Human rights group warns of risks of U.S. charity-run field hospital in Rafah

On Monday, the Gaza Center for Human Rights expressed deep concern over information indicating that the organization Samaritan Purse is seeking to establish a field hospital in an area under full Israeli military control in the city of Rafah, amid a lack of transparency about the nature of the project and the entities supervising and funding it.

The center said in a statement to the Safa news agency that the hospital would have 80 beds and would be operated by American, Canadian and European doctors, with efforts underway to recruit Palestinian doctors from the Gaza Strip by providing salaries and housing. It said equipment is expected to arrive in mid-October under direct U.S.-Israeli coordination.

It warned that the project could become a tool of political and humanitarian blackmail, or be used to control the lives of Palestinian patients, invoking the case of the “Gaza Humanitarian Organization,” which later turned out to be a cover for killings, the systematic targeting of civilians and engineering of starvation.

The Gaza human rights center said that establishing any medical facility in areas under absolute Israeli control cannot be separated from the system of control and domination exercised by the occupying authorities over humanitarian and medical services, noting that conditioning services on political terms empties humanitarian work of its substance and turns it into a weapon contrary to international humanitarian law.

It added that the so-called “American hospital” could be exploited as a political pressure card or to whitewash the image of the occupation, at a time when its forces continue to destroy Palestinian hospitals and deprive patients of care, saying the occupation has destroyed or put 38 hospitals and 96 health centers out of service in the Gaza Strip.

The center called for directing any humanitarian effort toward rehabilitating destroyed hospitals and supplying them with equipment and medicines, instead of building suspicious facilities in closed military areas, warning that the new hospital could become a cover for intelligence or military activities amid the absence of independent international oversight.

The Gaza Center for Human Rights urged the United Nations, international organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to verify the nature of the hospital’s operations and ensure it is not used for political, security or propaganda purposes, and to hold accountable any party involved in using medical aid as a weapon or blackmail against civilians in the Gaza Strip.