The Director General of the Government Information Office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, warned in an interview with Al-Quds that “the Israeli occupation forces’ control of the Rafah crossing has prevented the travel of more than 22,000 wounded and sick people, who are in urgent need of external hospitals, and prevented them from freedom of movement.” With his overthrowing the health system and putting it out of service, after destroying and burning 33 hospitals out of 35 in the Gaza Strip, which heralds the occurrence of a disaster that threatens their lives.”

Al-Thawabta pointed out that the Israeli forces’ attack on Rafah Governorate, where approximately 1,200,000 Palestinians currently live, heralds the occurrence of a real humanitarian catastrophe against hundreds of thousands of citizens, threatening their lives and placing them among the ranks of the martyrs, the wounded, and the hungry.

Al-Thawabta held the occupation and its supporter, America, fully responsible for the crimes of genocide against the Palestinian people, the escalation of the war of starvation and thirst, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, and the kidnapping and torture of civilian prisoners without fault.

Al-Thawabeta called on the international community, the United Nations and its institutions to take urgent action to stop the crime of our time, put an end to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that the Palestinian people have suffered for more than 7 months, and take the necessary decisions that force the occupation to stop the genocidal massacres, withdraw from the Rafah crossing, reopen it and facilitate the arrival of aid. The relief and medical assistance that the Palestinian people need, and the immediate release of all kidnapped prisoners from the Gaza Strip.

For 9 days, the occupation army has continued its ground invasion of the city of Rafah, with no aid entering from the Kerem Shalom crossing, preventing the exit of thousands of wounded to receive treatment abroad, and the arrival of humanitarian and medical aid, which portends a new humanitarian catastrophe, with hundreds of sick and wounded losing their lives due to... The availability of necessary medicines, the inability of the remaining health centers to deal with their medical needs, and the worsening food security crisis, reaching a state of famine, throughout the besieged sector.

Al-Thawabta called on the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court to investigate 19 types of war crimes and crimes against humanity in violation of international law against civilians, and to issue arrest warrants against war criminals among the occupation leaders, most notably the Prime Minister of the occupation government, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Minister of War, and his Army Chief of Staff.

He explained that the crimes of genocide carried out by the occupation include: deliberate killing, starvation, arrest, torture, inhuman treatment, deportation, forced disappearance, and taking hostages as human shields, as well as the destruction of villages, towns, and residential buildings, using internationally banned weapons.

He called on the International Court of Justice to raise its voice, after the occupation flouted its precautionary measures and decisions, especially at a time when American media revealed “some forms of torture and brutality with which the criminal occupation army treats the prisoners it kidnapped from the Gaza Strip, where it holds them in secret detention centers... subject to any supervision, and commits the most horrific forms of torture and sadism, which reveals the extent of the suffering and atrocities committed against these prisoners.”