The displaced residents of the al-Mawasi encampment, west of Khan Younis, were taken by surprise on Thursday when Israeli military tanks stormed the area without prior warning. The tanks advanced to within just 700 meters of the Nasser Medical Complex, the only functioning hospital in southern Gaza.
The hospital had been issuing distress calls for days, fearing that it might be forced to cease operations by the Israeli army. The medical complex remains the sole refuge for the injured and wounded, which includes casualties arriving from yet another aid massacre at distribution centers run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or from Israeli bombardment across the rest of the Strip.
Muhammad Saqr, the hospital’s head of nursing, says the hospital might be forced to shut down entirely within 24 hours due to a severe fuel shortage. “Only 3,000 liters of fuel remain, while the hospital needs over 4,500 liters daily to operate its departments, ” he told Mondoweiss on Friday.
“The hospital has begun implementing an emergency plan by cutting electricity to some sections and performing surgeries in the dark,” the head of nursing added. “They are using handheld flashlights or mobile phones to illuminate critical procedures on severely wounded patients.”
Saqr explained that doctors were also performing surgeries without adequate ventilation or air conditioning, which led them to sweat profusely during procedures and sometimes inadvertently drip sweat onto patients’ wounds.
Saqr stated that running out of fuel practically amounts to “a death sentence” for dozens of wounded patients, whose lives depend entirely on medical devices.
In the dialysis ward at the complex, 61-year-old Rehab Omar, who needs kidney dialysis three times a week, said that she knows the fate that awaits patients like her if the siege over the hospital continues. Omar affirmed that Nasser Hospital was the only medical institution still offering services to the beleaguered population, despite limited resources and shortages of medicine and essential supplies.
“In addition to our catastrophic problems — malnutrition, lack of food, the shelling, and death — another kind of death awaits us if the hospital stops providing the treatment that keeps us alive, like dialysis,” she said. “There is nowhere else in Gaza for us to go. Isn’t it enough that death surrounds us from every side, that we must now face a new kind of death by being deprived of our right to life-saving treatment?”
The hospital warned that the fuel shortage would turn the facility into a “silent graveyard.” Doctors described working under extremely harsh conditions, racing against time and dwindling resources to save lives.
The hospital is also suffering from severe conditions beyond the fuel crisis. Over the past week, Dr. Ahmad al-Farar, a physician working at the hospital, documented over 40 cases of meningitis among children. The spread of this disease inside the hospital has been attributed to poor hygiene and the lack of necessary sterilization capabilities.
The healthcare system across Gaza, especially the major hospitals that serve large numbers of patients across different governorates, has been subject to repeated Israeli attacks. The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis stands as one of the largest medical centers in southern Gaza alongside the European Hospital, which was subjected to heavy bombardment with bunker-buster bombs in mid-May.
The Nasser complex itself witnessed a ground assault in February 2024, which led to fires that destroyed entire sections of the hospital’s facilities and caused widespread damage, putting the entire hospital out of service for a time. Mass graves were later discovered in April 2024 inside the medical complex after Israeli forces withdrew. It was described as among the most horrific mass graves to be uncovered in southern Gaza, containing the bodies of patients, hospital staff, and displaced civilians, some with their hands bound and medical catheters still attached.
Also read: ‘It felt like pulling my heart out of the earth:’ testimonies from the mass grave at Nasser Hospital.
The medical complex did not escape further bombardment later throughout the war, as repeated airstrikes targeted various sections of the hospital, resulting in numerous casualties. Among them was renowned journalist Hassan Eslayeh, who was targeted and killed while receiving treatment in the hospital’s burn unit. Eslayeh had survived an earlier strike on a journalist’s tent outside the medical complex, telling Mondoweiss at the time that he expected to be targeted again in his hospital bed in Nasser Hospital.
Hospital threatened with shutting down amid faltering ceasefire talks
Reports of Nasser Hospital’s possible shutdown come amid mounting signs of the collapse of ongoing negotiations over a possible ceasefire, which was supposed to go into effect this week, according to earlier announcements by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Reports indicate that the negotiations are now on the verge of complete collapse due to the Israeli army’s insistence on not withdrawing from Gaza and its seizure of over 40% of the territory’s land area.
These areas include large parts of Rafah City, Khuza’a in Khan Younis, parts of northern Gaza, and other areas east of Gaza City. Israel has reportedly placed a new plan on the negotiating table that designates all these areas as permanently under Israeli control, widely believed to be a direct reason behind the faltering ceasefire talks.
Meanwhile, on Friday, new evacuation orders were issued for several Gaza residents amid warnings that the Israeli army intends to “concentrate” Gaza’s population in a so-called “humanitarian city” built over the flattened remains of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan has been widely condemned as a “concentration camp,” which Israel intends to use ahead of ethnically cleansing Gaza’s population.
Under the Genocide Convention (Article II(c)), genocide includes:
Does the article support that definition? Yes—here’s how:
These meet the three key elements for Article II(c):
⚖️ Legal context
VerdictYes—the article clearly depicts deliberate denial of vital resources (fuel, medical supplies, sanitation) in a way that creates conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction of a protected group. Under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, that aligns with the legal definition of genocide via “toxic conditions.”
Of course, legal determination would require formal investigation and findings of intent, but based on the Convention’s criteria, the reported conditions do meet the structural elements of genocide through the deliberate infliction of lethal living conditions.
In summary: The article does disclose facts that satisfy Genocide Convention Article II(c), describing conditions purposefully inflicted and dangerous enough to threaten the physical survival of the group.
So far, everything appears to be progressing according to Israel’s solution: rendering Gaza entirely uninhabitable, systematically dismantling its infrastructure, and leaving Gazans with nothing to return to effectively coercing, sorry ‘encouraging’ them to leave ‘voluntarily.’