The sound of tanks rumbling through the streets outside Kamal Adwan Hospital woke everyone up, already on edge after enduring months of direct Israeli attacks.
Then came the loudspeakers ordering everyone to evacuate – the sick, the injured, medical personnel and displaced people seeking shelter – early Friday morning.
It was clear that the Beit Lahiya medical complex in northern Gaza was about to face an Israeli raid, like so many others before it, as Israel appeared to be systematically destroying all health care in Gaza.
Never mind that, according to the World Health Organization, the hospital is the last major operational health facility in northern Gaza, an area that has been besieged and decimated by Israel in its ongoing war.
Nor that it was a refuge for hundreds of Palestinians whose homes had been destroyed by Israel and had nowhere to go.
Numbers written on their chest
Around 6 a.m., patient Izzat al-Aswad heard Israeli forces calling over loudspeakers for Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital director.
Dr. Abu Safia came back and told the people at the hospital that they had been ordered to evacuate. Abu Safia himself, who was one of the few to denounce what Israel was doing at the hospital, was taken to the hospital by Israel, which refused to release him despite calls to do so by Israel. UN, humanitarian NGOs and international health organizations.
A little later, al-Aswad said Israeli soldiers demanded that all the men strip down to their underwear in order to leave.
Shivering, frightened and many injured, the men were ordered to march to a checkpoint the Israelis had set up about two hours away, al-Aswad said by telephone.
At the checkpoint, they gave their full names and had their photo taken.
A number was then scrawled on their chest and neck by a soldier, indicating they had been searched.
Some men were taken in for questioning.
“They beat me and the men around me,” al-Aswad said. “They hit the injured like me directly on our wounds.”
Shorouq al-Rantisi, 30, a nurse in Kamal Adwan’s laboratory, was among the women taken from the hospital.
The women were asked to walk to the same checkpoint, which was at a school, and then wait for hours in the cold.
“We could hear the men being beaten and tortured. It was unbearable.
Then the research began.
“The soldiers were dragging the women by their heads towards the search area,” al-Rantisi said. “(They) shouted at us, demanding that we take off our headscarves. Those who refused were severely beaten.
“The first girl called for the search was ordered to undress. When she refused, a soldier beat her and forced her to lift her clothes.
“A soldier dragged me by the head, then another soldier ordered me to lift the top of my clothes, then the bottom, and checked my ID card,” she said.
Abandoned patients
Al-Rantisi said the women were eventually taken away, abandoned at a roundabout and told they could not return to Beit Lahiya.
“How could we leave and abandon the patients? None of us ever thought about leaving until we were forced to,” she said by phone.
Israel attacked the hospital for several weeks before the raid.
“The hospital and its courtyard were bombarded relentlessly, day and night, as if it were normal,” al-Aswad said.
“Quadcopters fired at anyone who moved in the courtyard…they targeted generators and water tanks, while medical staff struggled to treat patients. »
The night before the raid had been “terrifying,” al-Aswad added, with Israeli attacks all around, including on the “al-Safeer” building.
“Witnesses say there were about 50 people inside, including hospital nurses. No one was able to rescue them or recover their bodies, they are still there,” he said.
Al-Aswad and the men who were not interrogated were released after a full day of mistreatment and humiliation.
“The soldiers ordered us to go to the west of Gaza City and never return,” he said. “We walked through the destruction and rubble, freezing, until people came to meet us near Gaza City, offering us help and blankets. »
“Betrayed” and “abandoned”
The Israeli raid only worsened the “global silence and abandonment” that Palestinians in Gaza have faced throughout more than a year of relentless Israeli attacks that have killed more than 45,000 people, al-Rantisi said.
“More than 60 days of relentless bombardment – quadcopters, artillery and targeted strikes on generators,” she said.
“Dr Hussam’s calls went unanswered until the hospital was stormed and emptied. How does the world allow this to happen?
“I feel like we have all been betrayed,” Fadi al-Atawneh, 32, said bitterly by telephone.
“I was injured, so I stayed in the hospital, hoping that the World Health Organization would evacuate us or protect us, but that never happened,” al-Atawneh said.
“I am deeply saddened by what happened to us and by the fate of Dr. Abu Safia. We are alone in the face of this aggression.”
