Two weeks ago I sat across the table from several EU officials in Brussels. I, and other doctors who have worked in Gaza, told them what we witnessed there.
We conveyed testimonies from our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza, told them about families targeted in their homes, violence against ambulance crews, and the calculated damage to hospitals and essential medical equipment.
I was part of a delegation of healthcare workers who have worked over several years in Gaza. We travelled to Brussels in desperation, knowing full well that medical care and humanitarian aid won’t bring about an end to the violence.
Diplomats and advisors nodded, offered sympathies “off-the-record”, then proceeded to do nothing.
Instead, there was a press conference. A promise of slightly more aid. More platitudes and self-congratulatory remarks. As if that were enough, politicians throughout Europe will now break for their summer holidays.
At the very same time, colleagues in Gaza tell us every day that nothing has changed. The same hospitals are targeted, while ever more are left in ruins. The same colleagues attempt to care for tens of patients on the floors of emergency rooms, often without the basics — paracetamol, saline or gauze.
Perhaps more trucks with food will now arrive. But that will not stop Israel’s strikes on tents, schools and hospitals, or the Israeli snipers who shoot at those who queue for something to fend off starvation.
Offering bread and water with one hand, while supporting those who drop bombs with the other, is a perverse distortion of our collective moral, legal and political responsibilities.
I am an emergency doctor. I have worked and supported colleagues in many countries affected by conflict and forced displacement. But the extreme nature of Israel’s violence and systematic destruction in Gaza far overshadows anything I have ever seen.
I saw ambulances and UN vehicles riddled with bullets. Of those ambulances that could safely reach the emergency room, they were often so overcrowded that the wounded lay bleeding on top of each other.
My colleagues and I treated a child with a gaping chest wound and a collapsed lung. Another boy — 12 years old — was brought in on a donkey cart by his brother. He was pale from massive blood loss. We patched his wound while we waited for space in the operating room. We reviewed him later only to find him semi-conscious, bleeding out into the mattress. His father wept by his side as we tried to find blood for an emergency transfusion.
On another day, we treated a pregnant woman critically injured by an airstrike. We had no pain relief for her as we rushed to insert tubes into both sides of her chest. Her daughter sat beside her, silent and in shock. Her baby was delivered prematurely and survived, but the woman would later find out that her husband and others in her family had been killed.
These were everyday occurrences — of such a scale that they would have overwhelmed the capacities of any of the most advanced hospitals in Brussels, Berlin or Rome, at least three times over.
In several hospitals we found equipment that had been sabotaged or destroyed — I saw ultrasound cables deliberately cut, machines smashed, and wards burnt by Israeli soldiers who had occupied the Red Crescent Hospital in Khan Younis.
To be clear — what I witnessed in Gaza was a form of manufactured human suffering of the most disturbing and depraved proportions.
Yet the EU insists on inaction.
Shortly after our visit, the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, confirmed what Palestinians, legal experts, and those who have worked in Gaza have known for a long time: that Israel may be in breach of its obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — the clause that makes respect for human rights a condition of trade.
Of course this came as no surprise to our Palestinian colleagues and those of us who have worked in Gaza.
But it was, for a brief moment, an overdue step in the right direction.
That confirmation should have triggered serious political action. But the outcome of the EU’s review is nothing but vague promises to revisit the situation every few weeks.
2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza can’t wait another day. Every single day, tens — and often hundreds — of Palestinians are killed, starved to death, or succumb to treatable diseases.
As those with the power to act plan their summer holidays instead, I ask Kaja Kallas, president Ursula von der Leyen, and all EU officials who bear the responsibility to hold Israel to account, whether any of you can confidently say you have done everything you can to end the horrors inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza?
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Dr James Smith is an emergency doctor who has repeatedly served in Gaza in the past few months, and recently travelled to Brussels to brief EU officials.
Dr James Smith is an emergency doctor who has repeatedly served in Gaza in the past few months, and recently travelled to Brussels to brief EU officials.