Raúl Incertis: "In Gaza, we treated children with gunshot wounds to the head."

BarcelonaValencian doctor Raúl Incertis has worked for four months in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders and the Canadian NGO Glia, which collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO). The anesthesiologist and emergency room specialist is a firsthand witness to the hell the people of Gaza are living in.

What did you see during your last stay at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip?

— Hell on earth. Israel has dropped 100,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, the equivalent of five atomic bombs. Everything destroyed. Population displaced. Children mutilated. Parents devastated. People starving. A horror.

What kind of wounds did you treat?

— Since the end of May until now we have seen the massacres at the food distribution points of the misnamed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation [promoted by the United States and Israel] and also at UN food distribution points. SIsraeli soldiers fire rifles into the crowd without warning, but also with grenades, drones, and artillery. We received multiple victims daily. Constantly shot in the head, chest, and abdomen. It's not a pattern of stray bullets at all. This very clearly shows the Israeli army's intentionality. Civilians, often children and women. Children shot in the head. Mostly under 18 or 20 years old and women. This is what you see most. Yes, well, in the case of shootings, I couldn't say the number, but it's also a significant percentage of women and children.

How were your fellow Palestinian health workers?

— Dr. Alaa was working at the hospital when we received her youngest son, Adam, in the emergency room. I think he was 10 or 11 years old, the only one of ten siblings to survive. We received the boy in a coma, with shrapnel in his body and a burned arm, and his father was also in very serious condition, with shrapnel in his brain, chest, and abdomen. It was a double bombing of their home. The bodies were unrecognizable, charred, amputated, or decapitated. The boy survived, in the Doctors Without Borders burn unit. But Dr. Alaa was devastated.

And it is not a unique case.

— Another doctor also lost his wife and children. My friend Ahmed, a nurse, died with his three young children when their tent was bombed in the humanitarian zone where they had told people to go to avoid being bombed. The woman was pregnant and a nurse herself. A medical student was killed in a double attack, a nurse killed by a sniper or a drone. There is no distinction between being healthcare workers; they are victims all the same.

We have also seen healthcare workers arrested and imprisoned.

— Yes, there are nearly 300 medical workers kidnapped in hospitals. At the Nasser Hospital last February, some were killed and more than 70 kidnapped. About 40 are still behind bars. I worked side by side with colleagues who were released after one, two, or four months, and they all said the same thing: torture, mistreatment, beatings, sleep deprivation, humiliation... They wanted information about hostages who had at some point been treated at the hospital. But obviously, they knew nothing. In reality, it's also a way of destroying the healthcare infrastructure and the morale of the workers.

Israel repeatedly claims Hamas hides weapons or command centers inside hospitals. Have you seen anything to corroborate this?

— No. And even if it were so, Israel cannot bomb a hospitalI didn't see any weapons, combatants, or attacks from within. In neither case did the conditions for attacking hospitals fit. I was at Nasser Hospital in the south and Indonesian Hospital in the north, and I didn't see anything like that in either.

The Israeli army orders people to move to the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone in the south. Is it really a safe zone?

— Every day we received families who had been bombed there, in their tents. Especially at night. That's how my friend Ahmed died. Most of the dead are there now.

What resources are medical personnel using in Gaza in this context of bombing, blockade, and humanitarian crisis?

— They have only 30-40% of essential medications. They lack morphine and fentanyl. They have to reuse syringes, without enough gauze or compresses. They use intravenous ibuprofen for postoperative pain. Many babies have died because there is no formula. There is a lack of combination antibiotics, which increases mortality from infections. Furthermore, they have been working 60-70 hours a week for two years straight, many without pay. They are burned out, depressed, and exhausted.

They can't even alleviate the pain.

— If there's no painkillers for amputations, you can only be there for someone. But this doesn't comfort anyone.

A reflection to conclude.

— We just need people to understand that they're people like us. The only "sin" the Palestinians have committed is being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, being Muslim, and having dark skin. They had houses, cars, studies, music, and soccer, just like us. But they live under the wrath of Israel and the United States.