SAEDNEWS: As Israel intensifies its assault on Gaza City, doctors at the shattered al-Shifa Hospital refuse to abandon patients, transforming ruins into makeshift wards. Their resilience, tested by bombings, famine, and personal tragedy, has turned al-Shifa into both a humanitarian lifeline and a symbol of defiance.
Israeli tanks push deeper into Gaza City. Entire neighborhoods are flattened by artillery and airstrikes. Yet amid the smoke and rubble, one building refuses to die: al-Shifa Hospital.
Once Gaza’s largest and most advanced medical complex, al-Shifa is now little more than a shell. But inside its battered walls, doctors and nurses are performing miracles with almost nothing — refusing to leave, even as bombs fall and famine spreads. For them, leaving patients is not an option.
An Australian volunteer doctor working at al-Shifa described the experience as unlike anything she had ever seen.
“The amount of resilience I saw in these doctors — they’re literally heroes,” she told Al Jazeera.
Doctors, nurses, and even medical students have turned shattered corridors into triage stations. A collapsed clinic wing is now an emergency ward. A bombed-out surgery unit has been repurposed into an intensive care room. Every hallway is packed with the wounded. Every courtyard holds displaced families who have nowhere else to go.
The volunteer admitted that after just two weeks, she and her colleagues were overwhelmed:
“I don’t think any human being can stay alive and tolerate what we’re going through.”
Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the hospital’s director, embodies the impossible balance between duty and devastation.
Arrested in late 2023 by Israeli forces, he spent over seven months in prison on unproven allegations that Hamas used al-Shifa as a “terror base.” He was released without charges but not before enduring torture and humiliation.
This month, tragedy struck again. An Israeli air raid targeted his family home, killing at least five relatives — including his brother, sister-in-law, and their children. Abu Salmiya saw their bodies laid out in the same hospital he now struggles to keep alive.
And yet, he remains at his post.
“Our medical crews are still carrying out their humanitarian mission in this hospital complex under heavy pressure,” he said.
“Their message continues: We serve patients and the injured to the best of our abilities.”
Al-Shifa is not an isolated case. Across Gaza, hospitals have become battlegrounds. Nearly all major medical facilities — from Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis — have faced raids, sieges, or outright destruction.
Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of pediatrics at Nasser Hospital, described a shared nightmare:
“Since the beginning of this war, [Israel] has been attacking and targeting medical teams, even by putting them in jail and targeting their families.”
The World Health Organization has recorded record casualties among healthcare workers. Ambulances have been destroyed. Paramedics shot. The very people tasked with saving lives are now deliberate targets, Gaza’s medical community says.
Inside al-Shifa, survival extends beyond medical crises. Patients and displaced families are starving. Food convoys rarely reach the north. Water is scarce and contaminated. Diseases like cholera and hepatitis spread in crowded shelters.
Doctors face impossible choices: rationing dwindling supplies of antibiotics, deciding who gets the last bag of IV fluid, and who must wait — perhaps fatally.
A nurse described the daily reality:
“You stitch wounds without anesthesia. You watch children die from infections we could have treated anywhere else in the world. And still, we refuse to leave.”
To Palestinians, al-Shifa is more than a hospital. It is a symbol of endurance. Destroyed again and again, it continues to function in fragments, embodying Gaza’s refusal to surrender.
The symbolism is not lost on Israel either. Since October 2023, Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of using al-Shifa as a military base. Yet no conclusive evidence has ever been provided to substantiate these claims, while the destruction of Gaza’s health system has been undeniable.
For many Palestinians, the hospital now stands as proof of collective survival against all odds.
International organizations have condemned attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system. The UN has warned of war crimes. Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of systematically dismantling Gaza’s capacity to treat the sick and wounded.
Yet, despite these condemnations, the siege continues. Western governments continue supplying weapons. International outrage rarely translates into tangible protection.
What makes al-Shifa’s story so powerful is not only the destruction — but the defiance.
Doctors share their food with displaced families. Nurses comfort children separated from parents. Volunteers risk their lives to carry in supplies through bombed streets.
Even in mourning, Abu Salmiya and his staff insist on carrying out their duties. Their persistence reflects a larger Palestinian reality: the insistence on life, even under conditions designed to erase it.
Dr. Ahmed al-Farra summarized the tragedy:
“If you are in Gaza, you are being killed in every possible way.”
But inside al-Shifa, amid the ruins, a different message echoes: patients will not be abandoned. For doctors in Gaza City, medicine has become resistance, and al-Shifa stands as the last line of humanity in a war that seeks to erase it.
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