Nidal Sharaf- The epic photo of Palestinian doctor Hossam Abu Safiya as he made his way through the rubble and rubble towards the armored vehicles of the Israeli occupation army was the final scene of a military operation launched by the army against Kamal Adwan Hospital, which ended with the destruction and closure of the hospital, which, along with 4 other hospitals, represents the strength of the Palestinian health system in the North Gaza Governorate. A new chapter in the war of extermination launched by “Israel” against the health system since the seventh of last October.
Melted in his hospital.. Biography of Hossam Abu Safia
On November 21, 1973, Hossam Idris Abu Safiya was born in Jabalia Camp in the northern Gaza Strip, to a family of prominent families in the northern Gaza Strip, who were displaced during the Nakba in 1948 from the town of Hamama in the Gaza District. In the camp schools, “Abu Iyas” – as he was nicknamed – graduated. He received his basic education and traveled to Kazakhstan to study medicine, where he met his wife Elbina, who decided to return with him to the Gaza Strip in 1996.
Dr.’s work Hussam is part of the Palestinian Ministry of Health staff. He headed the pediatric department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, then ran the entire hospital. In addition to his professional competence, he holds a master’s degree in pediatrics and a Palestinian Board degree in the same specialty.
It is as if the hospital turned into a man. This is how the relationship between Dr. Hossam and Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he was stationed since the first day of the aggression, accompanying his fellow doctors and colleagues in the medical staff, spending days and months between operating rooms and building lobbies, under bombardment, fire, fire belts, rounds of siege, and the advance and withdrawal of vehicles, and he who refused, since the first week of the war, to respond to orders. Evacuation of the hospital launched by the occupation army.
Throughout the first weeks, the hospital continued under the leadership of its first director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot worked at his maximum capacity despite the start of the ground invasion and hundreds of raids that affected his surroundings, leading to the first target of the air bombardment that targeted his gate and resulted in a number of martyrs and wounded, and by the end of December 2023, the hospital was crowded with thousands of displaced people, hundreds of wounded, and medical sector personnel. Who were trapped inside its corridors.
The Israeli army stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital for the first time on December 12, 2023, and arrested its director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot and dozens of doctors and nurses, and hundreds of displaced people were forced to head towards Gaza City. The siege ended after 4 days, during which the hospital was transformed into a military barracks. The Israeli army’s withdrawal revealed that it had committed massacres against civilians and displaced people, and buried them alive in the courtyards of the hospital.
In February 2024, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, the leadership of Kamal Adwan Hospital, took the initiative from the first days to focus his field and media efforts to expose Israel’s crimes against patients and children in nurseries. In the same month, he warned of the spread of hepatitis among children, and he also announced the death of 13 children within 3 days. Due to malnutrition resulting from the ongoing Israeli siege on the hospital.
Hossam Abu Safiya remained present with his written and video messages, and his appearance whenever the opportunity arose on Arab and international media screens to provide daily reports on the reality of the hospital and the daily attacks on it, which apparently did not please the Israeli army, so it responded by bombing Dr.’s house. Hossam in Jabalia camp on May 12, 2024.
On May 19, after days of violent air and artillery bombardment, Israeli armor imposed its siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital again, completely destroying one of the buildings inside it, and while Dr. Hossam Abu Safia continues his appeals through the media. News has arrived of the advancement of his colleague Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi, director of the maternity department, was martyred under torture in Israeli detention camps.
The hospital was out of service again on June 4, 2024, after the fuel ran out and the continued strict Israeli siege of the hospital’s entrances, targeting its facilities and its surroundings with snipers and artillery shelling, and fire control of all roads leading to it with combat drones.
Through ebb and flow, communications and shuttle visits with the World Health Organization and other relevant organizations, coordination was made to bring quantities of medicines and fuel into Kamal Adwan Hospital, in light of the insistence of its medical teams to restart work in it again, which was finally achieved in August 2024 with the start of Limited renovation work in the reception, women’s and maternity departments, and the dialysis department reopened.
On October 8, 2024, the Israeli army began its third invasion of Jabalia camp, launching a military operation that was revealed two months after it began to target Kamal Adwan Hospital. This invasion, and what accompanied it, was the longest and most difficult chapter in the history of the hospital and its director, Hussam Abu. Safia.
During two months of siege and destruction, the Israeli army stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, expelled all its doctors, patients, displaced persons, and wounded, and arrested its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and other of his colleagues, subjected them to field investigation for hours in the hospital courtyard, and wreaked destruction and devastation on all facilities. The Israeli army also killed during its aggression both the doctor Muhammad Ghanem and the nurse Muhammad Salman.
After his release, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya reported the news of the martyrdom of his eldest son, Elias, in an Israeli bombing on the Jabalia camp. He received his body inside Kamal Adwan Hospital, and advanced to lead prayers for him, surrounded by his companions of doctors, nurses, and the displaced in the hospital, so that the combat doctor continued his extended battle with “Israel” in the heart of his hospital, which had become impossible. Ruins.
A month before the scene of his arrest on December 27, 2024, which became an iconic image of the Palestinian doctor, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya for a direct assassination attempt after he was targeted by bombs from a drone in the hospital courtyard, as a result of which he sustained wounds in his thighs.
As he made his way to the armored vehicle in the closing scene of the story of Kamal Adwan Hospital, which battled “Israel” for 14 full months, Hussam Abu Safiya was making his way between the rubble of the Geneva Conventions, human rights, and the standards of international organizations, before trampling on the rubble and rubble of his hospital and camp.
Hospital Decimal.. How was the health system established in the north?
The northern Gaza Strip governorate, which includes the cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and its camp, witnessed the establishment of its first hospital in 1997, which bore the name “Al-Awda Hospital” administratively affiliated with the Al-Awda Health Association. The hospital was built in the Tal Al-Zaatar neighborhood in the Jabalia camp with local donations, and underwent a series of The development processes that led to increasing its absorptive capacity and medical services, which started from birth, and included many medical specialties, bringing the hospital to a absorptive capacity of 97 beds, and a staff of 173 workers, including 35 doctors and support staff during the genocidal war.
The second established hospital in the north was the Martyr Kamal Adwan Governmental Hospital affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Health, located in the Beit Lahia Project. It was opened in 2002 on an emergency basis as a hospital after it was known as the “Beit Lahia Project Clinic”, to deal with the escalating infections at the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. As part of a health emergency plan developed to ensure the provision of medical care to the wounded in all governorates of the Strip.
Kamal Adwan Hospital is the central hospital in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, serving more than 400,000 people, through a group of departments that include ambulance, reception, emergency, children, maternity, laboratory, physical therapy, radiology, and others, with a capacity of 118 beds.
The third hospital in chronological order that was opened in the northern Gaza Strip governorate is Beit Hanoun Hospital, the only hospital that serves the city with a population of 350,000 people. Its opening came in 2006 after the city was subjected to a massive invasion by the occupation army, during which it was not possible to transfer the sick and injured to the hospital. Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia Camp as a result of the tight siege imposed by the occupation on Beit Hanoun.
The capacity of Beit Hanoun Hospital reached 86 beds distributed among a number of departments, including: internal medicine, surgery, operations, emergency, laboratory, radiology, and outpatient clinics departments.
The fourth hospital in the northern Gaza Strip governorate is Al Karama Specialized Hospital, which opened in 2007 on an area of 700 square meters, and is affiliated with the Patient Care Charitable Society. It was established to support the health sector and serve the neighborhoods northwest of Gaza City and the residents of the city of Beit Lahia in the North Gaza Governorate. It has a clinical capacity of 17 beds, and is staffed by 65 medical staff from various specialties.
The last hospital in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, the fifth in number and its second main side, next to Kamal Adwan Hospital, is the Indonesian hospital, which work began on its construction west of the Jabalia refugee camp during the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip in 2011, and it was officially opened in 2016 on an area of 12 dunums, funded by people’s donations. Indonesian.
The capacity of the Indonesian Hospital reached 110 beds, including 10 beds in the intensive care department, and it serves 300,000 citizens, through its departments distributed over two floors, and includes important facilities, including: clinics, surgery, intensive care, CT scans, and others, and its opening constituted a lever for health work in North, and also contributed to relieving pressure on Kamal Adwan and Beit Hanoun government hospitals.
Annihilation of the health sector.. How were the hospitals of North Gaza Governorate destroyed?
Since the first days of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has placed the health and services sector at the forefront of its war aims aimed at destroying all components of human life in the Gaza Strip in general, and the Gaza and northern governorates in particular. This targeting took two paths, the first of which was the destruction of these capabilities and their structure. Infrastructure, and the second is the systematic targeting of medical and health personnel through assassination, arrest, and deportation.
On October 9, 2023, the third day of the genocidal war, the occupation destroyed Beit Hanoun Hospital with direct aerial bombardment, putting it completely out of service. On the seventeenth of the same month, Al Karama Hospital was out of service as a result of the severe material damage it sustained after the bombing of its neighboring buildings. February 2024, clips filmed after the occupation army withdrew from the Karama neighborhood in northwest Gaza, showed the complete destruction of the hospital.
So, with the intensification of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, and the start of the ground maneuver that targeted the Gaza and northern governorates, the northern Gaza governorate relied on 3 main hospitals: Kamal Adwan, the Indonesian, and Al-Awda, which became the forefront of direct Israeli targeting, and efforts to destroy and put out of service for all… Hospital separately.
Al-Awda Hospital initially received evacuation warnings from the occupation army on the seventh day of the aggression against Gaza on October 13, 2023, threatening to bomb the hospital, but the medical staff confirmed their rejection of the evacuation orders, and continued working to receive the wounded and sick, so the occupation responded with violent bombing of the homes and residential neighborhoods adjacent to the hospital. To take it out of service, and in early November the hospital director announced that it was out of service as a result of preventing the entry of fuel and medical supplies and damage to its facilities as a result. Violent bombardment on its surroundings.
On November 21, Al Awda Hospital was subjected to the first direct bombardment by the Israeli army, targeting the reconstructive surgeries building, resulting in the death of 3 doctors and a patient attendant, and the complete destruction of the third and fourth floors of the hospital.
Two days later, on November 24, and before the first truce took effect, the occupation returned to targeting the facilities of Al Awda Hospital, causing the destruction of the central medicine warehouse and the ambulance garage, which caused the destruction of two ambulances designated for intensive care, and a vehicle for transporting medical supplies. The bombing also affected the solar energy system, and rooms. Electricity generators, the medical gas network, and water tanks, in addition to the housing department, which includes 38 beds and one of the operating rooms, caused them to be completely out of service.
In late December 2023, the occupation army had completely occupied the hospital for a period of 18 full days, during which it turned it into a military barracks, arrested a number of patients and medical personnel, executed 3 others, and wreaked widespread devastation on its facilities before withdrawing.
With the withdrawal of the Israeli army, the medical teams resumed their efforts to restore the hospital to work. A number of international delegations were received and work was resumed in a number of departments, despite the intermittent attacks on the hospital buildings, until May 2024, which witnessed the occupation regaining control of the hospital again for 13 days. He was detained. During which 170 medical personnel, wounded and patients were inside the hospital.
Until last December, Al Awda Hospital continued to operate at its minimum capacity, under siege and continuous targeting by occupation tanks, aircraft, and artillery. Quadcopter drones also imposed a fiery siege on the hospital yard and the roads leading to it, and the Israeli army assassinated the only orthopedic doctor in the hospital. Dr. Saeed Joudah was shot directly at him while he was on his way from his home to the hospital.
The Indonesian Hospital was not far from the wave of Israeli targeting of the Palestinian medical sector. Since the first day of the aggression, it was exposed to unprecedented waves of bombing that affected its surroundings with hundreds of raids and fire belts, which caused massive material damage to its facilities.
With the start of the ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip governorate, Israeli tanks imposed their siege on the Indonesian hospital on November 20, 2023, and besieged 700 medical personnel, patients, wounded, and displaced persons inside it, and killed 12 of them by snipers and shelling.
Before the siege, it was the only Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza receiving the wounded and sick, and it was subjected to an intense Israeli propaganda campaign that claimed it was being used for military purposes, and that it was built to hide military infrastructure underneath, as the occupation claimed at the time regarding the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.
On November 21, 2023, the Israeli army bombed the operating room inside the Indonesian Hospital, which was crowded with displaced persons, the wounded, and the bodies of martyrs, while its siege continued. After coordination with international and international organizations, dozens of wounded were evacuated to hospitals in Gaza City, after which the occupation completely stormed the hospital and took control of it for hours. During which he killed a wounded woman and arrested 3 patients before withdrawing with the entry into force of the first truce.
On November 25, 2023, the Indonesian Hospital was completely out of service, but it partially returned to work after 5 days, during which the reception department was rehabilitated, and the medical teams’ attempts continued to activate the hospital again despite it being subjected to continuous bombing and targeting operations that left martyrs and wounded patients and health personnel. The Israeli army also regained control of the hospital and militarily occupied it twice in a row during the ground operations launched by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip until December. 2024.
