Tag: Al Wafa hospital

Interview with Dr. Basman Alashi in Gaza

11th April 2015 |Valeria Cortes, International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Occupied Palestine

“You corner me, you kill me, and on top of that you ask me not to defend myself. Human beings in this world have the right to defend themselves. We, as Palestinians, have the right to defend our land and our families by all means available”, said the Dr. Basman Alashi.

The night of the 17th of July 2014 the Israeli occupation forces bombed the Al Wafaa Hospital, in Shijaia, Gaza Strip. The hospital´s speciality was the rehabilitation of paralyzed patients.

This is the moving testimony of Dr. Basman Alashi, its director:

Picture of Dr. Basman — Dr. Basman Alashi

How is it possible to reach the point of bombing a hospital full of patients and medical staff?

“The UN told me that, according to a report from the Israeli occupation forces, the bombing of the hospital was due to the fact that there were weapons within its facilities … I can assure you that this report is completely false; the hospital opened its doors to the international press and to all the foreigners who freely inspected our facilities without finding any weapons at all. Despite all the overwhelming evidence, our hospital was bombed in the middle of the night, with its patients, medical staff, and some international witnesses, still inside the buildings.”

What were the consequences of the bombing by the Zionist occupation forces?

“Whilst under Israeli fire, we evacuated the remaining 17 paralyzed patients that still were inside the hospital. We couldn’t take any medication or equipment; we evacuated them just with sheets. That’s why during a cease-fire we asked the Red Cross to take us to rescue some medicines that were vital for our patients. However the Red Cross refused and we had to go by ourselves. We were only able to stay 45 minutes at the ruins of what was the Al Wafaa Hospital. The bombings continued, and we could only recover a very small amount of medicine, as bombs had destroyed most of it.

Four members of our staff were injured during the bombing. Luckily these weapons of war injured none of the patients. However they did suffer a lot during the emergency evacuation. Four of the paralyzed patients needed oxygen and many of them breathe through tubes, that’s why it was so dangerous to move them from one hospital to another; under conditions of intense aggression, under the attack of lethal weapons used against a defenceless civil population.

We could have lost some of them. It was very hard because we had to evacuate them in regular vehicles, three or four in every vehicle. Luckily we were able to move them all without any loss, due to the heroic efforts of our nurses and hospital staff. Without them all would be dead.

The patients suffered a lot during the Israeli attack on the hospital, some of them still hear the explosions of the bombs and are afraid of the start of another bombing. One of our patients, just 19 years old, refuses to enter to another hospital “the Al Wafa Hospital was bombed, my house was bombed, this hospital will also be bombed” he explained to me, terrified.

We are here to survive, to improve the lives of our children, of our patients. I can’t stand to see a small girl of barely 6 years old, to whom I can’t give the medicines she needs to survive and who can not leave Gaza to receive them. The only thing we want is for them to live with the same freedom as kids from any other place in the world.”

The Israeli occupation forces said that they bombed the hospital because there were weapons inside, this statement was firmly denied by many witnesses. In your opinion, what was the real reason for the attack that left a hospital as big and important as Al Wafaa reduced to rubble?

“The hospital was less than a kilometre from the fence that separates Gaza from the occupied territories. Our facilities had three big buildings, so it was just a military decision, given that those constructions blocked their way for a deeper land incursion. There wasn’t activity from the resistance inside or near the hospital installations.

I challenged the Israeli occupation forces to provide any proof of their reasons to bomb the hospital. They showed me a classified picture where, according to them, there was a rocket launcher from the resistance very near the hospital. However, the picture wasn’t from the hospital, it was from a place located almost five kilometres away. That proves that all the reasons provided by Israel were false. They just fabricated this story to justify the planned destruction of a hospital.

The Israeli occupation forces demanded we evacuate the hospital under fire and, as the facilities were under their control, it was Israel’s duty to protect the buildings. It was their obligation to preserve a hospital with 30 years history and an investment of more than 15 million dollars in equipment. Despite all this, far from protecting it’s medical facilities, they bombed them and destroyed it to the ground.”

The occupation forces point out that the attacks aren’t against the Palestinian people but against Hamas and the resistance. Do you have anything to say against the government of Gaza or the resistance?

“Against the resistance?” – asks the doctor with surprise – “We are the victims!” he clarifies. “In Gaza we have already had 8 years of suffering a terrible blockade by Israel. Our resistance is very basic. Israel has the lead, they have F16 planes, they have the tanks, war ships… they surround us! They deny us the right to defend our children, our women, our land, our homes, our own lives. It’s ridiculous. You corner me, you kill me, and you still ask me not to defend myself. Human beings in this world have the right to defend themselves. We, as Palestinians, have the right to defend our land and our families by all means available. The resistance is a way of defending our lives, it is our right.

Israel has the most powerful and destructive weapons; Israel is the one that the world should control.

Israel has committed genocide in Gaza while the world was looking. It assassinated children playing on the beach. Israel has killed children and women while they were sleeping in their homes and has bombed residential buildings without reason. Thousands of families have been left destroyed or without a home and all this took place before the eyes of the world. That’s why I blame Israel but also the international community.”

What is the situation now regarding the reconstruction of the hospital?

“There are many organizations and countries who want to help us. However, due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade, they find themselves unable to provide the materials necessary for the reconstruction, or to send to the Gaza Strip the funds necessary for funding this reconstruction. That’s why we started to raise funds through local activities. Even so the amount collected doesn’t cover the 0,01% of the amount needed for the reconstruction of the hospital.

A lot of people all around the world have said to me that they are sorry about what happened to the hospital, and that’s good but we need much more than that to be able to attend our patients and move forward. The blockade is affecting our patients terribly, and it’s impossible for us to provide the medical treatment that they urgently need. They don’t need charity, blankets, or clothes… they need to have the stability to be self-sufficient.

The blockade seriously affects the hospital, as we find ourselves unable to go back to a full medical service like we had before and we are unable to support the rehabilitation and healthy recovery of our patients. Of the 11.000 injured from the last Israeli aggression against Gaza, more than the 50% need rehabilitation. If in one or two years the hospital is not working as it was in the past, there will be an important segment of this population that will be left unable to manage by itself and to contribute to our society, affecting it at all the levels.

What we need from the world more than anything else is an end to the blockade, to allow the entrance of materials for the reconstructions; to allow us to rebuild the homes of our families that were destroyed by Israel. This way there will be peace. But if the blockade continues, peace will be further away every day. We are human; we want a normal life as in every other place in the world. For our kids to be able to grow in a normal house, not in a shelter or a tent, suffering from the cold, without a single blanket to cover them”.

How do you see the current situation and the future of Gaza?

“The people of Gaza are resilient. They live in the most difficult conditions but still smile. The kids keep playing and adapt themselves to all the conditions, but the rest of the world must know that this situation is not normal and for this to end the only solution is to lift the blockade. The blockade must end. It’s not enough to give the people a tent, or some food or a blanket. People need a house, a job, and the possibility of giving their children a good education and to travel abroad if they wish to.

To have the possibility of going to a hospital abroad if their condition requires it. Give us the freedom that the rest of the world enjoys, because we are not different from any other population on the planet. We just want to live in peace if we are given the opportunity and doing it in freedom. But, if that right is denied to us, we will fight until we conquer it… Inshallah!”.

At Al Wafa – Saja and Ceasefiring

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

Yesterday E and I went back to see Amer at his Zaytoun house. He told us his brother Abdullah is back home from the Egyptian hospital, and showed us his hospital records; his wounds (two shots to abdomen, one to arm), are healing ok. He was worried about Saja, his 6 year old, though, it seemed he thought the gunshot wound to her arm wasn’t healing properly, and he wasn’t sure if he could get an overworked doctor’s attention under current circumstances. E already had some links with doctors at Al Wafa hospital in Shayjaiee, where the Al Helou family are staying with Shireen’s sister’s family, so she called Dr Tariq and asked if he would see Saja the next day.

Amer has a lot of friends dropping by when he is at his Zaytoun house, they don’t want him to be alone. One of the young men here lost his brother, as Amer lost Mohammed. Amer told us Mohammed’s wife is 4 months pregnant.

One of the friend made us a wonderful makluba dish for lunch, with virtually no facilities. E told us how she thought this was solely the name of this chicken and rice dish, and couldn’t understand what it meant when someone said his room was all maklubah. It actually just means “upside down.” Luckily while we ate, the wind was blowing the right way. When it’s blowing the wrong way, everyone still trying to live in a semi-rural area like this has to deal with the aroma of rotting chickens, cows, and sheep, killed or starved during the attacks.

Today E and I met Amer and Saja in the Shayjaiee market to go to Al Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital. Saja is a finely boned child with a solemn face, who kept close to her dad, even sitting as far forward on the taxi back seat as she could in order to be near him in the front seat. When you remember she saw her grandad and baby sister killed, it’s not surprising. She was sucking a lollipop and wasn’t willing to open her mouth to say a word for some time. When we got back to her home later and she was with her relatives and her little brother Mohammed (her other brother Foad was at kindergarten) she relaxed and drew some pictures for us.

Dr Tariq is a kind man, but Saja (as you can see in the above photo) was suspicious, and she had reason, as the examination unavoidably had her crying in a lot of pain. The wound has healed on the outside, but there do seem to be some internal problems, and a further operation might be required.

I learnt in my early visits to Palestine not to admire anything that Palestinians have that they could physically give to you, because they will. I try to limit my compliments to things that are bolted down, and children. But I slipped up today… when Shireen arrived, E and I both commented on how much we like her clothes, and that we’d like her to show us where she finds them. She immediately went into the back of the house and came back with two of her shirts, one for us each, for which she would accept no refusal.

By the end of the visit, we’d also collected a commemorative Palestine sash from one of her friendly family members, and some High Energy Biscuits from the World Food Programme, which were apparently a Gift of Norway before they were a gift of Shireen. I felt that I wasn’t really keeping up my end of things with the halva I’d brought them, but it made Shireen smile, because Amer had yesterday joked that my bag had a supermarket in it, after I’d pulled out cashew nuts followed by maramaya (sage) for the tea, yesterday. (These things are, by the way, funded by you, my kind donators.)

We asked Amer about work, he said before the attacks he delivered bread in his van, but now he couldn’t do this job

Shelled Al Helou house and shelled delivery van

anymore. You’ll see why in this picture of house and van.

E and I said that we would let folks who read our blogs know they can make donations to go towards medical treatment Saja might need, if they would like. She’ll be assessed on Thursday and then we’ll let you know, and we’ll try to sort out Paypal if we can. I *think* we can convince Amer and Shireen to accept this, after several battles over several days I managed to pay for our taxi today by saying “it’s not my money, but donations from people outside that I’m paying with”. (It’s actually a bit of both. I hope Amer doesn’t read that. He has a sneaky way of shaking hands with the driver and simultaneously passing shekels over when we’re not looking.)

While we were at Al Wafa, there was gunfire about every 5 minutes. Apparently the army constantly firing over the border is normal there. This is another hospital that was attacked – as you see. There were normally three patients in this room, but luckily they had evacuated this side of the building and moved everyone to the other side when the rocket went in one wall, through the room, and out the other. I believe there were other hits too.

While we were there, E took me to meet Abd, whose case she took up when she was in Egypt. He’s 18 now, and he was shot by a sniper in the March 2008 invasion. He had gone up on the house roof to find out why there was no water from their tank (that was also because of sniper shot it turned out.) He was shot in the spine, and it was a little while before his family realised he was missing. He was sent out to Egypt for treatment, and was in a pretty bad way when E met him, emaciated, with bed sores, cut off from his family, and having been shifted round 5 Egyptian hospitals.

The advice E was given was to try to arrange his removal back to Gaza, which surprised her because of the siege conditions, but then she learnt about the good quality long term care available at Al Wafa.

She was a key part of getting Abd home, and he is now greatly improved physically and has had some visits home. However the 3 solicitous doctors clustered round his bed were telling us that he is very dispirited.

It seems to have hit him he will never walk, and he is grieving for the life he won’t have. Al Wafa staff are doing their best to show him the life he can have. How many more young people there are like him after these last weeks, with so much lost. We wondered if we could ask E’s friend AK to visit Abd. AK lost both his legs, but he is a very strong, positive, and witty man.

23 hours in Jabaliya

By Sharon in Gaza
talestotell.wordpress.com

January 4, 6pm – January 5, 5pm

6pm: To Al Awda hospital, run by the Union of Health Work Committees. It normally has a 50 bed capacity but has been stretched to 75. E and Mo interview Ala’a, the medic from Jabalia RC who was injured when Arafa was killed yesterday.

The story goes as follows:

It was about 8.30 am Saturday morning in Jabalia. Five teenagers found themselves under shell attack and tried to get away. Three escaped. One, Tha’er, 19, had his foot blown off. His friend Ali, also 19, tried to pick him up and carry him to safety, but was shot in the head and killed. It took 75- 90 minutes before a Jabalia Red Crescent ambulance could reach them. Medic Arafa, 35, and Ala’a, 22, carried Tha’er to the ambulance, and then went back for Ali’s body. As they closed the van door, they were shelled.

Ala’a says “I felt nothing – just that I was flying in the air and then falling.” Other ambulances evacuated all. Arafa, who was married with 5 children, had a severe chest wound with most of one lung gone and only survived 2 hours. Ali’s head was blown off. Ala’a is now in hospital with severe shrapnel wounds all over, especially chest and legs. Tha’er survived but also now has several lacerations to back and body from shrapel.

Arafa was a teacher for the UN, gave medic training, and volunteered as a medic after being one professionally earlier.

7pm: We arrange to sleep in shifts at Al-Awda hospital. V and I crash. E, A and M hitch a ride with the first RC ambulance that turns up, out to Karmel Adwan hospital, the Red Crescent’s second new base since evacuating their centre. The base is a few blankets in a corridor, but there is tea sometimes.

11pm: E comes back to sleep, V and I ride with O’s ambulance to Karmel Adwan. O has a scarf wrapped round his knee, he was shot there some years ago and has pain in cold weather. I talking A and Mo into going to back to rest, but fail to convince EJ. The night turns out to be quiet. Unfortunately, I soon understand this is because a) a lot of Jabalia people have run away, and b) Israel is not letting the ambulances collected most of the wounded that do call for help.

2pm: we collect a woman in labour. Back at the hospital, I chat to Om, who is a nurse but volunteers at the Al-Assyria Centre that the Union of Health Work Committees runs. Also to M, in a hospital bed. He is 23, six months married, and made the mistake of standing next to the Jabalia mosque that was bombed two days ago. He is now recovering from abdominal surgery.

Everyone has naps in the ambulances. EJ and I are being called hourly by the BBC to contribute to news bulletins, “live from Gaza”.

5am: we hear that there has been a threat to bomb Al Wafa hospital which I understand is a centre for the disabled.

7.15am: we collect a man seriously injured by rocket explosion from a house in Sikha St, Jabalia; I doubt he has more than minutes to live, but he is still alive when we reach the hospital.

9am: An injured woman is having a panic attack. We collect a woman whose home has just been shelled, she is having a panic attack and I am not clear on her injuries. Back at the hospital people are loudly grieving for two recent dead. These may be the nearly dead man my ambulance collected and another I saw arrive, both horribly mangled by rockets and the now-familiar grey colour.

9.30: We hear that Beit Hanoun is almost completely occupied by the Israeli army, as is the nearby small town Zahra which commands the north/south road. The north (us) and the south (F, G, and OJ in Rafah) may now be cut off from each other. We check in by phone, making contingency plans.

10am: Mo’s sister calls to tell him his village of Khosa is being shelled; the farmland in the centre which is surrounded by housing. “There’s nothing there, just people’s homes.” he tells us. He says there are now Israeli tanks in the Attatta and Shaimah areas of Beit Lahia. This is 1km inside the border, and 2km away from us at Jabalia. He says tank invasions used to take main roads, but he expects this time they will do what they did in February; bring in bulldozers and go directly through the houses.

He tells us that today Palestinian phones are receiving recorded messages from the army, saying “To the innocent civilians: our war is not with you, but with Hamas. If they don’t stop launching rockets, you are all going to be in danger.”

11.50: Call to near Gaza beach, turns out to be a mistake. Instead we pick up a family with two little children who are evacuating, sat on the side of the road, worn out from carrying bags. We passed Beit Lahia UNRWA school earlier, it is filling up with refugee families. Like Naher El Bared all over again.

N draws my attention to one more extremely crowded bread queue, and then we discover a young teenage boy in the queue has collapsed from exhaustion; the medics treat him to the extent they can.

4pm: F calls to say they’ve heard Al Awda hospital has been shelled. I ring EJ. She says a structure immediately beside it received two shells; one person was injured, the man who lent her his jacket last night. He has shrapnel to the head and she says he isn’t looking too good. A apparently caught the shelling on his camera. We wonder if we should head back there to be again with Jabalia RC instead of Gaza city RC. But Gaza city lost 3 of their medics yesterday.

Latest:
There have been two separate reports about Israeli attacks on funeral tents. We are trying to confirm deaths and injuries for one. The second of the funerals attacked was medic Arafa’s yesterday afternoon; 5 people were injured.

We have also had reports that in the Zaytoun area two days ago, Israeli soliders rounded up a group of people into two houses; women and children into one, men into the other, where they were kept for two days. Then this morning at 11am Israeli forces shelled the houses. We have heard the number of deaths as between 7 and 20. One was a seven year old boy whose father was interviewed on TV while holding his body. We are trying to find out further details. It is getting very hard to keep up with this insanity.

We asked the Jabalia Red Crescent admin person how much of the emergency calls Israel is not letting them go to. These are in areas where co-ordination must be made with the invading forces via the Red Cross to enter. He said they are not being allowed to attend to about 80% of the calls from the north, covering the Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia area.

Shall I repeat that?
80%.
Eight of ten people calling for help are being prevented from receiving it.