As the Israeli regime targeted and destroyed Gaza’s health care system over the last 18 months of genocide, Palestine Square interviewed U.S.-based doctors and nurses who joined medical missions to Gaza. This effort to collect their testimonies supplements the Institute for Palestine Studies’ existing project to document the destruction of the health sector in Gaza via a database launched in June of last year.
Since the genocide began in October of 2023, more than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza, and many more have gone unaccounted for, missing, kidnapped, or buried under the rubble. Many Palestinians who were brought to emergency rooms or sought treatment in Gaza’s deteriorating health facilities died from treatable injuries or conditions due to the lack of resources, understaffed facilities, and repeated targeting of hospitals and their surroundings. Doctors on the ground have been forced to make difficult decisions, determining who they can save under the duress of nonstop bombings with a depletion of medical supplies. The interviews published in this series offer the perspective of health care workers on medical missions organized by U.S.-based non-profits aiming to support staff and patients in Gaza’s decimated health care sector. These missions were organized in coordination with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT, a branch of the Israeli military) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The targeting of Gaza’s health care infrastructure extended to the suffocation of humanitarian aid into Gaza, as Israel progressively heightened restrictions on missions, isolating passage into Gaza through Israeli borders, restricting the entry of medical supplies and personnel, refusing individuals of Palestinian origin, and eventually banning six medical organizations from Gaza.
This series is co-organized by Marah Abdel Jaber, who facilitated communication with most of the interviewed health workers, and co-edited by Laura Albast. Both women have provided trauma-informed interviewing and writing training to some of the writers featured, who took on the task of collecting the testimonies. The resulting publications focused on U.S.-based health workers due to most of the writers’ presence in the U.S., providing proximity and access to contact the individuals interviewed and the medical organizations with which they went on mission. The documentation effort is intended to be ongoing and is not limited to medical missions departing from North America. If you are a writer or health worker interested in publishing an interview, please see the general submission guidelines and contact the blog here. Future publications of interviews may not be reviewed by the editors of the special dossier, which is limited to the list below.
The interviews with nine health workers below (two included articles are forthcoming in this dossier) reveal various patterns witnessed, such as the targeting of children, direct attacks on limbs, and the complete desolation of Gaza’s health care infrastructure. Health care workers have testified to the devastating aftermath of the invasion of Rafah, Israel denying entry to medical workers of Palestinian origin, worsening health conditions during the ceasefire, growing displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, the besiegement of hospitals, the dwindling resources necessary for treating patients, the lack of equipment, an understaffed and exhausted cadre of Gazan doctors, nurses, and medical students, and more.
