In Gaza, where hospitals are bursting and desperation deepens by the hour, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has issued a stark warning: the Strip is facing a total medical collapse. Behind the numbers and headlines, a quieter catastrophe is unfolding, one not of nature, but of design.

On 20 June, MSF condemned what it called Israel’s “deliberate” obstruction of aid, accusing the authorities of fabricating an illusion of humanitarian relief while systematically preventing its delivery. The blockade, MSF said, is not just squeezing supplies, it is “suffocating the humanitarian response.”

At MSF’s facility in Deir al-Balah, medical teams are overwhelmed. Gunshot injuries have nearly tripled in one week, and the hospital is operating at 150% capacity. Yet doctors are running out of the most basic materials: gauze, antibiotics, even food for patients and malnourished children. In Khan Younis, nurses are sounding the alarm, but no lifeline is arriving.

Fuel shortages are turning Gaza’s humanitarian crisis into a death sentence. Desalination plants grind to a halt. Ambulances sit motionless. Medical devices fail mid-treatment. “Without fuel,” MSF said, “nothing moves, and nothing heals.”

Aid, once seen as neutral and lifesaving, is now being wielded as leverage. “Humanitarian assistance is being weaponised,” said MSF’s emergency coordinator Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, denouncing the piecemeal trickle of late authorisations as political theatre.

With only a tenth of April’s aid trucks now entering Gaza, MSF called on Israel to end its policy of collective punishment. For Palestinians trapped in this blockade, survival now depends not on the will to live, but on whether the world chooses to act.