Doctors Without Borders Suspends Gaza City Mission
The IDF offensive has encroached to "Danger Close" to the MSF facility in Gaza City. IDF continues to violate the Geneva Convention, treat non-combatants as enemies.
MSF/Doctors without Borders. Gaza: Medical care under fire.
MSF/Doctors Without Borders announced yesterday that it intends to evacuate its personnel from Gaza City. The international humanitarian aid group’s Gaza emergency coordinator, Jacob Granger, said: “We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces…This is the last thing we wanted, as the needs in Gaza City are enormous, with the most vulnerable people—infants in neonatal care, those with severe injuries and life-threatening illnesses—unable to move and in grave danger.”
Granger’s words ring true about the dangers. In August 2025, The Guardian revealed internal data from the Israeli military itself, indicating a civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza. Healthcare workers and journalists are no exception. An August 2025 BBC report stated that an IDF “double strike” on Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, killed 20, including journalists. The United Nations has long been aware of the IDF’s deliberate killings of medical professionals in Gaza. The UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported in July that “at least 1,581 health workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023. Those remaining in Gaza are operating under unprecedented constraints, including facing a daily threat of death or injury to themselves or their families.”
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch long ago rang the alarm bell of the IDF’s genocidal intent in the Gaza Strip. MSF has bravely served in Gaza; its mission in the apartheid zone has had a real impact in stemming the tide of death.
Doctors Without Borders has, to date, treated millions of Palestinians.
1,158,908 outpatient consultations
347,357 emergency cases
76,064 people treated for diarrhea
27,365 surgical interventions
56,034 inpatients admitted
15,404 deliveries
66,758 prenatal consultations
65,303 individual mental health consultations
81,786 non-communicable disease consultations
The organization’s medical teams have helped new life enter the world in addition to saving life and limb of children, adolescents, and adults. MSF have given much-needed physical and mental health consultations to over half the Palestinian population of Gaza. Their service and mission are beyond heroic.
The loss of the Gaza City field hospital is shocking, but should not come as a surprise given Israel’s hostility and genocidal intent toward journalists, medical professionals, and civilians. This publication, Structures in the Wild, delivered a report last week detailing the scale and scope of these war crimes and atrocities, accompanied by the words of EFF South Africa MP Carl Niehaus.
As Israel reignites its genocidal push into Gaza, many more displaced head South for the tenuous security of Khan Younis, where MSF/Doctors Without Borders intends to continue to operate. The organization will remain in the conflict zone as long as it can, and as long as critical care is needed. The Global Sumud Flotilla is now less than 433 nautical miles away, off the coast of Crete, joined by its escorts of Italian and Spanish warships, as well as Turkish drones.
While humanitarian efforts are underway, the world must do its part to bring this campaign to a decisive end, immediately, without delay. Millions of lives are at stake.