Students from Palestine

Pakistan's decision to welcome Palestinian medical and dental students to continue their education in Pakistani institutions is a commendable and humanitarian initiative. In the wake of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and other war crimes against Palestinians, Pakistan offered much-needed support for Palestinian students to safely continue their education. The Israeli attacks have not only taken out most of the health facilities in Gaza, they have also been hitting education institutes, making it harder for Palestine to produce much-needed doctors. This makes the offer to support well over 100 Palestinian students invaluable.

So far, two batches totaling 91 students have arrived, most of whom are in the last or second-last year of their medical education. This means that within a year in some cases, these students could return home to help alleviate the healthcare disaster in Palestine, which has lost over 42,000 citizens to Israeli atrocities conducted with American, German, Italian and British weapons. The British, who accounted for less than 1% of Israeli arms purchases in 2023, are the only one of the four to block exports due to the "clear risk" that they "might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law". Still, like the others, they feel no sense of responsibility to compensate the thousands of people suffering just so that a handful of weapons manufacturers can make a profit.

It is also worth noting that the death toll due to the war is actually many times higher - the 42,000 figure does not include deaths due to famine and disease that would have been preventable if Israel wasn't starving Gaza and blowing up hospitals and clinics. As was the case with Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria and dozens of other nations, the countries that directly or indirectly wrecked them are taking no responsibility for fixing them, leaving countries that may have nothing to do with the war to fill the gap.