Thank you very much. My name is Dr. Thaer Ahmed. I’m an emergency medicine physician based in Chicago, and I am a physician that has served in Gaza last year, in 2024, at Naser Hospital in Khan Yunis as well as AL Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. I come today with a reminder of understanding of what has taken place in Gaza over the last 19 months as not just isolated incidents of violations of international humanitarian law, of not just moments that have seen as headlines and then passed. It is essential for us to understand the totality of the devastation, to understand the nuance, to see the humans past the number, the tens of thousands of Palestinians that have been slaughtered in the last 19 months. And I urge for all of us to maintain a degree of urgency with what has taken place. The last 24 hours, we watched over a 100 Palestinians get slaughtered. We’ve seen in the last few days more than four hospitals, hospitals that I’ve worked at, get struck with missiles. And of course, there is no accountability, but there’s no mention of the victims who have suffered as a result of this. There is no talk of what will happen to them now that these hospitals are out of commission. Frankly, we don’t have time until next month to be thinking about what we can do now, what we can do tomorrow. Time is running out. You know, there’s a thing that we do here in the United States often times at events. We acknowledge the indigenous people that used to be on this land. And I fear that if we maintain the same level of paralysis, that if we are not acting, that we will be doing the same in Jenin and in Gaza, and in other parts of what we once knew as Palestine.

I also want to reiterate that I feel that this new aid modality that is being pitched – there is mention of the need for increased aid in Gaza. Absolutely. The need for food, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. But this idea of a new aid modality, of these distribution centers, of the ghettoization of Palestinians in Gaza, needs to be flatly rejected and recognized for what it is. It is another arm of occupation. It is the militarization of humanitarian aid. How can we expect that the people who have committed the atrocities over the last 19 months to suddenly say it’s okay for Palestinians to be getting food and medicine, to be packaging food and saying that’s enough? Can we expect them to not suddenly say I think that’s enough food for today or this week or this month, and starve the Palestinians again? And as a medical professional, it is very important that we all recognize that severe acute malnutrition and starvation is not simply giving people food and letting them eat. It is a medical emergency. They need monitoring. You cannot just give food for 50 days like we saw in a ceasefire and then suddenly cut it off and expect for them to be okay. They got enough food for that time period. They’ll survive the next seven or eight weeks of pure starvation. It doesn’t work like that.

I say this as someone who also recognizes the need for access. March 13th, 5 days before the escalations, 5 days before the ceasefire was violated, I was in Jordan ready to go back into Gaza and I was denied under the premise of security reasons like many other medical professionals. Myself because I am a Palestinian. But often times the denial can be arbitrary. Acess is limited. We have to push back on that. There needs to be a way for us to recognize that access into the Gaza Strip is just as important as aid. And that for the people to be able to go in and out is a right that should be enshrined and should not be used as a weapon of war, not be used as a way to punish and make them suffer. I say this as somebody who walked over the body of a dead child, while the mother was grieving, to treat another patient in Nasser hospital. I say this as somebody who didn’t get a chance to wipe the blood off of a 5-year-old who had died in an Israeli air strike because there were too many patients in the emergency room of Nasser. I say this as a Palestinian who yesterday had to watch a mother say that she found the body of her child outside of their house but could not find his head and spent the entire night with a flashlight going through the streets, roaming through the streets of Khan Yunis, hoping to find his head but being unsuccessful. I say this as somebody who saw a child who was born right after the ceasefire broke down and is starving to death. The mother delivered this child in the lone remaining room of a house that was destroyed in Khan Yunis. She delivered this child with 11 other family members in that room. And this infant, you can see the ribs through the skin. You can see the labored breaths. You can hear the weak cry of hunger, because they don’t have enough energy to be able to ask for a feeding, to do that normal cry that we hear. And the mother is not able to produce milk because there’s been no food that has entered. And we sit there knowing that the stuff that we need in order for this child to have a chance at life is right outside of the border, kilometers away. And I remind everybody that this child, every day that we deprive this child of the formula, of the milk that it needs to survive, every day that even if they miraculously survive, even if there’s a ceasefire deal tomorrow, that their future is compromised, their development is suffering irreversible damage. Their mental development, their physical development, their immune system.

And so I ask that we consider these people that we consider them when we start talking about the need for aid to enter, that we think about them when we say that the bombs need to stop dropping. And let us be honest, and I think we’ve mentioned this, but it’s important to hold ourselves accountable just as much as it is important to hold the Israelis accountable. I speak on behalf of, you know, the international humanitarian community. We have to see where we failed. It’s time for us to think and consider increasing the international presence in Gaza to make sure that we are standing there not as a line of defense for Palestinians. I mean, don’t get it twisted. It’s a line of defense for the rest of us, for all of humanity. To make sure that the hospitals in Gaza are protected, it’s to make sure that the hospitals everywhere else are protected. And when a hospital goes out of commission, just like European Gaza Hospital is now out of commission, it’s not just the patients that were there in that moment. It’s all of the other patients that will need those services in the coming weeks and days. The kids that need to be vaccinated against polio and the mothers who need to deliver their children, and the fathers who need to get dialysis. All of these people are at risk of death.

And I’ll conclude with one last thought. In Gaza, we saw the past of Palestinians being erased. Our museums, our universities, our hospitals, our clinics. 90% of schools have been damaged. They need major reconstruction. Right now, we see our present is being compromised. Healthcare workers are being killed. Dr. Husam Abu Safia is still languishing away in an Israeli dungeon without any charges against him. A leader in pediatric health – We need him in Gaza treating patients. We don’t need him behind Israeli bars. And we’re seeing our future being eliminated. We saw the fertility clinic be bombed. We are watching our children being dismembered, disfigured, disappeared. We are ruining the chance to have these beautiful children grow up and serve society, serve Palestinian society, and serve humanity at large. And so again, I just ask that we consider what are the things that we can do tonight and tomorrow. What are the ways that we can apply pressure to make sure that all sorts of aid is getting in, not just food packages at distribution centers. And I hope that all of us can consider how we can play a role with respect to access. Let us reconnect Gaza to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Let us make sure children who need cancer treatment can go to hospitals in Jerusalem or in the West Bank, rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get them out of the Gaza Strip with no guarantee that they’ll ever be able to return. Let Palestinians be treated by Palestinians. Palestinian doctors can take care of Palestinian children. They are very capable and I’ve met with many of them. And so maybe there’s an opportunity for us to support Palestinian institutions, to stand in solidarity with them, to fund them, to make sure that they have an opportunity to treat their people.
Thank you.