GAZA: Once the pride of Gaza’s medical community, the Palestinian territory’s main Al-Shifa hospital has become a stark symbol of the utter devastation wrought by Zionist war on Gaza. Until October 2023, patients received for years the best care Gazan doctors and nurses could offer, but earlier this year, they had to cease all operations. Al-Shifa was all but destroyed in two Zionist military operations — one in November 2023, the other in March 2024. Zionist troops detained the director of Al-Shifa, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, for more than seven months. He said he was tortured during that time.

An emergency department has since reopened, though the rest of the sprawling complex lies in ruins, charred by the flames of war. To revive the ward, staff had to “pull dialysis machines from under the rubble”, Abu Jaafar, a doctor there, told AFP. When Zionist tanks stormed the complex on the night of November 15, at least 2,300 people were in the hospital complex, according to the United Nations. Many of those on the site were Gazans who had sought shelter in what they had hoped would be a safe place.

Gunfire and explosions terrified patients, staff and others seeking refuge from the war, said one AFP correspondent who was among the displaced. On March 19, Zionist forces launched a second assault, again using tanks. For 11 days, soldiers then combed through the premises. When they finally withdrew, the Zionist military said they had killed “200 terrorists”, and that they had found many weapons. Gaza’s civil defense agency, which carries out rescue work across the Palestinian coastal enclave, said at least 300 bodies were found.

The Zionist entity claimed without providing any evidence that hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants were organizing on the hospital grounds when it launched its devastating assault on Al-Shifa, resulting in as many as 1,500 casualties or people disappeared, including medics and patients. To defend its claim, it held press events and aired videos it said proved that troops had found tunnels beneath the site, though specialists have questioned the veracity of the footage.

‘Pursuit of life’

Established in 1946, two years before the founding of the Zionist entity, Al-Shifa evolved from a “rather almost colonial and basic” health facility into Gaza’s largest health care center, said Palestinian-American Yara Asi, an academic at the University of Central Florida who specializes in access to healthcare in war zones. “It wasn’t just a hospital itself, but it was a representation of the Palestinian pursuit of life and willingness to live on the land in many ways,” Asi said.

Al-Shifa became one of Gaza’s best-known institutions, said Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Palestinian-British surgeon who spent the first 43 days of the war treating the wounded. “With each war, this hospital became more important,” said Abu-Sittah, referring to the previous four wars in Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021. “After the fall of Al-Shifa, people felt there was nothing left in the north (of the Gaza Strip) that could help them,” he said.

Beyond Al-Shifa, the Palestinian territory’s health system has largely collapsed, with the World Health Organization estimating that just a handful of clinics remain operational. The wounded, who number in the dozens every day, must seek treatment in field hospitals run by international aid organizations. Al-Shifa “was the nerve center of the health care system, and the raids broke it,” Abu-Sittah said. — Agencies