On October 7, my morning started like any other, at least on the surface. As a surgical resident who takes great pride in his work, I made my rounds among patients in the usual hustle and bustle of the hospital, then rushed to operate on an emergency case alongside one of my mentors.
However, when I felt the metallic coldness of the scalpel in my hand, perhaps for the first time in my career, I did not feel a chill. I didn’t feel the deep joy that normally accompanies the opportunity to improve someone’s life on the operating table.
My attending surgeon felt something was wrong and asked me what was wrong.
I told him the news I had received from my mother back home: the bombings had started. Gaza, my home, was under attack.
He listened and tears began to well up in his eyes. When I saw him, a non-Palestinian, sharing my pain, something broke inside me and I broke down. He hugged me and said, “Your family will be okay. We are all with you.”
I greatly appreciated his solidarity, as well as that which I have since received from many of my American colleagues. Today, I am the only Gaza-trained surgical resident in the United States, and it’s not easy.
I am emotionally exhausted and immersed in worry. Watching the assault on Gaza from afar, I feel helpless, broken.
I know it is a tremendous privilege to work and train in the American system. However, since October 7, I have the impression that my existence is divided between two completely different and disconnected worlds.
I spend my days worrying and caring for my patients here in America. Will Mr. Jones be shot again after being released? Has Ms. Lopez’s insurance approved the surgery she needs?
But while I do my best to help them and their families, I simultaneously worry about my family, loved ones, and colleagues struggling back home. How will my elderly widowed mother walk miles to safety, under intense bombardment, with her crippling arthritis – an illness that has gone largely untreated because Israel has refused to several times to grant him an exit permit to seek treatment abroad? Will she and my other relatives find food and shelter? When will I be able to hear their voices again?
My family in Gaza has been under intense Israeli bombardment since October 7. They walked miles from the now-destroyed northern Gaza to the south, moving from one shelter to another at least six times, but were unable to find safety due to raids. Israeli air forces. spare no place in Gaza, including areas designated “safe” by the Israeli army itself. At one point, they sought refuge in the courtyard of al-Shifa hospital, but eventually Israel attacked there too – a war crime under international law. Our family home, the place of my most cherished childhood memories, where we celebrated my brother’s wedding and my father’s funeral, was also destroyed.
My family is now homeless. They have no dignity and are forced to live in a makeshift tent, like my grandparents once did, after being expelled from their village during the Nakba.
In 1948, my grandparents were expelled from their village, Hammama, where they led a peaceful and prosperous life alongside their Jewish neighbors. After being expelled from their homes, their identity and political rights were erased and they became permanent refugees. After this catastrophe, after this serious crime, my family somehow managed to rebuild a new life in Gaza. But every bombing campaign, every attack on our home rekindles the transgenerational trauma we acquired during the Nakba. And now my family is displaced again, in a tent, uprooted and uncertain about the future.
During this latest attack on Gaza, I lost many members of my extended family, including three cousins, to Israeli bombing. Two other cousins were taken away for no reason. The surviving members of my family are experiencing horrors that defy imagination. The situation is particularly traumatic for children. My nephew Adam is now afraid of the dark and has developed night terrors and incontinence.
I haven’t been able to video chat with my family for over three months due to telecommunication difficulties. My brother managed to send me a photo of him and my family members over a month ago, after he managed to connect to an Egyptian phone service via roaming. Looking at the photo, I was dismayed to see how much weight they had all lost, almost skin and bones. Within just a few weeks, my mother’s face was also wrinkled, almost unrecognizable.
Since October 7, more than 30,000 people – more than two-thirds of them women and children – have been killed in Gaza. Another 70,000 people were injured and at least 1.7 million people were displaced.
Every day I worry about my family and my people. But as a surgeon, who knows well how health care is the main lifeline of any society, I am also concerned about Israel’s incessant and illegal attacks on Gaza’s health system.
At the time of writing, only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning. My medical school, the Islamic University of Gaza, was destroyed, as was the only cancer treatment center in the Gaza Strip. This means that thousands of medical students will not be able to continue their studies in Gaza and that cancer patients will lose their already limited access to cancer care for the foreseeable future.
Israeli attacks on health care do not only target infrastructure. According to a recent report from The Healthcare Workers Watch – Palestine, more than 400 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. These include the former dean of my medical school, Dr. Omar Ferwana, and several mentees, including Dr. Israa Al-Ashqar, a very kind anesthesiology resident, and Dr. Ibtihal Al-Astal, a exceptional internal.
Additionally, the Israeli army has kidnapped at least 110 health workers in Gaza. The families of these health workers, kidnapped from their workplace, do not know where they are currently and do not even know if they are dead or alive.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to become a surgeon. Not just a surgeon, but one of the most skilled surgeons in all of Palestine. From a young age, I understood the burden of preventable deaths carried by all Palestinians living under occupation, and I wanted to do everything I could to help my people. I never wanted to go abroad and stay there, I never dreamed of using my surgical training to escape the open-air prison in which we are all locked up. My surgical training has always been part of my social contract with my people – my goal has always been to learn as much as possible, then return home to use that knowledge to help my people.
Since beginning my training in the United States, I have had the opportunity to return home twice, to teach basic surgical skills and advanced trauma life support to medical students in Gaza. Today, as I helplessly watch from afar the attacks on healthcare workers, I hear from these former students. They tell me about the inhumane conditions in which they work, including the lack of essential medicines such as anesthetics needed for child amputations. They tell me about their colleagues who were injured, killed or kidnapped by the Israeli army.
It is difficult to express how painful it is to listen to their testimonies and see from afar their suffering and that of the people they are trying to treat in despicable conditions.
Fortunately, here in the United States, I am surrounded by patients, families, students, co-residents, nurses, and residents who recognize the ever-deepening struggles and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Not only do they support me, but they also denounce these injustices that do not affect them personally. They are working tirelessly to ensure that targeted attacks on healthcare workers like those we have seen in Gaza do not become the norm. Many of them called for a permanent ceasefire to end attacks on Palestinian health workers and infrastructure.
Their moral clarity and courage give me strength and hope for the future.
And yet, they are unfortunately in the minority. The medical community as a whole has remained completely silent, even complicit, in the ongoing attacks on Palestinian health care. Several hospitals and academic institutes have issued unilateral statements supporting the Israeli regime and censored their students and staff who speak out against the genocide it is committing in Gaza and the West Bank.
This indifference breaks my heart, but does not break my resolve. As a Palestinian surgeon, my dream has always been to use my training and knowledge to build an independent and competent health and education system in Palestine – a system that would allow us to competently train our own doctors, treat with respect to our own patients and to help our own doctors. the nation prospers and reaches its immense potential.
Despite the death and destruction we are currently witnessing in Palestine, I have not given up on this dream. However, I know that my dream cannot come true without achieving justice and lasting peace based on fairness, dignity and equal rights for all. To this end, I call on the global medical community to join me in demanding a ceasefire and an end to attacks on our colleagues, hospitals and other medical facilities in Palestine. I know dreams can still come true, but we are the only ones speaking with one voice against this attack on our profession.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.