On the morning of Sunday, November 12, I received a call, an SOS, from my dear friend Shireen, a Christian Palestinian from Bethlehem. “Ghada, do you know of any institutions in Gaza, other than the Red Cross, that can help evacuate people stuck in the north? I had to answer: “No…”
Shireen is just one of many friends, relatives and acquaintances who have contacted me in recent days, desperately seeking a way to find help for those stuck in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel’s ongoing war against Gaza has created three simultaneous crises. First, there is the crisis faced by every individual in the besieged Gaza Strip who is unable to escape. Then there is the crisis of conscience that seems to have gripped the international community, which ignores the desperate plight of civilians in Gaza. Finally, there is the global crisis resulting from the apparent collapse of all mechanisms meant to promote and protect human rights.
A crisis of humanity
Every day, I receive dozens of SOS messages, calls for help, from Gaza. As a Palestinian from Gaza who is currently outside the Gaza Strip, I am living a nightmare, as there is little, if anything, I can do to help those who are besieged and attacked there.
I know there is nothing I can do to stop the Israeli war machine. I know this because I spent most of my life, about 36 years, in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip – the open-air prison that has since been transformed into a slaughterhouse.
Yet I desperately try to do something, anything. It is imperative to act: remaining inactive, doing nothing, is like being stuck in another hell.
So, even though I didn’t know how I could help, I replied to Shireen, “Can you send me more details?”
“Nour al-Nakhala’s family is stuck in their home in Gaza City due to intense bombardment,” she responded quickly. “Nour is the wife of Dr. Hammam Alloh. Their residence is opposite the al-Basma kindergarten on Abu Hasira Street in Gaza. Here is their cell number. Please help me.
Shireen’s call to save the al-Nakhala and Alloh families triggered a flood of memories and made me think of all the other families I know in Gaza. I thought of the Luthun family, the Bilbaisi family, the al-Birwai family… I thought of the Awad family, who live or lived near the blood bank and the German representative’s office – in the heart even from the middle class of Gaza.
I didn’t know the fate of any of these families. I didn’t know if they were alive or dead. But I feared the worst. And we still had no news from the al-Nakhala and Alloh families.
Then I received a desperate call from the al-Bayid family – a household of six members, some with special needs, stuck in their house on al-Halabi Street, next to the civil affairs office. They found themselves stranded without food or water.
Another cry for help came from the al-Saqa family, besieged in their home not far from al-Shifa hospital. They were also trapped, immobile, with their children and the elderly, with little access to food or water. The tanks had ravaged the surroundings and were shooting at everything that moved.
Then, on the same day, Dr. Majdy Alkhouly, who lives in Qatar, also used Facebook to try to find someone to help the al-Nakhala and Alloh families. He said they needed to be evacuated immediately as many of them, including Dr Hammam Alloh and his father-in-law, Mahmoud, were seriously injured following the bombing and were bleeding.
Simultaneously, the Abu Hashish family, a group of around 15 people not far from al-Shifa hospital, issued a heartbreaking appeal for help. The family said some of them were seriously injured and their lives were at stake. But bombs were raining from the sky and the presence of tanks around their house made them completely immobile.
All of these last names echoed in my mind repeatedly, filling me with a feeling of dread that I know I will never be able to forget or overcome for the rest of my life.
All this, repeated two million times every day, constitutes the first crisis born of the last Israeli war against Gaza.
A crisis of conscience
The second crisis is caused by the world’s indifference to the appeals of Gaza’s doctors and hospital staff. It’s a crisis of conscience.
The Israeli army continues to target doctors, nurses, patients and medical facilities. At least 200 doctors and nurses have been killed in the ongoing genocide. In numerical terms, the occupation force has claimed the lives of an average of six doctors and nurses every day since the start of its latest attack on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Just a few days ago, my own brother, a doctor at Nasser Hospital, came close to death. He had left his office to check on a patient when a nearby mosque was struck. The bombings also damaged the hospital’s radiology unit. The ceiling collapsed, creating a scene of devastation.
Meanwhile, my cousin Nour, a recent medical graduate, continues to work at the United Nations school in the Khan Younis camp, transformed into a concentration camp with tens of thousands of people crammed into classrooms, n ‘using only eight toilets between them. Despite the dire conditions, Nour continues to work tirelessly, seeing at least 500 patients a day and offering advice and prescriptions to the sick, even though it is almost impossible to obtain medicine.
Whenever we can talk, she tells me how shortages have become the norm in Gaza, causing tragedies. She explains that people are struggling with kidney problems and illnesses like diarrhea due to lack of clean water. She tells me they also suffer from hunger-related illnesses and anemia. Communicable diseases like chickenpox spread quickly. Newly married girls expecting their first baby live in fear that when the time comes to give birth, no one will be able to help them. Two children at the school where she works lost their lives last week due to lack of medicine. The despair is overwhelming.
As I write this, most hospitals in Gaza are short of essential supplies and have become graveyards. The bodies of those murdered lie both inside and outside al-Shifa Hospital, now occupied by Israeli soldiers.
The world has ignored calls from Gaza doctors for fuel to be delivered to keep hospitals operational. It is remarkable that countless residents, who face a communications blackout and often do not even know exactly what is happening around the corner from where they have taken refuge, heard these calls and rushed to the hospitals to offer them the little gasoline they have in their cars or homes. Even though everyone feared for their lives, they believed that taking the risk, in hopes of helping someone even more desperate than themselves, was the right thing to do. This is the true spirit of Gaza.
A crisis in human rights protection mechanisms
Finally, Israel’s war on Gaza has led to a global crisis of systems and mechanisms designed to protect civilians. All international institutions have proven powerless. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has been supposed to investigate the situation in Palestine for many years, still does nothing to provide justice and relief to long-suffering Palestinians. The United Nations Security Council is powerless even to condemn Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, despite the existence of ample evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide committed in the besieged strip and the occupied West Bank. The best these institutions offer is empty words, and in most cases they can’t even achieve that.
So it’s an SOS call. An SOS appeal on behalf of every family in Gaza who needs an immediate ceasefire. An SOS call on behalf of global conscience and governance structures. If we do not act today and immediately, we risk accepting a world order in which impunity is rewarded, where the powerful are allowed to crush the weak, and where no civilian is truly safe.
As I conclude this article, Dr. Majdy posted that Dr. Hammam Alloh and his father, Mahmoud, are no longer with us. They bled to death in front of the children. I am plunged into darkness.
And we still don’t know what happened to their loved ones, the al-Nakhala family.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.