Summary
Director of the European Gaza Hospital, whose testimony (27 October 2023) is the second of the three doctors’ testimonies in Chapter 6 of From the River to the Sea, describing sixteen years of siege on Gaza’s hospitals and triage under the 2023 war (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 456-474).
Details
- “The Gaza Strip has been under Israeli siege since 2007. This means that for the past 16 years, doctors have lacked the drugs and medical supplies necessary for our work.” (line 460)
- Replacement parts for radiology equipment can take over a year to reach Gaza; his hospital had no CT scanner for more than eight months for want of a simple part (lines 460-462).
- After 7 October the hospital used unsafe well water, received bodies in parts, and sheltered thousands of displaced people; its ICU beds grew from twelve to fifty-four, every bed occupied, and patients thought to have no chance are left to die so another can take the bed (lines 464-472).
- “What I want for Gaza is simply freedom. We have been under occupation for seventy-five years.” (line 474)
Related pages
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, European Gaza Hospital, Gaza