Another Doctor Is Dead in Gaza

5 months in the past, after I was on a medical mission in northern Gaza, a Palestinian heart specialist named Marwan Sultan confirmed me what was left of the Indonesian Hospital, a hundred-bed facility that had been shelled and raided by Israeli forces. The constructing was riddled with shrapnel scars; its hallways have been darkish and cluttered with particles, and a chilly wind blew via damaged home windows. Sultan, who directed the power, was sporting a protracted white coat, a necktie, and rectangular glasses. He identified the twisted stays of the hospital’s turbines. The working rooms have been being repaired, he mentioned, however had no anesthesia.Sultan was welcoming, however, after greater than fifteen months of Israeli army operations in Gaza, he appeared profoundly worn down. I filmed with my smartphone as he identified a row of dialysis machines whose screens had been smashed in. Upstairs within the I.C.U., he confirmed me quite a few different items of kit that had been destroyed with bullets. He shook his head, speechless, together with his palms turned up. After I described the injury to the Israeli army, or I.D.F., for a narrative revealed in April, a spokesperson mentioned, “Claims that the IDF intentionally targets medical tools are unequivocally false.”A couple of months later, I gave a speak about what I witnessed in Gaza. I didn’t perceive how destroying medical units may advance any army goal. A dialysis machine isn’t a weapon, I mentioned. A person within the viewers raised his hand and requested, “How lengthy can somebody who wants dialysis dwell with out it?” Days to weeks, I informed him. “I feel that’s the way you flip a dialysis machine right into a weapon,” he mentioned.On the afternoon of July 2nd, Sultan was killed by an Israeli missile alongside together with his spouse, a daughter, a sister, a niece, and a son-in-law. On the time, they have been displaced from their residence, staying with different households in a multistory condominium constructing close to the Mediterranean. A surviving daughter, Lubna, has mentioned that the “missile was dropped on his room precisely, on his place, on him exactly.” The remainder of the condominium was intact, she mentioned. In images of the injury, a gaping gap is seen on the website of the strike.After I requested the Israeli army about Sultan’s killing, the I.D.F. mentioned in an announcement, with out offering proof, that it had “focused a senior Hamas terrorist operative.” It refused to say whether or not Sultan was the goal. “The IDF regrets any hurt to uninvolved civilians and takes all possible precautions to reduce hurt to uninvolved civilians,” the assertion mentioned. Sultan’s household has mentioned that he had no affiliation with any political group. “My father was simply a physician, only a human caring for sufferers,” his seventeen-year-old son, Ahmad, informed an NBC Information crew.Sultan, who labored as a professor of medication on the Islamic College of Gaza, was reportedly one in every of solely two coronary heart specialists left in northern Gaza. Colleagues described his killing as catastrophic for the medical neighborhood, notably for medical trainees, who’ve stored the territory’s remaining hospitals working. “It’s a big loss for us,” Muneer al-Boursh, who directs Gaza’s well being ministry, informed me. The ministry is a part of the Hamas-run authorities of Gaza however is staffed by medical professionals. “I nonetheless can’t comprehend that he’s gone,” Boursh mentioned.Throughout my time with Sultan, in February, there have been causes to be hopeful. Gaza was protected by a ceasefire, and help was flowing in; tables piled with recent fruit and greens lined the streets. Hospitals have been in a position to replenish their provides of antibiotics, sterile gauze, analgesics, and surgical tools. I noticed kids enjoying hopscotch and swinging from downed energy traces. I visited a number of warehouses in Gaza Metropolis the place bundles of meals have been being calmly and effectively distributed. “We hope that that is the tip of the conflict so we are able to rebuild our hospital,” Sultan informed me.A month later, Israeli authorities blocked additional help from getting into Gaza. On March 18th, Israel ended the ceasefire and resumed army assaults. In April, one in every of Sultan’s colleagues, a twenty-seven-year-old Egyptian surgeon named Mahmoud Abu Amsha, who was volunteering in Gaza, was killed in an air strike. Sultan texted me to say that he wasn’t sleeping due to nightly blasts. “We miss [a] very courageous colleague,” he wrote. “Medical employees suffered quite a bit.”A couple of weeks after that, the World Well being Group reported that the Indonesian Hospital was “out of service resulting from continued army presence.” A employees member was killed, the W.H.O. mentioned, and nearly the entire facility’s sufferers needed to be evacuated. Mills that had been repaired have been destroyed once more. In its assertion, the I.D.F. accused Hamas of “utilizing hospital infrastructure and employees for terrorist actions.” It mentioned that it “operates out of army necessity and in accordance with worldwide regulation.” Boursh informed me that he begged Sultan, “like a toddler begging their mother and father,” to go away. Sultan refused, Boursh mentioned, as a result of he wished to stick with his sufferers.Boursh alleged that Sultan was assassinated due to his place inside Gaza’s health-care system. He mentioned that Sultan’s wage got here from the Palestinian Authority, within the West Financial institution, and never from Hamas; so did one in every of Sultan’s colleagues on the Indonesian Hospital. The colleague described Sultan as honorable—“a person with out mud on him,” utilizing an Arabic idiom. “They focused him as a result of he’s a human, he’s somebody sort, and everybody in Gaza knew him,” a twentysomething medical scholar, whom I met throughout my journey there, informed me in a voice be aware. The I.D.F. informed me that it “doesn’t goal medical personnel or healthcare employees.”In keeping with Healthcare Employees Watch, a Palestinian non-governmental group that has been cited in medical journals and worldwide media stories, Sultan was the seventieth health-care employee killed within the Gaza Strip prior to now fifty days alone. The group referred to as his killing “a part of a wider sample.” Israeli forces have killed or detained not less than one director from each hospital in northern Gaza, it mentioned. In whole, greater than fifty-seven thousand Palestinians have misplaced their lives in Gaza since October 7, 2023, in line with Gaza’s well being ministry. Boursh mentioned that determine contains greater than fifteen hundred health-care employees: 2 hundred physicians, seventy of whom have been prime specialists of their fields; 100 and eighty pharmacists; 2 hundred and twenty paramedics; and lots of others.This month, as Israel and Hamas held renewed ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, flew to Washington to fulfill with President Donald Trump. Netanyahu stunned Trump with the information that he had formally nominated the President for the Nobel Peace Prize—an honor that Trump has wished for years. No matter whether or not Trump deserves the prize, he’s in a commanding place, so far as peace goes. The U.S. is Israel’s strongest ally and the provider of most of its weapons. He has the facility to cease the destruction in Gaza.When Sultan led me via his wrecked hospital, the sounds of hammers echoed via the halls. Employees have been hurrying to make repairs. Sultan was excited to inform me that, the day earlier than my arrival, the E.R. had absolutely reopened. Nonetheless, he was reeling from all that had been misplaced. He listed identify after identify of fellow medical employees who had died. “You miss your colleagues,” he informed me. “Some are killed; some have been arrested. And for what? For doing their jobs.” ♦