so because this war constitutes and shall constitute a major turning point in the course of the Arab Israeli conflict and the Palestine Question. It will mark a new period of history totally unlike the previous one, and thus requires expending all efforts possible on all levels of publication and documentation. It is in this context that the project to be carried out by the IPS regarding the health sector in the Gaza Strip is envisaged.