“I am heartbroken.” This was the anguished response of Jagan Chapagain, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, to Sunday’s news that the bodies of 14 rescue workers, missing for a week in Gaza after encountering Israeli forces in Rafah, had been found in a makeshift grave.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society, eight of whose staff are among the dead, said its team went missing on the morning of March 23, when an ambulance was sent into Rafah after overnight Israeli attacks. When the ambulance crew reported being injured by Israeli fire, the agency said it sent three more ambulances to assist them. Contact with all the crews was lost.
Israel's military admitted on Saturday that it fired at ambulances after identifying them as "suspicious vehicles”. Israeli troops "opened fire towards Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists", it said in a statement, without saying whether there was any gunfire coming from the vehicles. However, as the IFRC’s Mr Chapagain said in his own statement: “Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules.” Here, it appears, the rules were ignored.
Under international humanitarian law, ambulances in war zones must be respected and protected in all circumstances. Militaries can target ambulances and other medical vehicles if they are being misused for combat purposes by the enemy, but even in such circumstances those pulling the trigger must exercise extreme caution and make every effort to verify their suspicions. As the Geneva Conventions note, such vehicles are targetable “only after a due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded”. Given Israel has released no proof it issued these warnings and that no sign of a Hamas presence was found among the medical personnel, it is far from clear if such laws were followed.
Sadly, the violent end experienced by these 14 humanitarians – an additional Palestine Red Crescent worker remains unaccounted for – is not an isolated incident. In November 2023, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” by Israeli strikes on an ambulance convoy outside Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, with World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus adding that he was “utterly shocked” by the reports. The April 2024 deaths of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarians in Israeli strikes on their marked convoy – despite the charity telling the Israeli military of its planned movements through a “deconfliction” channel – further underlines the manner in which Israeli forces operate with impunity.
There is a cascade effect from such killings. Gaza’s healthcare and first-response systems are already in tatters after repeated Israeli bombardments and a lack of humanitarian aid. The killing of yet more aid workers and medics not only reduces this capacity further, it further erodes international law and degrades global protections of medical personnel given that their special status seemingly counts for little. Hamas undoubtedly committed crimes by kidnapping and killing innocent civilians but that does not in any way justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, let alone medical workers.
Unfortunately, this incident and too many others like it have not been met with practical international measures to curtail the actions of Israel’s military. The message this sends out is that no one in Palestine is safe, be they displaced civilians, hospital patients, aid workers, UN staff or journalists.
