August 28, 2024
On August 21,
the Israeli army ordered different areas in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza
Strip, to evacuate their homes and newly-erected tents. This was the first step
in the army’s invasion and campaign of destruction in Deir al-Balah, the last
town that has not been completely leveled throughout the war.
One of the
blocks ordered to evacuate included the last fully operational hospital in
central and southern Gaza, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Affiliated with the
Palestinian Authority, the governmental hospital has been working at four times
its capacity, hosting over 700 patients.
As the military
order spread among people in the area, dozens of doctors and nurses evacuated
too, knowing what would likely happen to anyone in the hospital who remained,
with the horrors of the massacres and mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital and
Nasser Hospital still fresh in their minds.
But there are
others working in the hospital who have refused to evacuate under any
circumstances, intent on remaining to care for the patients that keep streaming
in.
Mondoweiss spoke
to several doctors at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital who refused to abandon their
posts when the Israeli army ordered the evacuation. They preferred not to be
identified and have been given pseudonyms in this story due to their fear of
reprisal by the military. Based on numerous past experiences throughout the
war, they believe that the Israeli army has been deliberately targeting doctors
and hospital staff who refuse to adhere to evacuation orders. During the second
invasion of al-Shifa Hospital in March, medical workers were singled out for
killings and arrests and the Director of al-Shifa was sent to the notorious Sde
Teiman torture facility, only to be released in late June with no charges.
Ayat is a
physician who refuses to evacuate the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. She also
witnessed the al-Shifa invasion and was one of those forced to evacuate to the
center of Gaza. She has remained at her post since the start of the war but is
now biding her time, waiting until the last possible moment before she is
eventually forced to evacuate or risk getting trapped in the hospital whenever
it comes under siege.
Ayat tells
Mondoweiss she does not want to stay for an inevitable death, but is torn about
leaving her patients. “Both choices are painful for me, but I know what the
army is going to do when it invades the hospital. I’ve been at al-Shifa
Hospital. They were running over people with bulldozers and tanks.”
“There is no
chance for survival inside the hospital if we are surrounded by the army,” she
continues. “On normal days, we are short on everything: medical supplies,
staff, and medical equipment. And this leads us to wonder what would happen if
everything stopped coming in altogether for just one day, let alone a long
siege.”
The hospital has
not made an evacuation plan, but it has not made one for working under siege
either — the choice of whether to remain or evacuate has been left up to each
individual to make.
Ayat is staying
with the hope that the army would notify the staff ahead of invading, as they
did with al-Shifa. “The Israeli army has not called the hospital so far, but we
can’t trust the army either,” she says. “They may invade any second, and they
have already issued warnings to residents of the block that includes the
hospital.”
“I’ve seen the
army make no difference between doctors, nurses, civilians, patients, and even
premature babies in incubators,” she says. “If I can escape at the last moment,
that’s what I will do, but I will not witness the same massacre again.”
‘Who is going to
care for my patients?’
On Tuesday,
August 27, the morning shift in the hospital is attended by three doctors and
ten nurses. Over 700 patients were in the hospital before the evacuation began,
but several hundred still remain.
Hakeem, an
emergency room physician at al-Aqsa Martyrs, tells Mondoweiss he is worried
about what will happen to the injured and the sick who cannot evacuate with
those who leave. “If we leave, who is going to stay to care for them?” Hakeem
asks.
“We have no plan
to evacuate and we have no plan to operate in the event of a siege. We don’t
have anything stored for such a scenario,” he says. “We’re working under
impossible conditions, but if we leave our positions, if we give up our duties,
we will fail ourselves and our society. We will fail our families and the
friends who count on us.”
Even after the
Israeli warning was sent to residents in the area, injuries continued to arrive
at the hospital, being the only possible refuge for people affected by the
bombardment.
“The injuries
arrive every hour,” Hakeem says. “On normal days we’re overwhelmed, but now the
number of cases has jumped dramatically. It’s beyond the capacity we’re able to
deal with.”
For 11 months,
the hospital has not once gone out of service, but Hakeem says that its medical
capacity is now less than it has ever been. “If the army surrounds the
hospital, neither us nor the patients will be able to survive for very long.
But we will try to do our best — until our last breath.”
“We chose this
path, and we will stay with the patients and save their lives,” he vows.
‘Will it be even
worse than the other massacres?’
Despite their
resolve, many of the medical workers cannot hide their fear of what may befall
them if the army reaches the hospital entrance. The only encouraging sign is
that the army has not called the hospital directly, but this only partially
assuages their fears.
“We expect
anything from the Israeli army, we saw everything,” Amani, a nurse operating in
the ICU, tells Mondoweiss.
“We’re afraid
because of what we saw at the other hospitals. If the army surrounds us, we’ve
considered every possible scenario. Being killed, being buried alive, being
burned — we imagine the Israeli army is capable of anything,” Amani says,
adding, “but we won’t leave our people.”
“Sometimes we
think out loud with one another and ask, will it be worse than the other
hospitals? Will the same massacres happen again? And will the world allow us as
doctors and patients to meet such a horrifying fate? Is that the humanity and
the Hippocratic oath that the world created?” Amani says.
Israel has killed around a dozen
suspected militants in a series of airstrikes and raids in the occupied West
Bank, as well as an assassination near the Syrian-Lebanese border, the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday. The strikes allegedly targeted members
of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
Israeli forces launched what they
called a “counterterrorism operation” in the West Bank settlements of Jenin and
Tulkarm in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Three “armed terrorists” were
killed in an airstrike in Jenin, while two others were killed by Israeli ground
troops in Tulkarm and an unknown number were arrested, the IDF said in a
statement.
Another four alleged “terrorists”
were killed in an airstrike on Far’a, a sprawling refugee camp located around
30 kilometers east of Tulkarm, the IDF said. The Palestinian Authority, which
governs some West Bank territory autonomously, confirmed the Israeli casualty
figures.
The raid was launched in response to
an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last week. Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a smaller militant group active in both Gaza and the West
Bank, claimed responsibility for the blast, in which only the bomber died when
his explosive device apparently detonated prematurely.
Israel’s war on Hamas has largely
remained confined to Gaza, as the militant group does not have a significant
presence in the West Bank. However, the IDF has carried out more than 60
airstrikes in the West Bank since last October, and Israeli security forces
have arrested nearly 5,000 people in the territory.
More than 650 Palestinians have been
killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the same time, according to the
Palestinian Authority. By contrast, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza now
stands above 40,000, according to the health ministry in the enclave.
Palestinian-provided casualty figures are considered accurate by the UN, but
make no distinction between civilians and combatants.
An Israeli drone strike on Monday in
Tulkarm in the West Bank also reportedly killed five people on Monday.
In a separate announcement on
Wednesday afternoon, the IDF said that Faris Qasim, a “significant terrorist”
in the PIJ, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike along the Lebanese-Syrian
border. An unknown number of “additional Islamic Jihad terrorists” were also
killed in the strike, the IDF stated.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz
has called on his government to step up its campaign in the West Bank even
further. In a social media post on Wednesday, he described Israel’s operation
in the territory as “a war in every sense,” and urged West Jerusalem to “deal
with the threat exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza,
including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians and any other step
needed.”
Gaza’s civilian population has
received multiple evacuation orders since Israel began striking the enclave
last October. In many cases, however, Israeli forces have struck areas
previously declared safe. The UN has described the evacuation policy as fueling
“mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced
again and again.”
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