Doctors at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza perform leg surgery on a patient. Photo: Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem
A ceasefire and the free passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza are urgently needed to halt a genocide in progress, an official with the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem says.
In April, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugee bureau concluded Israel was deliberately blocking the delivery of food and medicine into Gaza. Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Nov. 12 that aid entering the Gaza Strip was the “lowest in months,” with an October average of only 37 trucks per day being allowed in for a population of 2.2 million people.
Israel declared a “total blockade” of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 9, 2023, blocking food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity from entering Gaza and conditioning the lifting of the blockade on the release of hostages by Hamas. Israel has denied blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza and accused Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians, though it has provided no evidence for this claim.
The diocese of Jerusalem runs the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which is the only hospital still functioning in northern Gaza. The hospital is struggling to cope with a flood of patients amid Israel’s bombing campaign and its blocking of aid such as food and medicine, Sawsan Aranki-Batato, programs development officer for the diocese, told the Journal.
Aranki-Batato said due to the difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, local medical suppliers are providing what they can to Al-Ahli Hospital. However, she added, the hospital is going through medicine and supplies very quickly. “We need advocacy for unlimited humanitarian aid to Gaza to save the lives of all people, because the number of wounded is dramatically increasing these days,” Aranki-Batato told the Anglican Journal in an Oct. 23 interview.
Israeli forces behave “as if we are not humans in Gaza,” Aranki-Batato said, with Israel bombing residential buildings and killing entire families, targeting medical staff and ambulances. The Gaza Media Office reported on Oct. 7, 2024 that Israeli attacks on hospitals in the previous year had killed 986 medical workers; targeted, destroyed and damaged 131 ambulances; and rendered 80 health centres and 34 hospitals inoperative.
The diocese of Jerusalem runs 30 institutions across Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, including 17 schools and 13 medical centres and hospitals. More than a year into Israel’s assault on Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Al-Ahli is the only hospital left in Gaza to provide a broad range of services such as cancer treatment, CT scans, ultrasounds and mammograms, Aranki-Batato said.
Israel has targeted Al-Ahli Hospital three times, she said, including the destruction of its solar panels used to generate electricity. On Oct. 17, 2023, hundreds of people were killed in an explosion at Al-Ahli. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion; Israel, Canada, the United States and allies claimed it was the result of a failed PIJ rocket launch.
Donations from the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) have helped Al-Ahli continue providing services to thousands of people, Aranki-Batato said. At the beginning of the current conflict, PWRDF donated $30,000 in emergency funding to the hospital. Following consultations with the diocese of Jerusalem, PWRDF donated $175,000 from February to July 2024 to enhance access to health care and education for Gazans impacted by the war, and has allocated a further $100,000 for the period from August 2024 to January 2025.
Despite Israeli restrictions on aid, communications and marketing coordinator Janice Biehn said, PWRDF’s aid to Gaza and the West Bank—partnering with a range of church-affiliated international aid organizations—has continued to fund these ministries, with donations going through the Anglican Alliance directly to the diocese of Jerusalem.
“Money transfers have been able to go through,” Biehn said. “While it’s true supplies are hard to come by, the funds are getting to their intended location and the health care and education ministries of the Diocese of Jerusalem are able to use the funds.” PWRDF also supported a Canadian Foodgrains Relief program funded by the Humanitarian Coalition appeal in 2023, she said, and is making an emergency appeal for Lebanon through the ACT Alliance.
PWRDF donations are crucial to the ongoing operations of Al-Ahli Hospital, Aranki-Batato said. “Without your contribution, we would not be able to do what we’re doing now.”
She described a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza that hospital staff are struggling to cope with. “The lack of drinkable water, the lack of hygiene standards, the lack of proper sanitation, overcrowding in shelters all have resulted in catastrophic public health [and] infectious diseases,” Aranki-Batato said.
The official death toll in the Israel-Gaza war as of Nov. 15 stood at 44,548 Palestinians and 1,139 people killed in Israel. A letter by three public health researchers published in medical journal The Lancet in July said “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more” people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza. Gaza’s government media office has reported more than 1 million cases of infectious disease due to mass displacement.
October 2024 Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp, a few kilometres from Al-Ahli, saw a sharp uptick in the number of injured and traumatized people at the hospital, Aranki-Batato said. “We have inpatients in the corridors, in the church, in the chapel. Wherever there is a space, we have a bed or mattress with a patient” to receive treatment, she said.
The lack of other operational hospitals has meant Al-Ahli is overcrowded to three times its capacity; on average, 700 patients a day arrive Aranki-Batato said, and the hospital, which has 80 beds, has 150 inpatients per day. Many patients have suffered from burns. Most of the wounded have broken arms and legs. Staff now perform up to 30 surgeries per day.
Medical staff who used to work at other hospitals now work at Al-Ahli. “They work around the clock to meet the crushing flow of patients,” Aranki-Batato said. Many of these health workers are themselves becoming traumatized. “They mention to me many times that we passed through several wars—2014, 2021. They never saw the cases that they are dealing with now,” she said.
The International Criminal Court concluded in January 2024 that it was plausible Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to genocide. “We have never passed through such a situation… It is a genocide,” Aranki-Batato said.
Archbishop of Jerusalem Hosam Naoum and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The United States, Aranki-Batato said, “has the power to stop the war in two minutes” but continues to provide advanced weaponry to Israel while asking Israel to let humanitarian aid into Gaza. “I don’t know what’s the logic [in] this, but this is the situation,” she said.
“What we can do is to continue to save the lives of people, to continue advocating for an immediate ceasefire, to continue advocating for unlimited and unconditional humanitarian aid to Gaza and to continue advocating for human rights,” she added.
On Oct. 24, PWRDF’s humanitarian response coordinator Naba Gurung took part in a virtual meeting between NGOs, including PWRDF and the Mennonite Central Committee, and Canadian MPs. He briefed them on the work of PWRDF in Gaza and the West Bank and reiterated the call for a ceasefire and the protection of human rights in Israel and Palestine. “Without a ceasefire, lasting peace cannot begin there,” Gurung said.