Gaza Healthcare System

Monica Harding Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing the debate and for bringing his expertise to this issue.

More than two years of devastating conflict has left Gaza in ruins. Over 70,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. More than 1 million people remain unable to return to their homes, while the vast majority of the population relies on humanitarian aid to survive. The attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October were appalling, and their continued violations since the ceasefire remain indefensible. They must play no future role in the governance of Gaza.

Israel’s war on Gaza over the past two years has been conducted without due regard for international humanitarian law, with devastating consequences for the Gazan healthcare system. Gaza’s healthcare system is no longer functioning in any meaningful sense. Doctors on the ground describe surgeons being forced to amputate limbs and stitch wounds without anaesthesia. Patients remain fully conscious because there is no fuel, pain relief or functioning supply chains. That has been the daily reality inside Gaza’s hospitals as they buckle under continued bombardment, medicine shortages and staff losses. There is not a single fully functioning hospital left. Even since the ceasefire, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,500 injured. There is urgency to protect civilians and rebuild a shattered healthcare system.

Aid access is in a state of crisis. Medical staff are exhausted, many nurses have fled, doctors have been killed, equipment has been destroyed and antibiotics are scarce. Amputations are common because injuries go untreated, cancer care is barely available and dialysis is severely limited. Intensive care is stretched beyond breaking point and routine vaccinations have been disrupted. Thousands of patients are effectively queued with no realistic access to care, and some remaining hospitals have been described by doctors on the ground as “waiting stations for death”.

At the same time, as we have heard, medical evacuation is limited, and beyond hospitals, public health conditions are in a dire state. Unsafe water, poor sanitation, overcrowding and winter conditions have driven notable increases in respiratory infections and diarrhoeal disease. Vaccination coverage was already fragile before the war and it is now years behind.

The UN has warned that tens of thousands of pregnant women, newborns and children now face compounded risks of malnutrition, disease and preventable death—not from bombs, but from a shattered health system unable to provide prenatal care, vaccinations or even basic hygiene. On top of that, the introduction of additional Israeli administrative restrictions has placed dozens of international humanitarian organisations under new registration requirements with limited timeframes to comply. The deadline of 1 March—next week—is approaching fast.

The uncertainty over legal status and operational permissions continues to disrupt medical deployments, supply procurement and programme continuity at a moment when trauma care, dialysis, maternal health services and infectious disease control depend heavily on international partnerships. At the same time, tighter Israeli constraints on major humanitarian service providers, particularly the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, have had direct knock-on effects on health delivery. When indispensable agencies such as UNRWA, which runs primary care clinics, vaccination programmes and community health outreach, face limits on staff entry and access to premises, utilities, banking or logistics, the impact is immediate and severe. That is because healthcare does not function in isolation. It relies on fuel for generators, secure facilities, functioning cold chains for vaccines and the ability to move personnel and supplies without obstruction.

If the operating space for humanitarian organisations is narrowed, the remaining fragments of Gaza’s healthcare system weaken further. So it is fair to ask: what are the UK Government doing about all of that? There have been some positive steps. The additional aid packages, including the £20 million humanitarian post-ceasefire package, is to be welcomed. The Government have supported about 50 sick and injured children to come to the UK for NHS treatment under a Gaza medical evacuation scheme. There have been diplomatic efforts at the UN Security Council, but the UK has much more work to do.

First, the UK Government must make reliable humanitarian access a top-tier diplomatic objective. The Israeli Government must immediately allow international humanitarian NGOs full access to Gaza and the west bank. The UK Government must co-ordinate with European partners to apply sustained diplomatic pressure on Israel to reverse the ban on aid organisations, and engage with Washington directly, consistently and regularly on the issue. There must be consequences if access continues to be denied, and the UK must act with like-minded partners to establish alternative delivery channels. We should apply co-ordinated pressure for full access across all crossings while scaling up parallel routes to ensure that aid reaches those who need it.

Secondly, the UK must treat the protection of healthcare workers and medical NGOs as a red line. Medical neutrality has to be defended in practice, not merely asserted in principle.

Thirdly, it is vital that international journalists are granted full access to the Gaza strip so that the world can see events on the ground clearly and independently. The UK must continue to press for that.

Fourthly, we must expand sanctions. It is right that we have sanctioned some Ministers, but that cannot be where it stops. We should also sanction other Ministers in the Israeli Government who oppose the lifting of the aid blockade or who promote the erosion of humanitarian protections. Accountability must be consistent or it means nothing.

Let me close on the west bank, because what is unfolding there is not peripheral to the crisis, but central to it. Across the west bank, settlement expansion, demolitions and tightening movement restrictions are accelerating displacement and entrenching instability. I support the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) in her call for medical transfers to the west bank, but there too, while most hospitals remain technically operational, medicine shortages are deepening and referral approvals are increasingly delayed. This winter alone, hundreds of attacks on healthcare facilities were recorded, alongside the closure of key UNRWA services.

Severe funding shortfalls now compound access barriers, forcing critical service reductions at precisely the moment when needs are surging. To compensate, clinics and mental health teams are scaling up where they can, but for many vulnerable communities, care is becoming slower, more fragmented and increasingly out of reach. The result is an inevitable erosion of basic medical access, with growing delays, disruption and unmet needs that are quietly pushing the west bank deeper into humanitarian crisis.

I hope that the Government will now move beyond statements and take concrete action to expand accountability through sanctions to protect and open humanitarian access, and to press relentlessly for an equitable political pathway out of the crisis. Lives are being lost while we deliberate. The UK still carries diplomatic weight, and with that comes moral obligation. I urge the Minister to use it.