Gaza Healthcare System

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing this debate and on his expertise in the area.

The Israeli Government carry out these crimes against humanity because they can, and no one stops them. For nearly two years, Gaza’s healthcare system has been systematically dismantled during Israel’s military campaign. The World Health Organisation reports that there were 735 attacks on healthcare in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to 11 June last year. In 2024, the UN commission of inquiry concluded:

“Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza.”

The special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has stated that the targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system by the IDF amounts to “medicide”, part of

“the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza which constitutes an act of genocide.”

One image stays with me: a hospital tent, a patient on a drip, flames climbing the IV line, a man too sick to run. That is what the destruction of a health system looks like. Amid this horror, there have been many extraordinary acts of courage from very many British medics, including Middlesbrough doctor Mohammed Mustafa and Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah. They have stitched, they have amputated, they have delivered babies and they have kept children alive in wards without power and under bombardment.

Even under the so-called ceasefire, Israel restricts healthcare. Dual-use restrictions block medical equipment, including imaging machines, prosthetic materials and surveillance tablets. More than 6,000 amputees await limbs. Only a few hundred prostheses have been allowed in. Stocks will run out. Israel has moved to deregister more than 35 international NGOs, including those funded by the British public. Those organisations deliver one in three births in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of consultations. They are being forced to hand over staff data or be shut down. Medical evacuations remain desperately limited. The WHO lists 18,000 people as in urgent need of care outside Gaza.

The deliberate targeting of healthcare, the obstruction of aid and the killing and detention of medical personnel raise serious questions under international humanitarian law and the Geneva convention. A ceasefire must mean a ceasefire. Israel must uphold the ceasefire, lift its blockade on medical aid, end registration rules, allow safe passage for patients, permit the reconstruction of hospitals and release detained healthcare workers. The UK Government must do more than issue statements. They must interrogate Israel’s actions and intent, and enforce consequences. We are seeing scenes where the dogs are healthy in Gaza and the people are starving. We must ask ourselves how it is that the dogs are so healthy. Where are they getting their nutrition? I will leave people to make up their own mind.

I ask the Minister these questions. Have the Government assessed whether UK-supplied arms, including F-35s, were used in strikes on healthcare facilities? Will they publish their assessment? Will he state without equivocation that the destruction of hospitals in Gaza is a breach of international humanitarian law and is in direct contravention of the genocide convention? What diplomatic or economic sanctions has the UK imposed in response to Israel blocking 18,000 patients? What consequences will Israel face for deregistering aid agencies? How is the UK implicated through the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre?

Given that the UK sanctioned over 1,500 individuals after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the glaring double standards are beyond reprehensible. The UK’s diplomatic statements have not shifted the Israeli Government’s policy one iota. We must use leverage, trade measures, arms controls and sanctions—concrete consequences for grave breaches of international law. Healthcare is protected in war. That is not optional; it is the law.

The UK has not done anywhere near enough to exert pressure on Israel. If the same ineffective stance is maintained, the UK risks facing charges of complicity. We have more than diplomacy in our locker. It is absolutely criminal that the UK is not using the levers available. We have legal, moral and historical obligations and responsibilities to the Palestinians, who this country has betrayed for over 100 years, from the Balfour declaration to the present day, and the genocide continues. In the name of God, I ask the Minister—I urge him and this Government—to do the right thing and act, before the Palestinian people are completely wiped from the map.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I can give the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) three minutes to speak.