A group of American and British physicians is in Washington, DC, to inform the Biden administration of the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) intentionally destroying Gaza's healthcare system.

According to The Guardian, the doctors recently volunteered in the besieged Strip and are scheduled to speak with senior members of Congress and administration officials to warn them of the dangers of increased aid without an immediate ceasefire.

Professor Nick Maynard, the former director for cancer services at Oxford University who worked at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, revealed that the IOF were committing "appalling atrocities", citing a "systematic targeting" of healthcare facilities and staff.

Maynard reported that not only were the IOF targeting medical buildings, but they were also destroying their infrastructure and equipment like CT scanners and oxygen tanks.

"If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?" he questioned. 

Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza recounted instances of being blindfolded, detained, stripped, and subjected to repeated beatings by Israeli troops following a hospital raid last month, BBC reported.

Maynard believes this to be an intentional tactic to expel Palestinians from their homes.

"If a hospital has been dismantled, if the locals see there is no medical care available and see the disrupted infrastructure, it’s yet another factor that drives them south."

Urgency for a ceasefire

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, head of the medical organization MedGlobal and a guest of Senator Dick Durbin during the President's State of the Union speech earlier this month, said that public backlash has led Democratic legislators to be more open to discussing Israeli behavior. 

A Chicago physician, Thaer Ahmad, who volunteered at Nasser Hospital's emergency department in January, believes the damage to the healthcare system makes a truce even more vital.

Ahmad explained that the effort was intended to communicate a sense of urgency to those who are capable of "impactful decisions".

The physicians stated that with most hospitals closed or overburdened, tens of thousands of Palestinians with severe wounds are not receiving proper treatment beyond initial emergency care, and many of them would die or be permanently disabled.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face deliberate starvation as a result of "Israel's" blockade of appropriate food supply to Gaza. WHO representative Margaret Harris shared troubling reports of doctors observing starvation in children to the point of seeing newborn babies "simply dying because they [are] too low birth weight."

Maynard added that "however much aid gets to the borders of Gaza it cannot be distributed whilst there’s ongoing military action."

He expressed that he was headed to the US because of a "desperation" to challenge false narratives coming from the occupation, such as the fact that the IOF are "protecting civilians", adding that "what we witnessed refutes that completely."

"I operated on far more women than I did men. This notion that they’re targeting Hamas militants – I saw the most appalling injuries in children. Awful burns, traumatic amputations in children.”

Attack on Rafah to be 'catastrophic'

Doctors are concerned that worse is on the way after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Biden's request to halt a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which is home to more than one million displaced Palestinians.

Ahmad called a possible assault on Rafah "catastrophic".

“It’ll be a bloodbath. You have a place that already didn’t have the infrastructure for the one million who are there," he expressed.

Biden's administration is considering various options instead of an Israeli ground invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah, which it plans to present to a senior Israeli delegation visiting Washington next week, Axios reported citing two US officials.

The Biden administration strongly opposes an all-out Israeli military action in Rafah and has expressed concerns that "Israel" lacks a viable plan to protect Palestinian civilians there. But Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the invasion of Rafah is a must to "eliminate Hamas."