Israel's violent week-long February ground incursion into Nasser Hospital, the largest in southern Gaza, seems just a blip in the long litany of assaults that have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and left almost the entire population of 2.3 million bereft of shelter, safety and basic order, food, clean water, and essential medical care.

Yet that attack continued Israel's relentless destruction of Gaza's already reeling health system, and provided a graphic, set piece microcosm of Israel's flagrant disregard of the oldest duty contained in the Geneva Conventions, dating to 1864, to respect and protect the wounded and sick.