In an attempt to assassinate top Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, the Israeli military on Tuesday struck the European Hospital, Gaza's last facility that could treat cancer patients, killing at least 16 people, wounding 70, and leading to the evacuation of its patients. Since then, strikes on the hospital have not ceased.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that since October 7, 2023, Israel has struck 122 health facilities in the Gaza Strip and 180 ambulances in 686 different strikes.
According to a report by The Guardian, the UN estimates that more than 12,000 people in the Gaza Strip need to travel to receive treatment they don't have access to in the enclave. Ten thousand of them are cancer patients, for whom Aseel Aburass, the director of Physicians for Human Rights' Occupied Palestinian Territory Department, says "the only treatment that can be offered to patients today is symptomatic treatment."
Even before the war, "being a cancer patient in Gaza was a death sentence," according to Aburass. "Today, it is much worse. Their only hope is to evacuate outside the Gaza Strip." She added that "in November, the stock of chemotherapy drugs ran out, and even the little that came in during the respite has already run out."
Ever since the Gaza Strip was blockaded around 18 years ago, cancer patients have suffered significant difficulties in receiving medical treatment. Even before the war, no departments provided radiotherapy, and there was a shortage of equipment and various other treatments. Gazan cancer patients, therefore, mainly relied on treatments they would receive in hospitals in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Most of the Palestinians who left Gaza before the war were, in fact, oncology patients seeking treatment.
The situation has worsened since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023. The two main hospitals providing radiotherapy were the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in the center of the Gaza Strip and the European Hospital in the south. The Al-Shifa Hospital and the Rantisi Hospital provided supportive treatment.
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital was abandoned at the instruction of the IDF at the beginning of the war. Around two months ago, Division 252 commander Yehuda Wach ordered the hospital's destruction, leaving the European Hospital as the sole facility treating cancer patients – until its recent closure.