Juan Alguacil
Physician and Professor of Public Health at the University of Huelva
Although their causes may be political, wars are an increasingly relevant public health problem. They are increasingly affecting the civilian population. And what is alarming is no longer that the main victims are women and children, but that, based on data provided by researchers, there is no longer respect for hospitals, health professionals, or the sick or vulnerable population being cared for in health facilities or in refugee camps. In the case of Gaza, in full view of the whole world, including the major regional and world political leaders, and international organizations such as the UN, which, after a year since the conflict began to worsen, not only continue to allow the massacre, but accept that it is spreading.
The most telling sentence in the article, in my opinion, is not in the conclusion, but when it states that 'damage to infrastructure and injury or death of human beings within the lethal range of antibunker bombs are not truly collateral, but are in fact an anticipated effect of those bombs when chosen in place of smaller munitions'. To put it plainly, not many more words are needed. Another 'message' that the article leaves is about the client for whom these bombs are manufactured: the U.S. Department of Defense.
The study, led by researchers from Harvard University, in collaboration with other American, Palestinian and Lebanese institutions, provides arguments and data to try to demonstrate that Israel has been violating international humanitarian law during the current conflict in Gaza by dropping anti-bunker bombs in the vicinity of hospitals within the lethal range of these bombs.
The study is pioneering and original in its methodology combined with the objective, and provides relatively robust data to support its conclusions. Geospatial data on bomb craters from publicly available satellite imagery from media with little suspicion of being anti-Semitic (CNN and New York Times), and geolocation data on hospital facilities provided by the United Nations, combined with artificial intelligence data analysis strategy, ensure the reproducibility of the study by third parties.
The results are in line with official accounts from UN representatives such as Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or the World Health Organization's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.