Dr Zouhair Lahna has labored in battle zones throughout the globe – Syria, Libya, Yemen, Uganda and Ethiopia – however he has by no means seen something just like the Israeli warfare on Gaza.
In these life-threatening conditions, the Moroccan French pelvic surgeon and obstetrician stated, there was a path to security for civilians.
However on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized and closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt – the one escape for Palestinians from the warfare and an important entry level for humanitarian help.
“That is one other injustice. … It’s not human,” Lahna stated, shaking his head as he spoke to Al Jazeera from Cairo, Egypt, the place he has been evacuated from the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis.
He laments having to depart his Palestinian colleagues behind.
“I’m indignant, troubled, upset … as a result of I left some folks. They’re my buddies. I used to be with them, these medical doctors, these folks. …We eat collectively, we work collectively and now I left them in bother. They’ve to maneuver their households, search for a tent, search for water, for meals,” he stated.
Lahna has spent months volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals as a part of missions organised by the Palestinian Docs Affiliation in Europe (PalMed Europe) and US-based Rahma Worldwide.
On the morning that displaced Palestinians in jap Rafah had been ordered to evacuate and earlier than Israeli tanks rolled in, Lahna and his international colleagues acquired textual content messages from the Israeli military.
“The Israeli military, they know every thing. They know everybody who’s in Gaza and learn how to attain them. They advised us to depart.”
The texts urged the international medical doctors to depart Gaza as a result of the Israeli navy would quickly start an operation in jap Rafah.
A couple of hours later, Lahna and his counterparts from PalMed Europe and Rahma Worldwide had been picked up by their organisations and brought to security in Cairo.
“There have been 4 medical doctors within the European Hospital, 4 within the Kuwaiti Hospital and two others,” he stated. “We waited whereas they gave our names to the Egyptian and Israeli authorities, and eventually, we obtained phrase to depart.”
As they had been departing, leaflets from the Israeli navy printed with the evacuation order fell from the sky together with missiles from Israeli warplanes.
Folks had been in a panic as they headed north from Rafah in direction of Khan Younis or west in direction of the ocean, Lahna recalled.
Collapse of a system
When requested concerning the situations of the hospitals he labored in, Lahna has bother describing what he noticed.
He begins to talk, then pauses, apologising, pained by the variety of sick, wounded and dying people who had been introduced in each day.
“It’s tough for me to recollect this,” he stated slowly.
Whereas the European Hospital has been spared from an Israeli raid, it has been receiving referrals from different overwhelmed hospitals.
It has additionally been a spot of shelter for displaced individuals who attempt to discover house wherever they’ll, together with on the doorways of affected person rooms, within the constructing’s corridors, on the steps and within the hospital’s backyard.
Earlier than the European Hospital, Lahna and his staff volunteered at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s northern metropolis of Beit Lahiya. He’s among the many few international medical doctors to have travelled to the realm.
They labored there for per week, the longest Israeli authorities permitted them to be there, he stated.
There, the state of affairs was much more dire, the physician stated, exacerbated by what the World Meals Programme says is a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza.
In December, the hospital was the positioning of an Israeli raid when the navy besieged and shelled it for a number of days. Displaced households had additionally been sheltering there and had been rounded up alongside medical workers and personnel.
Gaza’s hospitals, nearly all of that are now not functioning, have additionally been the positioning of mass graves found after Israeli raids. Graves have been present in latest weeks in Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals together with 392 our bodies.
Working for peace, not warfare
With the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza, Lahna is set to return and volunteer there as soon as once more however isn’t certain when that might be doable.
For now, he stated, he’ll return to France to examine in at his “different job” and spend time together with his household, who might have had a more durable time than he did as a result of all they did was fear about him whereas he was in Gaza.
He’s certain all of Rafah will quickly be occupied by Israeli forces, which might be lethal for the a whole bunch of hundreds of Palestinians there, he stated.
“This world is blind,” Lahna stated, dismayed that the Rafah incursion is prone to proceed to happen regardless of warnings from the worldwide group, which has not been in a position to cease Israel from committing mass atrocities, he stated.
“Human rights is a joke. The United Nations is a giant joke,” Lahna added.
He believes the warfare is as a lot a United States battle as it’s Israeli with the US approving an extra $17bn in help to its high Center East ally final month.
For Lahna, the protesting college college students world wide, notably within the US, who oppose Israel’s ongoing assault know the worth of human rights.
But with regards to Palestinians, he stated, they’re coming to understand that these values don’t apply – and are more and more turning into disillusioned with their elected officers and the state of the world.
That disillusionment is carrying on the physician himself, however he stated it has additionally strengthened his resolve to supply his experience to folks in warzones world wide, together with Gaza.
Requested if he’s frightened about being arrested. tortured or killed for his work within the enclave, the surgeon barely bats a watch.
He stated his time to die will come at some point or one other and if it occurs whereas serving to the susceptible in Gaza, then that would be the time meant for him to depart.
“I’m not extra treasured than Palestinian folks,” Lahna stated. “I’m a humanitarian physician. I work. I assist folks. [We] medical doctors are available in for peace. We don’t are available in for warfare.”