As the head of Gaza’s ambulance services, Hani al-Jaafarawi had one of the toughest jobs amid Israel’s genocidal war on the strip. Even before October 7, his staff were stretched thin, overworked and under constant threat. After the start of the war, al-Jaafarawi was hands-on in the medical response.

Hospitals, clinics and all health facilities were under extreme threat, and every day al-Jaafarawi’s life hung in the balance. But on June 23, the balance tipped away from him when Israeli forces attacked Daraj Health Clinic in Gaza City, killing him and four other civilians. His only crime was his dedication to the civil defence of Gaza’s beleaguered population.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, he was the 500th health worker killed in Gaza.

The murder of al-Jaafarawi was part of Israel’s systematic campaign to destroy civil services provision in Gaza. It has purposefully targeted and killed medical personnel, Palestinian Civil Defence workers, ambulance drivers, rescue teams, police forces, civil engineers, utility workers, aid convoy drivers and civil society leaders with the aim to create chaos and lawlessness in Gaza and to demoralise the population.

The official justification used by the Israeli Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) for the targeted killings of these professionals is that they are affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) by virtue of working for government institutions in Gaza.

This rationale is spurious. Working under a government does not infer support for its political agenda or membership in the political party that leads it. We cannot assume that every Israeli employed by the Israeli state supports the war crimes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so why should we assume anything about Palestinian public employees and their political sympathies?

International law makes a clear distinction between combatants and civilians, and the political views of the latter make no difference. That, of course, is yet another aspect of the international legal regime that Israel wilfully ignores.

Two days before al-Jaafarawi’s murder, an Israeli air strike killed four municipal employees and one passer-by in the centre of Gaza City. The workers were preparing to........

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