19 September 2025
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) warns that the intensifying Israeli military invasion of Gaza City is threatening to force the suspension of its health and humanitarian operations in the city, cutting off tens of thousands of people from some of the final strands of lifesaving care available to them.
MAP works with a network of local partner organisations across Gaza City, operating multiple medical points and health centres. We also support hospitals, including Shifa Hospital – which used to be Gaza’s largest functioning hospital – as well as the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society (PFBS) and Sahaba hospitals where we have established neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). But due to constant Israeli military attacks and forced displacement orders, some of our partners have been forced to suspend their services, and others are at imminent risk of closure.
Our partner, Ard el Insan (AEI), has been forced to suspend its work on monitoring and screening the nutrition of children, pregnant women and lactating mothers in Gaza City. Many staff have been forced to flee south, leaving these women and children without vital support and guidance to prevent malnutrition and related health complications.
The Sahaba Hospital is dangerously low on fuel supplies, putting its operations at risk of shutting down. Without urgent resupply, its lifesaving services – including NICUs for critically ill or premature newborn babies – could leave patients without essential medical care.
Fikr Shalltoot, MAP’s Gaza Director, said: “Every day brings a new massacre. We are witnessing a genocidal campaign that aims to make northern Gaza uninhabitable. We have been warning for weeks that if the Israeli military intensified its assault on Gaza City, it would unleash an even greater health and humanitarian catastrophe – and that nightmare is now here. Hospitals and healthcare centres are being bombed and our colleagues are fleeing for their lives. If urgent action is not taken, there will be nothing left – no people, no hospitals, no hope.”
“If world leaders continue to watch passively while Israel starves, bombs and empties the north of its people and its hospitals, then they are complicit in these atrocities. Northern Gaza is being erased. This must stop now.”
The massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, combined with attacks on humanitarian operations, is annihilating the last remaining lifelines for civilians in Gaza City. Forced displacement orders issued by the Israeli military have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, with more than 125,000 people fleeing the north in just the past week.
Displaced families are sleeping in the streets or makeshift tents, struggling to survive in areas further south that are already overcrowded, with shelter, sanitation and basic services insufficient to meet existing needs.
Through systematic attacks on health and humanitarian facilities and the forced displacement of civilians southward, the Israeli military is threatening to depopulate the whole of northern Gaza – a strategy that amounts to ethnic cleansing. It also signals the takeover and long-term presence of Israeli forces in Gaza City.
The broader humanitarian response in Gaza City is collapsing under the weight of attacks, fuel shortages and staff displacement. Around 35% of international humanitarian organisations have fully suspended operations, while those remaining are operating under fragile conditions. Lifesaving health, water, hygiene, sanitation and nutrition services are at risk of complete disruption, leaving people without essential aid.
The intensified offensive in Gaza City is accelerating Israel’s genocide and Gaza’s descent into famine, disease, mass forced displacement and the annihilation of healthcare services.
We urgently call on world leaders, including those in the UK, to act to enforce an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and pressure Israel to lift its total blockade of Gaza. We demand that the UK and other states uphold their legal duty to prevent and stop genocide, including by suspending arms transfers to Israel and supporting international accountability.
Despite the escalating crisis in Gaza City, MAP continues to deliver essential health services across the rest of Gaza. Our teams and partners are working tirelessly to keep Gaza’s health system functioning in the most difficult conditions.
Our solidarity polyclinic in central Gaza has provided over 65,000 people with vital medical care, mental health support, physiotherapy, and other essential services. It now treats an average of more than 450 patients every day, serving as a crucial lifeline for displaced families. At Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, MAP has ensured that daily chemotherapy sessions continue uninterrupted, and so far delivered 145 chemotherapy sessions to patients in the last three weeks. Read more here.
