WHO has been preparing for ‘worst-case scenario’ in Lebanon, regional chief tells Arab News

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Updated 01 October 2024
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WHO has been preparing for ‘worst-case scenario’ in Lebanon, regional chief tells Arab News

  • Dr. Hanan Balkhy says agency conducted hundreds of sessions in mass casualty training, health workforce training and EMT training
  • Expresses concern over the  “significant amounts of pressure and stress” that medical staff in Gaza are operating under

NEW YORK: The escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is of “grave concern” for the World Health Organization, and the agency is exerting substantial efforts in ensuring that countries in the region are “ready for the worst-case scenario when it comes to health preparation,” WHO’s regional chief has told Arab News.

Dr. Hanan Balkhy, a Saudi physician who was appointed to the role of director for the Eastern Mediterranean in January this year following a distinguished career in medicine, made the comment while she was in New York City last week to rally support for critical public health initiatives.

“When it comes to the health preparation, we were able over the past months to pre-place emergency kits within Lebanon and with a few other neighboring countries to at least sustain some of the commodities that would be needed in case the escalation reached a very high point,” she told Arab News.

“We work very closely with the ministers of health, within the ministries themselves, and we make sure that we can train people on certain skills that we know will be necessary.”

The agency has conducted “hundreds” of training sessions — including mass casualty training, health workforce training and EMT training — within Lebanon and other WHO member states in the region.

Some of those countries have already faced significant pressure on their healthcare systems as a result of Israel’s war in Gaza, Balkhy said.




An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon. (AFP)

“There’s big pressure on the member states that are surrounding the Occupied Palestinian Territories, from receiving the (Palestinian) patients and taking care of them, but now there’s actual escalation of war in southern Lebanon.

“So, with that in mind, we’re trying to put together at least the basics that are needed for the worst-case scenario.”

Balkhy voiced concern over the recent pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon.

On 17 and 18 September 2024, thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies intended for use by Hezbollah operatives exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in an Israeli attack, killing dozens, including two children, and injuring thousands more.

Most of the dead are believed to have been fighters, based on death notices posted online by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia.




A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut’s southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display. (AFP)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called for an “independent, thorough and transparent investigation” into the mass explosion, adding that “simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law.”

The device explosions led to “very complex injuries in the face and in the hands,” said Balkhy.

Doctors in Lebanon say they had never seen the kind of maiming that resulted from the pager attacks. Described some of the wounds as “horrific,” they said the injuries have ranged from puncture wounds in the face, amputated hands, ruptured eyeballs, abdominal wounds, ruptured bones, and broken jaws.

“We’re looking and seeking to find experts that can help us in identifying the best methods of treatment and how we can support the Lebanese Ministry of Health,” Balkhy said, pointing to “empathy” between member states and “a strong sense of solidarity.”




People gather outside a hospital in the city of Baalbeck in eastern Lebanon on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around the country. (AFP)

Balkhy also oversees WHO operations in Gaza, where the healthcare system is “on its knees” according to the UN.

“None of the healthcare facilities are fully functioning,” said Balkhy who witnessed the stark reality of the situation during a visit to Gaza and the West Bank in July.

Over 500 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the beginning of the war in October last year, and where out of 36 hospitals, 17 remain only partially functional. Primary healthcare and community-level services are frequently suspended in the battered enclave, due to insecurity, attacks and repeated evacuation orders.

More than 22,500 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries since Israel launched its military campaign in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 during which militants gunned down civilians and snatched people in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival.




A man sits near the destroyed Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 17, 2024. (AFP)

Medical staff operating in Gaza are under “significant amounts of pressure and stress,” Balkhy said, with surgeons forced to operate in increasingly makeshift facilities, often without access to basic medical equipment.

“The healthcare facilities are not just buildings. They are buildings, they are medication and instruments, and commodities, they are also the health workforce.

“There’s not one single individual (in Gaza) who has not been faced (with) being asked to move from one point to another.

“Many of them have moved many, many times, but also with the deaths and the losses within their family.”

Yet healthcare workers “continue to stand on their feet and provide care when appropriate,” Balkhy added.

IN NUMBERS

  • 1.9m Palestinians who have fled their homes since Oct. 7, 2023.
  • 41,150+ People killed in Gaza in fighting and Israeli bombardment.
  • 1,200 People killed in Israel during Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack.

However, the type of traumas and injuries inflicted on Palestinians have been “unprecedented” and “devastating,” requiring “very complex healthcare systems” of the type that Gaza lacks, she said.

“Those who have been working in the humanitarian field for over a decade have acknowledged that the types of compound fractures, soft tissue injuries, skull injuries … need neurosurgeons.

“You need very sophisticated orthopedic surgeons. You need very sophisticated equipment.”

In response, the WHO has worked in tandem with member states to organize medical evacuations across the Middle East and beyond.

Since October 2023, over 5,000 patients have been evacuated for treatment outside Gaza, with over 80 percent receiving care in Egypt, Qatar and the UAE, and a further 10,000 patients are currently in need of medical evacuation for specialized care.

This includes newborn babies requiring intensive care whose families are trying to evacuate them following the bombing of specialist maternity units across Gaza.




An injured Palestinian man is set for evacuation from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip following renewed Israeli evacuation orders for the area on August 26, 2024. (AFP)

Another major concern of health officials has been the growing lack of clean water and sanitary conditions in Gaza.

Hundreds of the enclave’s water filtration and sanitation facilities were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes since the beginning of the war.

Balkhy said that the lack of clean water makes it “very difficult” to provide the basics of healthcare.

She also highlighted the worrying proliferation of mental trauma among the population in Gaza.

“The last thing that worries me and that I saw of significance was what we will be facing from the mental stress disorders among the people who remain there and that will continue to work there.

“We will need, as the WHO, with partners, to help support, rehabilitate and address some of these issues.

“So, there’s a lot. The environment, which is a crucial part of the health and wellbeing of individuals, is extremely disturbing.




A boy walks through a puddle of sewage water past mounds of trash and rubble along a street in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on August 14, 2024. (AFP)

Balkhy described scenes of sewage “running in the streets” as well as endless rubble, adding: “It’s extremely devastating to be there on the ground.”

A significant breakthrough in the WHO’s Gaza campaign came earlier this month with the completion of the first round of a polio vaccination campaign.

A month earlier, a 10-year-old baby had been left partly paralyzed by the disease, in what was the enclave’s first reported case in 25 years.

The WHO’s campaign in central Gaza involved more than 2,000 health workers operating across 143 sites.

“We’re very happy that we were able to secure these days of tranquillity to ensure that we conducted the first round of the polio campaign,” said Balkhy.

“The whole world has their eyes on this polio campaign because the success is not just a success for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gazans, it’s a success for the world, because pathogens know no borders, and there’s a risk that polio might again spread.”

“So, I’m very happy that that has happened.”




A child receives a vaccination for polio at a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict in a school run by the UNRWA in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on September 5, 2024. (AFP)

A second round of vaccination is still needed, however, to ensure optimal levels of immunization, Balkhy added.

“Every child needs to receive those two doses, between one to two months apart,” she said.

A second round is set for mid-October, and the WHO will look to “replicate what we did in the first round.

“The WHO, UNICEF, UNRWA and the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority did amazing work to make this happen together,” Balkhy said.

“But also significant credit goes to the workers on the ground.

“All those lessons learned from the first round of the polio campaign will be very much looked at in order to have a more successful and efficient second round for the polio.”




Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of Israeli strikes on a makeshift displacement camp in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip on September 10, 2024. (AFP)

However, Balkhy gave warning that health authorities are only at the beginning of the campaign to rehabilitate living conditions in Gaza.

“As an infectious disease person, as an epidemiologist and as a pediatrician, we have a long way to go to rehabilitate the environment for the people in Gaza to to be living with dignity and with appropriate methods to have proper hygiene, instruments, clean water, soap and so on,” she said.

Balkhy is also focused on Sudan, where millions of people have been displaced by the country’s raging civil war, and famine has been declared in the North Darfur region.

Her latest visit to the country came two weeks ago, when she called for warring factions to abide by international law and end their attacks on healthcare facilities and workers.

The WHO reported in July that since the outbreak of the war in April 2023, more than 88 attacks in Sudan had targeted health facilities, ambulances, patients and workers.




People inspect a destroyed medical storage in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur province, on May 2, 2023. (AFP)

“It’s very important to sustain the regular people, the civilians who are not engaged in any of these wars, to be able to feel secure and that the humanitarians and the health workers can do their job,” Balkhy said.

“We have been able to work with the Ministry of Health of Sudan to come up with very good plans on rehabilitating primary health care and some of the secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities.”

Balkhy also visited a site for internally displaced people, warning that the level of access to clean water and sanitation, as well as the risk of cholera, are “huge challenges.”

She added: “It came also during the rainy season. It was expected — none of this is a surprise. We’ve been talking about this for quite a while.

“We’ve been able to, of course, with the Ministry of Health, establish cholera treatment centers and rehydration centers.

“So, the immunization program is is moving forward. We’re trying our best — it’s not optimal. But we do hope that we will be able to access as many children as possible.”




Cholera patients are treated at a clinic in Sudan’s Red Sea State on September 25, 2024. (AFP)

At the General Assembly in New York City, Balkhy eyed a breakthrough resolution in a high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.

“It’s the silent pandemic. I have led the Directorate of Antimicrobial Resistance as the first assistant director general in Geneva for close to five years,” she said.

“The fruition of reaching to this point of a high-level meeting — hopefully the resolution has clear, objectives, clear commitments and targets for the member states to focus.”

Despite the combined burden of Gaza and Sudan, and fears mounting over a new war in Lebanon, the WHO is “ready to do its full job and its full role in supporting the elevation of health and leaving nobody behind,” Balkhy said.

That, however, requires heads of state to meet their own responsibilities, she said.

“Secure peace for the world so that we can move on with our agendas and truly walk the talk of leading to our SDGs, leaving nobody behind.

“But without peace and without everybody working together, that is not possible.

 


UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

Updated 22 November 2024
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UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

  • UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
  • UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013

UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.


Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

Updated 22 November 2024
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Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

  • Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
  • The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court

LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.

The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.

All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.

The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.

The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.

“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”

He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”


Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

Updated 21 November 2024
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Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

MASNAA, Lebanon: Stuck in no man’s land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.

The journey is just 2 km, but Slika has no other choice — his taxi is his only source of income.

“My car is stuck between craters: I can’t reach Lebanon or return to Syria. Meanwhile, we’re under threat of (Israeli) bombardment,” said the 56-year-old.

“I work and sleep here between the two holes,” he said.

A dual Lebanese-Syrian national, Slika has been living in his car, refusing to abandon it when it broke down until a mechanic brought a new engine.

His taxi is one of the few that has been operating between the two craters since Israeli strikes in October effectively blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.

The bombed area has become a boon for drivers of tuk-tuks, who can navigate the craters easily. 

A makeshift stall, the Al-Joura (pit in Arabic) rest house, and a shop are set up nearby.

Slika went for 12 days without work while waiting for his taxi to be fixed. The car has become his home. A warm blanket covers its rear seats against eastern Lebanon’s cold winters, and a big bag of pita bread sits on the passenger side.

Before being stranded, Slika made about $100 for trips from Beirut to Damascus.

Now, an average fare between the craters is just $5.50 each way, though he said he charged more.

On Sept. 23, Israel intensified its aerial bombing of Lebanon and later sent in ground troops, nearly a year after Hezbollah initiated limited exchanges of fire in support of Hamas amid the Gaza war.

Since then, Israel has bombed several land crossings with Syria out of service. 

It accuses Hezbollah of using what are key routes for people fleeing the war in Lebanon to transfer weapons from Syria.

Amid the hardship of the conflict, more than 610,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria, mostly Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.

Undeterred by attacks, travelers still trickle through Masnaa, traversing the two craters that measure about 10 meters deep and 30 meters wide.

On the other side of the road, Khaled Khatib, 46, was fixing his taxi, its tires splattered with mud and hood coated in dust.

“After the first strike, I drove from Syria and parked my car before the crater. When the second strike hit, I got stuck between the two holes,” he said, sweat beading as he looked under the hood.

“We used to drive people from Damascus to Beirut. Now, we take them from one crater to another.”

Khatib doesn’t charge passengers facing tough times, he said, adding he had been displaced from southern Beirut, hammered by Israeli raids since September. He moved back to his hometown near the Masnaa crossing.

Despite harsh times, a sense of camaraderie reigns.

The drivers “became like brothers. We eat together at the small stall every day ... and we help each other fix our cars,” he said.

Mohamed Yassin moved his coffee stall from the Masnaa crossing closer to the pit after the strike, offering breakfast, lunch, and coffee. “We try to help people as much as possible,” he said.

Farther from the Lebanese border, travelers crossed the largest of the two crevasses, wearing plastic coverings on their shoes to avoid slipping in the mud.

A cab driver on a mound called out, “Taxi to Damascus!” while tuk-tuks and trucks ferried passengers, bags, and mattresses across.

Nearby, Aida Awda Mubarak, a Syrian mother of six, haggled with a tuk-tuk driver over the $1 fare.

The 52-year-old said she was out of work and needed to see her son after the east Lebanon town where he lives was hit by Israeli strikes.

“Sometimes we just can’t afford to pay for a tuk-tuk or a cab,” she said.


Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

Updated 21 November 2024
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Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

  • “No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said
  • The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity“

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct of the Gaza war would not stop him defending Israel.
“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not yield to pressure,” he vowed.
The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
He described Thursday’s decision as a “dark day in the history of nations.”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “utterly baseless.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Its retaliatory campaign has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
UN agencies have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to a lack of food and medicines.
The court said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “the real war crimes, horrific war crimes being committed against us and against many others around the world.”
In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military wing chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel said was killed in an air strike last July.
Hamas has never confirmed his death.
Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue a warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”


Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant

Updated 21 November 2024
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Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant

  • Crosetto believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas
  • It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants

ROME: Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Thursday his country would be obliged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant.
The ICC earlier also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
Crosetto — whose country holds the G7 rotating presidency this year — told RAI television’s Porta a Porta program that he believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas.
But he said that if Netanyahu or Gallant “were to come to Italy, we would have to arrest them.”
It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants, Crosetto said.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had earlier been more cautious, saying: “We support the ICC, while always remembering that the court must play a legal role and not a political role.
“We will evaluate together with our allies what to do and how to interpret this decision.”