Gaza is at the heart of People’s Health Movements struggle for Justice and equality

Comrades at People’s Health Movement,

We Palestinians have learned with great regret and condemnation of our prevention from participation in the People’s Health Movement fifth international conference held in Argentina. Our prevention from participation alongside you comrades will not deter us from our struggle for the call to stop the genocide committed by the settler colonialist and apartheid Israeli regime against our Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza Strip; an unabated war without limits or accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

We wish your conference success in the struggle towards developing health goals for all in the right place. We remind you that for us, health for all must challenge the dominant powers that collude and compromise for the continuance of the genocide in Palestine for their own interests. The unjust war waged by the Israeli occupation is using hunger, thirst and destruction of all means of life as targets of war.

Our dear comrades: Gaza is at the heart of People’s Health Movements struggle for Justice and equality. We are saddened, bereaved, angered and hurt by what is happening to our people in Gaza in the current massacre carried out by the Zionist Israeli regime since October 2023 with the despicable complicity of imperial regimes that lost all sense of humanity, objectivity and justice. At the same time, we sense the bravery of our Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, and we believe in their ability to continue resisting this aggression to maintain their land, identity and history. However, we wonder why the majority of world governments are standing silent while crimes are being committed daily in Palestine.

The world has seen poverty and hunger for many reasons including the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the discrepancy between social classes and imperial interests’ control in peoples’ natural wealth. However, in light of the genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, we are witnessing a new form of hunger; hunger has become a weapon aimed at women, men, children and the elderly. This weapon is being deliberately used by the occupation against Palestinians to destroy them. These circumstances have been ongoing throughout six months of suffering to access food, education, drinking water and safe shelter. The occupation is destroying hospitals, health centers and ambulances, killing health workers and patients in the process. It is depleting healthcare facilities and preventing water, power and electricity supply. It is undermining healthcare capacities to the lowest level possible.

Dear comrades, many countries and the free people of the world are standing with the Palestinian people today in their tragedy, and are struggling alongside our people to stop the war and support their right to stop the occupation and hold it accountable for its crimes that are affecting all people with a living conscience; people who refuse to accept such crimes. We call on you today to stand with all these free voices consciences in the world to call for the following:

• Struggle and call for an immediate end to the genocidal war waged by the Israeli occupation against our Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza Strip that is facing famine, thirst, and depravation of all forms of a decent life.
• Join popular, international and electronic campaigns to boycott, divest from and sanction the Israeli occupation (BDS), and support campaigns calling for stopping the selling and supplying the Israeli occupation with weapons to kill innocent Palestinians in Gaza Strip.
• Join international and popular efforts to organize medical supplies and aid to break the Israeli blockade over Gaza Strip, particularly in the healthcare and medical aspect. 
• Incriminate and condemn the occupation’s use of hospitals and healthcare facilities as military command centers, and call for holding the Israeli apartheid regime accountable for the grave violations committed against workers in the health sector and patients, including children, women and elders, at hospitals and healthcare facilities.
• Incriminate and condemn the killing and execution of doctors and workers in the health sector, as well as the arrest of dozens of them and subjecting them to torture and different forms of inhumane treatment, and join the international campaign calling for their immediate release.
• Call for ending the 75 year old settler colonial and apartheid Israeli regime, considering it one of the most destructive tools of human dignity, and support the Palestinian people’s right to freedom from this occupation, self-determination, and return of their refugees to their land. 
• Oppose the militarized humanitarian aid interventions to our Palestinian people in Gaza Strip and call for a radical change at the UNSC, which is impeding all efforts to stop the genocide and hold the apartheid occupation state accountable for its crimes due to the Veto used by the United States who is complicit along with some other imperial powers in this genocidal war.