Gaza- While Israel’s hand was shedding the blood of innocents in the Gaza Strip, its hand was stopping the bleeding, extracting death, stitching up the wound and repairing the shattered bones. It is the hand of a surgeon who was established in Gaza, and who remained when others were forced to leave it.
Tel Aviv Tribune Net went to the surgeon Fadel Naeem in his shelter, where the Arab National Hospital “Al-Baptist” was located, which he had used as a home that had remained constant during the seven months of the war.
Doctor Naeem came out to us from the operating room in green surgical clothes soaked with the blood of the injured. His mask and glasses did not hide the fading of his face, which indicated fatigue running through his body, compounded by his impact on the parting of his friend, Doctor Adnan Al-Barsh, who died in the occupation prisons a few days ago.
He responds to the condolences of those arriving to comfort him, with a stream of tears appearing in his eyes, asking, “How did torture destroy my friend’s strong body and solid structure, when he is an athlete who swims 3 hours a day, takes care of his nutrition, and does not suffer from diseases or complain of pain?”
Naeem expels from his mind the thoughts that came to him about the way the investigator destroyed his colleague’s body, saying, “I hope that God’s mercy covered him, and he did not feel anything, just as Abraham – peace be upon him – was not burned by fire.”
To God’s mercy, Dr. Adnan Al-Barash was a martyr of torture in Israeli army prisons after he was kidnapped from the hospital while performing his humanitarian duty against the wounded in Gaza.
Arab medical unions bear first responsibility for their shameful silence regarding the killing, kidnapping and extermination of medical personnel in Gaza for 7 months.
pic.twitter.com/dpg485Y0Tg– Nour Naim| Nour (@NourNaim88) May 2, 2024
No immunity for a doctor!
Naeem tells Tel Aviv Tribune Net about his “younger brother,” Al-Barash, who not only filled his life with medicine, but was passionate about sports and politics, which prompted him to choose political science as a major for his higher studies. He says, “Adnan was very ambitious and virtuous of his country and his people. He refused administrative positions to remain close to serving them.” “.
The professional companion was the link between Al-Shifa and Al-Mamadani Hospital to organize the distribution of the wounded between the two hospitals, so communication between them was daily and frequent.
The loss of the human body was not the first blow that broke Jarrah’s back. The targeting and advancement of his two friends, the doctors Omar Farwana and Muhammad Dabour, had hurt him before.
Perhaps what pained him most was the official silence of the unions and medical bodies, which did not say a word regarding the targeting of doctors, especially “the heinous murder of Adnan, the gravity of which no human being disagrees about.” He said, “Adnan specialized in Jordan and Britain and had many colleagues there. Why did we not hear a condemnation?” One, or see one stop for him!”
“I did not expect doctors to be a target, and I never imagined that war would not grant immunity to anyone!” Naeem says that in previous wars he used to travel in his own car without restrictions, but today he finds medical teams, ambulances and hospitals under the crosshairs of Israeli missiles, with premeditation and premeditation.
In Baptist Square, which witnessed the fall of more than 500 martyrs and thousands of wounded, most of whom were displaced women and children in a witnessed massacre, Tel Aviv Tribune Net toured with Dr. Naeem, who was injured in the head when the ceiling of the operating room where he was present collapsed on him.
He rolls his eyes like a witness at a crime scene, recalls “details that his memory will never erase,” and says: For the first time, I am aware of God’s saying, “On the Day when people will be like spread out mattresses.”
Pieces of flesh scattered everywhere, lakes of blood covering the ground, survivors running without direction or goal, screaming and astonishment as if it were the land of resurrection, and a stream of people calling for help from doctors inside the buildings of the hospital that went out of service after its electricity was completely cut off due to the raid.
War medicine
While the doctor is trying hard to provide the optimal treatment for his patients, the lack of capabilities prevents this. The air was trapped in the doctor’s lungs, as he remembered the woman who held on to his leg and pulled on it to save her drowning son in final agony.
A harsh situation in which mothers cling to a glimmer of hope that they see as existing, while doctors classify it as they know it is missing.
Naeem says, “We classify cases between mild, difficult, and hopeless. We deal with the difficult cases, leave the hopeless ones, and postpone the simple ones.” This is a classification forced upon the medical staff, which does not exceed only 10 people in Al-Baptist Hospital, who are treating most of the injured in the northern Gaza Strip after the collapse of Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
The classification makes it difficult for them to adhere to the medical protocol in many cases, as there is no time for the crew to change their clothes between operations, nor to grant the injured their right to sterilization and routine procedures. However, the surgical medical decision was taken carefully, in a way that ensured the three work fundamentals of war medicine, which is saving lives. Save the limb and maintain its shape.
“We will continue” was the decisive decision that Naeem took with a group of remaining doctors in Baptist, after the displacement of hundreds of them, and his first steps to implement the decision were to fill the administrative and medical gaps created by their leaving, and they actually succeeded.
Naeem does not deny the collapse of the health system in terms of advanced services such as open-heart surgeries and neurosurgery. There are no capabilities or cadres to perform these operations at the present time, while the remaining doctors in Gaza are trying to arrange the files of the health system and renovate some existing institutions to provide secondary and primary care services.
These are attempts to revive what the occupation is striving to eliminate through its repeated and deliberate attacks on the Gaza Strip’s hospitals in general and the Shifa Medical Complex in particular, “which represents for Gaza doctors a long history, system and feelings, and goes beyond being buildings that were destroyed and will be rebuilt,” according to Naim.
Distance and loss wholesale
He continues, “The Al-Shifa Complex includes more than 700 specialized doctors under its roof, and contains quality equipment and unique capabilities, which made it the focus of the delegations’ fascination, as it is an achievement with which Gaza triumphed over the siege imposed on it for years.”
On the personal level, Dr. Fadl put his emotions aside. The option of returning to the family in the city of Nuseirat, south of the Gaza Valley, was not on the table. 21 years of continuous work in the corridors of the Baptist favored him in favor of his remaining at the top of his job.
Although Naeem holds a foreign nationality, he did not try to leave Gaza, and did not even think about doing so, he says.
He justifies this by asking, “How can Gaza be the destination of medical delegations and we, the doctors, leave it? To whom and how will I leave it, when I was the one who was urging medical students to stay there and never abandon it?”
Survival separated him from his family, from which he lost 7 martyrs, including his mother, in a direct attack on the apartment where his brother, doctor Jamal Naim, was located in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. News he received in the morning via text message that he is unable to accept until now – as he says – because he did not witness its details!
He added, “The news of my mother’s severe injury came like a thunderbolt. How could my mother suffer from fractures when her son is an orthopedic doctor and he is not with her? How will the lady of the house live crippled, helpless, and in pain when I am not next to her to comfort her?”
Hours later, he received the news of her ascension, which he saw as a blessing and a mercy for her from all the torment and pain, but he was unable to bid her farewell and bury her, despite the close distance due to the Israeli barrier erected on the road between them.
Famine is an additional burden
This may exhaust the soul and body during the 17 hours during which Dr. Naeem stands on his feet with extreme concentration in the operating room to eradicate the pain of the Palestinians. His prayers are his breaks in rest, and the only meal he eats throughout the day.
The famine left its effects on the doctor’s body, who lost 17 kilograms of weight. Going through the doctors was exhausting. Naim describes their condition to Tel Aviv Tribune Net during that period: “We ate barley and soybeans, tasted food for the first time that we recognized, and devoured dishes that we had never eaten before.”
Searching for food has become an additional burden on them, which Dr. Naeem is forced to do in the city’s markets in the hope of alleviating the burden of famine on the hospital workers.
The “day after the war” does not only concern politicians, but it is a fear that orthopedic surgeons fear, as they see it as another stage that requires redoubled efforts, follow-up, and reconstructive surgery.
This matter cannot be controlled by the currently available staff, which requires the return of displaced staff, the supply of medicines and consumables, the rehabilitation and reconstruction of buildings, the organization of departments, securing the crews, and providing for their needs.
Although the war took away his mother, his loved ones, his comrades, and his well-being, it gave him people’s love and appreciation, which he seeks in their warm peace, their wide smiles, and what their eyes reveal, which is clearly evident as he walks through the streets of Gaza, and they are convinced that the wounds of his name have a share, for his favor spread over all others. The steadfast ones who chose to remain despite Israel’s will.
