He saw Israeli forces disappear doctors during raids on besieged and collapsed hospitals in the Strip. He feared that he would be accused of supporting Hamas, that he would be forced to take off his clothes, sit blindfolded, and see images of humiliation posted online. He heard about the abuses suffered by Palestinians in secret Israeli detention sites for Gazans.
But the anesthesiologist had six children and a large family in Rafah that depended on him. He said he therefore fled the hospital with a heavy heart on January 26 and joined the growing cadre of displaced medical workers in the Gaza Strip.
“There were a lot of gunshots, a lot of destruction, and I had to leave because I have a big family that I am responsible for,” he said by phone from Rafah, where he now lives in a nylon tent. He described his experience to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety.
The anesthetist fled Khan Yunis with three other medical workers, but he was the only one who managed to make it south to the relative safety of Rafah. Israeli forces took control of war-torn roads filled with fleeing refugees, and the journey terrified his colleagues. They returned to the hospital in two groups. The anesthesiologist said that one of his colleagues was shot along the way.
His three colleagues are now believed to be among 70 doctors, nurses and medical technicians from Nasser Hospital who the Gaza Ministry of Health says have been detained by Israeli forces. It is believed he crossed the checkpoints because he was carrying a child whom he found abandoned in the chaos of the evacuation.
There are more than 100 medical workers in Israeli prisons, and their exact whereabouts and condition are not known, according to the Ministry of Health. The rest are likely to be displaced; Ministry official Ahmed Shatat told The Washington Post that most doctors, like the rest of the population, in northern and central Gaza, which witnessed the heaviest fighting during most of the war, have fled their homes and communities to the south.
Most of them live in tents, where they receive partial or no salaries, Shatat said. They devote their days to trying to find food and water so that they and their families can survive.
Many people fear returning to the medical sector and its severe crises. Gaza's population of 2.1 million is on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations, and infectious diseases are spreading. Ultimately, analysts and aid workers warn, hunger and disease could kill more people in the conflict than Israeli weapons.
Hamas-led militants emerged from Gaza on October 7 to kill about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in Israeli communities near the Strip, and take 253 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli military campaign, which began that day in response, killed more than 29,000 people and injured more than 69,000, according to authorities in Gaza.
Now a few hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza remain open, even partially.
“How can we sustain any kind of response when medical workers are being targeted, attacked and vilified for helping the wounded?” Christopher Lockyer, Secretary-General of Doctors Without Borders, asked the United Nations Security Council on Thursday. “There is no health system to speak of in Gaza. The Israeli army has dismantled one hospital after another.
Israel says doctors and hospitals provide cover for Hamas fighters. The Israeli military told the newspaper that “it is well documented that Hamas uses hospitals and medical centers for its terrorist activities.”
Palestinian doctors and international medical volunteers told the newspaper that they saw no sign of armed activity. Human rights groups say Israeli raids on medical facilities and medical professionals violate international law and are disproportionate to any threat posed by militants who may have been working in hospitals.
Israel has denied The Washington Post and other international news organizations independent access to Gaza hospitals.
Nasser Hospital, once the largest medical facility serving southern Gaza, is the latest flashpoint in the Israeli campaign.
The Israeli army said it found weapons and arrested “Hamas terrorists” in the compound.
MSF staff fled the hospital last week. Lockyer said the organization had “seen no independent, verified evidence” of hospitals being used for military purposes.
Israeli forces surrounded the compound in January. Mohamed Harara, a doctor in the emergency department, told The Washington Post that overcrowding and lack of supplies left doctors treating patients on blood-stained floors.
Israeli forces raided the Nasser area on February 16 and occupied it for several days. The World Health Organization says it is now “non-functional”.
In recent days, the World Health Organization has conducted three “high-risk missions” to the hospital and hospital 51 patients evacuated to the southAccording to what Ayadil Saparbekov, Acting Head of the World Health Organization office in the West Bank and Gaza Strip said. There are still about 140 patients, four doctors, nurses and dozens of volunteers.
“The hospital’s intensive care unit was not functioning,” he said in a press conference on Thursday. “The hospital had no electricity. The hospital had no food or medical supplies; no oxygen.
Moshe Tetro, who heads coordination and liaison with Gaza for the IDF, said he visited the hospital and did not see any shortages of medical supplies, food, water or fuel for generators.
Chandra Hassan, a Chicago-based bariatric surgeon, went to Gaza with the relief group MedGlobal in January to volunteer at the Nasser Center. He described it as a “war zone”, subject to constant bombing, shooting, and communications blackouts for days.
He told the newspaper: “Most of the doctors were displaced from other parts of Gaza.” “They want to spend the rest of their time serving their patients. They have no hope of getting out alive.”
Hassan said that what frightened them most was not death, but rather “humiliation and abuse” in Israeli detention. “They've seen it over and over again,” he added. “They do not expect help from anyone else outside Gaza.”
Among the doctors arrested in the November raid was Muhammad Abu Salamiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital. Israel said Hamas was allowed to use the hospital as a “command and control center,” but has not publicly disclosed the evidence.
Israel has arrested hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians and fighters in Gaza and detained them without charge inside Israel under a secret legal framework that human rights groups say is ripe for abuse.
The released civilian detainees told The Washington Post that they were subjected to physical and psychological violence, were blindfolded, forced to kneel all day, and were denied access to lawyers.
Israel retains the authority to detain Gazans without charge under the 2002 Unlawful Combatants Law, a form of administrative detention that human rights groups say violates international law. Israel is detaining 606 Gazans who were not identified under the law as of February 1, according to the Israeli rights group Hamoked.
Israeli authorities say they need to use the law to respond to the Hamas attack. The Israeli army told the newspaper that it removes fighters “from the circle of hostilities” and “grants many procedural guarantees and basic rights.”
“One can view the detention of these doctors as an extension of attacks on hospitals and medical facilities, which are supposed to be protected under international law,” said Baddour Hassan, a researcher at Amnesty International.
The law has not been applied on this scale before. It is still unclear whether, when and how Israel will prosecute detainees in Gaza.
This month, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition submitted by the families of 62 detainees from Gaza, requesting that they be allowed to contact lawyers.
In Gaza, some displaced doctors set up free clinics in camps and shelters for displaced people.
The anesthesiologist works several days a week at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. He said that most of the patients he saw suffered from catastrophic wounds. Many of them die on arrival or bleed out quickly.
He still doesn't feel safe. The Israeli army asked about 1.5 million Gazans to flee to Rafah. Now she says she is heading towards Rafah.
Once again, the anesthesiologist is cornered.
“If something happens to Rafah, where can we go?”
