I spoke to a paediatric surgeon yesterday. He worked in hospitals in Gaza before the war. Want to understand why damage to hospitals has happened in this war? Read on… “I was there with two other surgeons. Our remit was to go and make things slightly better. Children are always the ones who are worst-affected in war zones. They’re low to the ground, they pick stuff up, they put things in the mouths, they have immature immune systems, so are prone to infections. The idea was to go in, do some training with their doctors, do some operations. There were two subsets of people in the hospital. There were no ambulances, so the first set were patients brought in by families - once even by horse and cart. The second set were people you couldn’t talk to. They were just referred to as “them”. The people in charge of the hospital were scared and anxious when they were around. There were people with guns guarding parts of the hospital, bits you couldn’t go into. They controlled what equipment and medicine you could and couldn’t use, depending on who the patient was. There was clearly enough medicine for everyone, but not everyone was allowed it. They curtailed people genuinely trying to give care. For younger patients, there were no restrictions. For adults who were not Hamas, there was a rationing on who would get what resources. There was a brutalism in terms of who would get antibiotics and who would not. Everyone was accepting… that’s just how it was. A thing you don’t talk about.” For clarity: that’s Hamas sealing off areas of hospitals with guns. Hamas denying medicine to patients. Hamas misuse hospitals. That’s why IDF operations have had to take place in and around them.
See Tweet