We are caregivers, returning from Gaza over the past 8 months,

having witnessed with our own eyes the unspeakable, having heard the din of constant and blind terror against civilians, having daily stories from caregivers about the catastrophe human in progress. Since our returns, we have testified, challenged, communicated with politicians, media and citizens who agreed to meet us...

European and French parliamentarians, senators, diplomats, assembly foreign affairs committee, left and center politicians, written media, audiovisual media, citizens...

We organized 80 public meetings, 20 political meetings, 100 media meetings out of these 8 recent months, unfortunately without having a positive impact on public debate and political positions.

The unique narrative proposed by the Israeli government, supported by the far right, is only exceptionally subject to critical analysis and does not reflect what is happening in many countries.

Many people, associations and collectives in the Jewish community describe the current occupation:

• like a colonial war, serving particular interests;
• having nothing to do with anti-Semitism,
• invoking it, wrongly, is an offense and an injury for many of those who have in their flesh the engraved wounds of the Shoah.

We testify because this is our duty as caregivers

Duty not to be satisfied with dressing a wound, operating on a patient, diagnosing and treating without trying to understand what causes the illness, the suffering.
Duty to try to prevent or act on what is causing it, without taking sides, taking into account the identical value of each human, in an ethical approach, faithful to our ethics and our oaths.

We also testify because the caregivers and patients in Gaza and the West Bank, with whom we work, asked us to do so.
“Thank you for coming to help us, but thank you for returning to your countries, to Europe and the United States, so that international law and humanitarian law, the lack of application of which has been responsible for the situation in Palestinian territory for so many decades , finally be respected.'
So that the silence and hypocrisy which are co-responsible for the human disaster on site give way to courageous positions, respectful of the desire to live in peace, free and autonomous, on each side of the walls of shame, inoperative and totally counterproductive.

Today we are angry

Angry to see our colleagues and friends killed as collateral or targeted victims, detained, like 179 of them to date, for no other reason than not wanting to abandon their patients.
Angry to see that patients do not have access to care, 34 of the 38 hospitals having been destroyed or put out of use, as well as the majority of health centers.

Angry at seeing the entry of medical aid and the exit of the seriously wounded who can't be treated on the spot, under the control of occupying forces, who are restricting all passage at the only open crossing point, and helping to starve and thirst a civilian population at the end of its tether, in full view of everyone, since no one can fail to know what's going on.
Angry at the unbearable hypocrisy of stopping the fighting long enough to give a polio vaccine to starving, terrorized and exhausted children, to protect them from a risk they may never see: indiscriminate bombardment, snipers, malnutrition and infectious diarrhea killing daily, as they have for the past 11 months.

Refusing to give in to anger in the form of expressed violence or silent complicit resignation, we continue, along with healthcare workers and citizens from all over the world, to stand up alongside those suffering from the lack of respect for humanitarian and international law.

An invitation for citizens and medical professionals to act together

This is why we invite you join to us in calling on the members of the UN Security Council to demand the temporary opening of a humanitarian corridor. This proposal must in no way interfere with the Palestinian people's process of self-determination, and the prospect of a political solution accepted by the states of Palestine and Israel, the first necessary step before the UN Security Council intervenes.

The Philadelphia Corridor, the “brotherly love” corridor (a 14 km-long buffer zone on the border between Egypt and the Palestinian territory of Gaza) set up in 1978 after the Camp David Accords, has been occupied since May 7, 2024 by the Israeli armed forces, in flagrant violation of international law.

This appropriation drastically and inhumanely limits the daily arrival of hundreds of trucks enabling survival and care in this occupied territory.

The Israeli government's refusal to evacuate the Philadelphia Corridor during the current negotiations is unacceptable, both to those of us who have just returned from Gaza, and to those of us who are concerned about respecting the right and freedom of each and every person to live in dignity, on their own territory.

We demand, as do the UN and the WHO, not only that an immediate and permanent “ceasefire” be put in place, but also that at the very least, the Philadelphia corridor immediately revert to a buffer zone allowing :

• On the one hand, the unrestricted entry of medicines, medical devices, health-care teams and the foodstuffs necessary for the survival of 2.3 million civilians in a devastated territory.
• On the other hand, access to appropriate care in hospitals abroad for 10,000 serious patients who cannot be treated in the 4 hospitals still in operation out of the 38 previously existing.

The UN Secretary-General is in a position, as soon as possible and subject to the agreement of the parties involved, to mandate a technical assessment mission to validate the temporary deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in the Philadelphia corridor.

A US veto in the Security Council would be ethically unacceptable in view of the dramatic situation, which no one can ignore.

When the unlimited “right to defend oneself” and “ethical war” are invoked to justify everything, we, as caregivers and citizens, agree that defending the law and its application to all, without discrimination, is a position in line with our conscience and ethics. An ethic of living together to which every Palestinian, Israeli and every other national has a right.

Take action for a world beyond the walls

If you share this invitation to live together, beyond the walls that only generate misunderstanding, fear and rejection, we invite you to take part and pass on this appeal to the following people, who have the responsibility and duty to act, and to uphold the human values we hold so dear.

Signed :

Imane MAARIFI, Khaled BENBOUTRIF, Raphael PITTI, Christophe OBERLIN, Zouhair LAHNA, Mohamed ABARGUISS, Samyr ADDOU, Chems Eddine BOUCHAKOUR, Youssef BOUABDALLAH, Baraa ZUHAILI, Hicham EL GHAOUI, Christophe DENANTES, Mohamed AL SHAREEF, Abdullah BROWN, Mohamed ELFAR,Yahia SHEIKH, Pascal ANDRE doctors and nurses that returned from Gaza in janvier 2024