Medics volunteering in Gaza pressure European govts over dire conditions

In September 2023, Palestinian paediatrician Hashem Hijji, had chosen to leave the safe confines of France and to return to help his community in the besieged enclave of Gaza.

Under siege since a 2007 Israeli blockade, medical professionals like Hijji, part of non-profit PalMed that emerged in the same year have become used to facing extremely challenging circumstances amid a severe scarcity of medical supplies and training.

Today PalMed with the help of those originally from Gaza like Hijji are providing medical expertise, equipment, medicines including anaesthetics, pain relievers and antibiotics alongside study grants for aspiring paramedics for Palestinians on the ground in historic Palestine and across Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

The president of PalMed France, Hijji, was shortly into his stay in Gaza amid an atmosphere of hope with rebuilt houses and roads, verdant areas springing up and parks for children to play.

But, nothing could prepare him for what would ensue.

After Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7 killing 1,200 Israelis - as Israel retaliated with a brutal bombardment and a ground invasion on the enclave.

“I was in Gaza when the war started,” Hijji tells TRT World. “I stayed there a month under the bombings like the other Palestinians of Gaza; I saw the houses erased. My family home was totally destroyed. My neighbors all died.”

Amid the carnage, he had to move to the south, together with thousands of Palestinians. He reached Rafah, where he stayed 21 days to help the medical staff at the Kuwait hospital.

That’s where he saw the magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe: wounded people arriving all day long, corpses left in the halls, no reanimation service nor operating theatre.

As Israel’s aggression continued, the unfolding scenes began to take a toll on the healthcare worker.

“I saw things that I couldn't imagine in 2023: to see kids dying like this because we don't have the means to cure them, there was no surgery room, especially in the hospital in Rafah as it's very small.”

It was Hijji’s first-hand experience of Israel’s intense bombing campaign, impacting him and others around who said they had never experienced such a scale of relentless, compared to ones dating back from 2009, 2012, to 2021.

“Everything was missing: medicines, antibiotics. So many infections became gangrene and amputations were the only way to save people” he recounted.

Hijji was shocked by the ruthless ferocity of Israeli bombings that he says targeted hospitals, cultural centres, libraries, churches, mosques and even the football stadium.

Among those helping on the ground after October 7, was seasoned health care professional and professor Raphaël Pitti. While his work has taken him across several continents, the Frenchman underscored how the carnage in Gaza was incomparable to events elsewhere.

“It's 30 years since I have been a humanitarian doctor: I was in Northern Syria, in Ukraine, in Africa, I never saw anything like this before,” Pitti said to journalists upon his return.

The professor has since returned to Paris after his humanitarian work at the European Hospital.

As part of PalMed, he and his colleagues submitted to the French Authorities a list of children in dire need of medical treatment.

However, their calls for the Palestinian children to receive vital care, they say, have received no response.

Despite the Israeli's onslaught, PalMed has kept a strong presence while on the ground.

Since October 7, they have opened ten medical centres in Rafah and in refugee camps.

Targeting hospitals and medics

It comes as Palestinian authorities say that Israel has specifically targeted hospitals and medical staff, something Palmed doctors have documented.

“Even doctors are victims: there are more than 360 doctors and medical executives and more than 260 doctors and surgeons are hostages ” Dr. Mamoun Albarqawi, surgeon orthopedist tells TRT World, referencing how Israeli forces have targeted medics on the ground.

Albarqawi says some doctors including Mahmoud Shehada, Ghassan Abou Zhari, Adnan Albicher have been taken hostage by the occupying forces and remain missing.

UNICEF says around 155 health facilities have been damaged, and 32 hospitals and 53 health centers are non-functional alongside shortages of essential medicines.

Palestinian Albarqawi was on the ground in Gaza from 22 January until 6 February, supported by PalMed and Rahma, another non-profit.

“We flew to Cairo, and there we took the bus. We crossed the Sinai desert and we reached Rafah from the Palestinian side. We directly went to the hospital Khan Younis and as soon as I arrived I went to see my colleagues.” he says.

Albarqawi treated patients day and night without medical equipment, as all the orthopaedic devices he brought from France were exhausted within a single day's use.

Amid the overcrowded emergency room, he had to operate amputations and cranial traumas on mostly women and children without anaesthesia.

Israel authorities have withheld vital medical items, banning them as “for dual use." This list includes basic and lifesaving items such as medical scissors, anaesthetics, solar lights, oxygen cylinders, and ventilators, water cleaning tablets, cancer medicines, and maternity kits, says UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

Albarqawi says amid such conditions, the work became more challenging as the airstrikes intensified at night.

Generations of families targeted

Like countless others in Gaza, he witnessed the impact of the killing of generations of Palestinian families.

“I treated a colleague, a paediatrician, whose wife, his little daughter and his father had died and he himself was wounded,” Albarqawi says.

Despite his lengthy medical training, since returning home he has opened up about the psychological impact of his time in Gaza.

“It’s been a month since I came back to France and, to be honest, I don’t sleep well. I wake up ten times at night and I don’t feel well. It’s not easy to see such things, even as a doctor. I see blood all the time, but here… it’s injustice, there is no justice.”

With more than 30,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 90% of the population facing acute food insecurity, 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza displaced and 60 percent damaged or destroyed, Albarqawi explains the impact of the strife .

“Everything has been systematically destroyed to push them out, to force them to leave,” he says.

Pushing Brussels to act

Amid this backdrop in March a delegation of PalMed medical professionals came together, after their third medical mission in two months, at the European Parliament in Brussels for a public hearing on their latest mission in Gaza.

During the conference at the European Parliament in Brussels various professionals denounced the extent of Israel’s onslaught against Palestinians.

Surgeon and obstetrician Dr Zouhair Lahna said that “For 25 years I have been involved in going to all war theatres: Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, Ethiopia, Congo. And I have never seen a country being bombarded in the way the Palestinians have been in Gaza, without having a way out.”

While the future of Gaza remains unclear under occupation, PalMed suggested that in the future Palestinian authorities could likely pivot to Russia and China to reconstruct the enclave, moving away from Europe unless they shift their policies.

In February the European Parliament pushed “for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in order to allow uninterrupted access to food and water for all its inhabitants”.

This latest vote follows a prior resolution approved in January, calling for a ceasefire and another in October demanding a “humanitarian pause”. However, critically both demands hold no weight as the Parliament has no legacy authority over the EU bloc's foreign policy.

While some Western governments have been accused of complicity in Israel’s assault on Gaza, supplying arms and accused of providing political cover, experts have told TRT World previously more commitment is needed.

Amid Israel’s denial of vital humanitarian aid entering Gaza and other nations’ airdrops of aid, a push is underway to establish a maritime corridor.

The sea route has been described by the UN as “no substitute”, marking the first EU bid to provide critical aid.

However, many from PalMed are fully aware of Western governments lack of commitment to bring about peace for Palestinians.

Nizran Bodran, the former president of PalMed France and a surgeon and urologist, warned that “The Europe of tomorrow will be stained and marked by Gaza”.