In recent days the specter of the spread of polio has emerged in Gaza, a very serious disease of which we have a distant memory but which recurs where hygiene conditions are seriously compromised. It is not surprising that it emerged in Gaza, where for eleven months the population has been living crowded together, waste and sewage are spilled on the streets and everything is missing, especially clean water.
The UN organizations and the WHO have asked to vaccinate around 640,000 children, for the first time those born from 2023 and with a booster those up to ten years old. Israel has apparently allowed a suspension of attacks for 9 hours a day for 3 days in each of the areas into which it keeps Gaza forcibly divided. Which will therefore resume after 3pm and until 6am daily.
WHO and UN organizations on the ground began preparing to be active on Sunday, September 1, but expressed skepticism about whether these time windows will be respected by Israel or whether they are adequate for the task. One of WHO’s concerns is whether safe access is permitted even during these limited periods for both staff and children’s families. And they have reasons, even fresh ones: 3 days ago, due to yet another “mistake”, the IDF repeatedly hit a World Food Program car to which it had “allowed and coordinated” passage. Today it targeted cars from Anera, a humanitarian organization that was “allowed” to travel to distribute aid. The attack killed 5 people under the pretext that there were “suspicions” around the cars.
We are convinced, along with the WHO, that the operation may not be effective, puts the lives of vaccinators and the families who approach them at risk, and that the conditions imposed are not adequate for the purpose of widespread vaccination. There is no doubt that families and the Ministry of Health in Gaza are alarmed by the spread of polio in addition to other diseases, and that they too will do everything possible to protect children, already seriously decimated or ill and often malnourished. All of them will still try to make it a useful intervention.
What is outrageous and deeply disturbing in this context in which we try to protect the health of children is that nothing is done to prevent them from becoming possible and apparently favorite victims of the IDF – see the many children who are victims of sniping documented by doctors international organizations operating in Gaza – and it is also the incompetence of European and Italian political representatives. Who, at the very least, should know and be aware of their responsibilities and capable of using the tools they have to stop the genocide.
Instead, we heard the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, call for 3 days of ceasefire, as if they were the panacea for Gaza. Naturally following the same US request. It seems that Borrell has never seen even a photo of what Gaza is now and how it is under attack and does not ask himself what sense there is in vaccinating children and then not protecting their lives.
But how come this anxiety about the vaccination saving in just a few hours (27) for approximately 210,000 recipients for each area, welcomed with caveats and skepticism by the UN delegated bodies who “know what they should do” and say how it is almost impossible to do it, has had a lot of echo in the EU buildings and apparently in its governments and was praised by the US representative at the United Nations?
What its “true and certain” outcome will be, however, is clear. And if only part will be vaccinated, if perhaps none of the convoys and people who converge, on foot and under the sun to vaccinate their little ones will be attacked by “misunderstanding” between 6 and 3 pm, if not even after 3pm of the fateful 3 days, if and if…even if, certainly having “granted this vaccination truce” has already achieved with the announcement alone the result of protecting Israel from an additional crime against humanity and genocide in addition to as already documented, and any incident will be condoned like all other IDF “mistakes”.
And we are convinced that at least this outcome is clear to the politicians, that both Borrell, the majority of European governments and the USA are clear about this role of “protection of the criminal”, having practiced for a long time and successfully in this activity. An exercise so well done that after 11 months the EU does not even talk about suspending economic and research agreements, although required by compliance with Article 2 of its own rules, nor about sanctions on the state of Israel, in compliance with the Court’s ruling International Criminal Law while, also late on the USA, Borrell timidly suggests sanctioning some settlers, individually.
We therefore denounce the proposal for a humanitarian truce for vaccinations, however necessary, as insufficient and hypocritical. The apparent humanitarian value of the request by Borrell and the USA actually covers an objective complicity with Israel, which could improve its international image, without giving any guarantee that vaccinations are actually feasible. A bit like with the US bridge for humanitarian aid? only this time the UN pays.
Vaccinating the population, and especially children, is absolutely necessary, but we cannot allow and ignore that, at the end of the truce, the situation in Gaza will become dramatic again, with daily massacres, an average of 40 deaths per day, the majority of which are women and children, and that the population continues to survive in the complete destruction of schools, hospitals, infrastructures, and in the impossibility of accessing humanitarian aid. The EU and the states of Europe and the world have the tools in their regulations and legally permissible and invoked by the International Criminal Court to stop the massacre in Gaza and the extension of the genocide into the occupied territories in the West Bank.
They all have to use them.
We no longer accept this political ignorance and bad faith. As also stated by the Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, he also underlines how “the only lasting medicine is peace” and “the only way to completely protect all the children of Gaza is a ceasefire”
We add: a permanent ceasefire, the reconstruction of Gaza, the end of the Israeli occupation. Otherwise, any humanitarian initiative, however necessary and desirable, unfortunately covers up the ethnic cleansing at the hands of Israel which continues and extends it, and also pays the price for it.
We therefore ask the EU to take a position so that vaccinations are accompanied by a permanent ceasefire, abandoning the complicit policy it has pursued until now and finally sanctions Israel for failure to respect humanitarian law and for war crimes.
Prof.ssa Paola Manduca, Genetista, NWRG-odv
Dr. Giorgio Mariani, Sapienza Università di Roma
Dr. Antonello Petrillo, sociologo, Università degli Studi S.O. Benincasa, Napoli
Carla Pagano, dottoranda, Università di Napoli L’Orientale
Prof.ssa Laura Guazzone, Sapienza Università di Roma
Dr. Maria Elena Indelicato , CEEC Individual FCT Researcher, University of Coimbra, Center for Social Studies | UNPOP Researcher
Dott.ssa Chiara Tenti, ASIT – Università degli Studi di Padova
Antonio Banfi, biblioteca sede Medicina, Università di Milano Bicocca
Dr. Giulia Rossi, TNPEE Milano e Torino
Dr. Mariasilvia Giamberini, ricercatrice, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Dr. Paolo Cuttitta, Università di Genova
Dr. Stefano Portelli, Università Roma T
