Five months ago, when I was on a medical mission in northern Gaza, a Palestinian cardiologist named Marwan Sultan showed me what was left of the Indonesian Hospital, a hundred-bed facility that had been shelled and raided by Israeli forces. The building was riddled with shrapnel scars; its hallways were dark and cluttered with debris, and a cold wind blew through broken windows. Sultan, who directed the facility, was wearing a long white coat, a necktie, and rectangular glasses. He pointed out the twisted remains of the hospital\u2019s generators. The operating rooms were being repaired, he said, but had no anesthesia.<\/p>\n
Sultan was welcoming, but, after more than fifteen months of Israeli military operations in Gaza, he seemed profoundly worn down. I filmed with my smartphone as he pointed out a row of dialysis machines whose screens had been smashed in. Upstairs in the I.C.U., he showed me numerous other pieces of equipment that had been destroyed with bullets. He shook his head, speechless, with his palms turned up. When I described the damage to the Israeli military, or I.D.F., for a story published in April<\/a>, a spokesperson said, \u201cClaims that the IDF deliberately targets medical equipment are unequivocally false.\u201d<\/p>\n A few months later, I gave a talk about what I witnessed in Gaza. I didn\u2019t understand how destroying medical devices could advance any military objective. A dialysis machine isn\u2019t a weapon, I said. A man in the audience raised his hand and asked, \u201cHow long can someone who needs dialysis live without it?\u201d Days to weeks, I told him. \u201cI think that\u2019s how you turn a dialysis machine into a weapon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n On the afternoon of July 2nd, Sultan was killed by an Israeli missile along with his wife, a daughter, a sister, a niece, and a son-in-law. At the time, they were displaced from their home, staying with other families in a multistory apartment building near the Mediterranean. A surviving daughter, Lubna, has said that the \u201cmissile was dropped on his room exactly, on his place, on him precisely.\u201d The rest of the apartment was intact, she said. In photographs of the damage, a gaping hole is visible at the site of the strike.<\/p>\n When I asked the Israeli military about Sultan\u2019s killing, the I.D.F. said in a statement, without providing evidence, that it had \u201ctargeted a senior Hamas terrorist operative.\u201d It refused to say whether Sultan was the target. \u201cThe IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians and takes all feasible precautions to minimize harm to uninvolved civilians,\u201d the statement said. Sultan\u2019s family has said that he had no association with any political group. \u201cMy father was just a doctor, just a human caring for patients,\u201d his seventeen-year-old son, Ahmad, told<\/a> an NBC News crew.<\/p>\n Sultan, who worked as a professor of medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza, was reportedly one of only two heart specialists left in northern Gaza. Colleagues described his killing as catastrophic for the medical community, particularly for medical trainees, who have kept the territory\u2019s remaining hospitals running. \u201cIt is a huge loss for us,\u201d Muneer al-Boursh, who directs Gaza\u2019s health ministry, told me. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government of Gaza but is staffed by medical professionals. \u201cI still cannot comprehend that he\u2019s gone,\u201d Boursh said.<\/p>\n During my time with Sultan, in February, there were reasons to be hopeful. Gaza was protected by a ceasefire, and aid was flowing in; tables piled with fresh fruit and vegetables lined the streets. Hospitals were able to replenish their supplies of antibiotics, sterile gauze, analgesics, and surgical equipment. I saw children playing hopscotch and swinging from downed power lines. I visited several warehouses in Gaza City where bundles of food were being calmly and efficiently distributed. \u201cWe hope that this is the end of the war so we can rebuild our hospital,\u201d Sultan told me.<\/p>\n A month later, Israeli authorities blocked further aid from entering Gaza. On March 18th, Israel ended the ceasefire and resumed military attacks. In April, one of Sultan\u2019s colleagues, a twenty-seven-year-old Egyptian surgeon named Mahmoud Abu Amsha, who was volunteering in Gaza, was killed in an air strike. Sultan texted me to say that he wasn\u2019t sleeping because of nightly blasts. \u201cWe miss [a] very brave colleague,\u201d he wrote. \u201cMedical staff suffered a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n A few weeks after that, the World Health Organization reported that the Indonesian Hospital was \u201cout of service due to continued military presence.\u201d A staff member was killed, the W.H.O. said, and almost all of the facility\u2019s patients had to be evacuated. Generators that had been repaired were destroyed again. In its statement, the I.D.F. accused Hamas of \u201cusing hospital infrastructure and staff for terrorist activities.\u201d It said that it \u201coperates out of military necessity and in accordance with international law.\u201d Boursh told me that he begged Sultan, \u201clike a child begging their parents,\u201d to leave. Sultan refused, Boursh said, because he wanted to stay with his patients.<\/p>\n Boursh alleged that Sultan was assassinated because of his position within Gaza\u2019s health-care system. He said that Sultan\u2019s salary came from the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank, and not from Hamas; so did one of Sultan\u2019s colleagues at the Indonesian Hospital. The colleague described Sultan as honorable\u2014\u201ca man without dust on him,\u201d using an Arabic idiom. \u201cThey targeted him because he is a human, he is someone kind, and everyone in Gaza knew him,\u201d a twentysomething medical student, whom I met during my trip there, told me in a voice note. The I.D.F. told me that it \u201cdoes not target medical personnel or healthcare workers.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Healthcare Workers Watch<\/a>, a Palestinian non-governmental organization that has been cited in medical journals and international media reports, Sultan was the seventieth health-care worker killed in the Gaza Strip in the past fifty days alone. The organization called his killing \u201cpart of a wider pattern.\u201d Israeli forces have killed or detained at least one director from every hospital in northern Gaza, it said. In total, more than fifty-seven thousand Palestinians have lost their lives in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to Gaza\u2019s health ministry. Boursh said that figure includes more than fifteen hundred health-care workers: two hundred physicians, seventy of whom were top specialists in their fields; a hundred and eighty pharmacists; two hundred and twenty paramedics; and many others.<\/p>\n This month, as Israel and Hamas held renewed ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, the Prime Minister of Israel, flew to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump<\/a>. Netanyahu surprised Trump with the news that he had formally nominated the President for the Nobel Peace Prize\u2014an honor that Trump has wanted for years. Regardless of whether Trump deserves the prize, he is in a commanding position, as far as peace goes. The U.S. is Israel\u2019s most powerful ally and the supplier of most of its weapons. He has the power to stop the destruction in Gaza.<\/p>\n When Sultan led me through his wrecked hospital, the sounds of hammers echoed through the halls. Workers were hurrying to make repairs. Sultan was excited to tell me that, the day before my arrival, the E.R. had fully reopened. Still, he was reeling from all that had been lost. He listed name after name of fellow medical workers who had died. \u201cYou miss your colleagues,\u201d he told me. \u201cSome are killed; some have been arrested. And for what? For doing their jobs.\u201d \u2666<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five months ago, when I was on a medical mission in northern Gaza, a Palestinian cardiologist named Marwan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,4046,6898,137,5266,500,6897,1679,7828,6900],"class_list":["post-5943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-doctors","tag-gaza","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-israel","tag-medicine","tag-physicians","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}