https://newint.org/health/2024/i-now-understand-how-genocides-happen
9 May 2024

Surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah talks to Bethany Rielly about healthcare as resistance and his experiences in Gaza’s besieged hospitals.

‘WCNSF = Wounded Child No Surviving Family. It’s a thing in Gaza.’ Ghassan Abu-Sittah’s social media post on 15 October made my blood run cold. It’s difficult to imagine the kind of destruction required to necessitate such a chilling acronym to become common.

A London-based plastic surgeon, specializing in conflict wounds, Abu-Sittah arrived in Gaza on 9 October, where he spent the next 43 days working around the clock in the Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals, treating a never-ending flow of patients through blackouts and relentless airstrikes. When the surgeon wasn’t treating patients, he was giving interviews to international media, and taking to X (formerly known as Twitter) to tell the world what was going on.

Born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family, the 54-year-old has worked as a war surgeon in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon as well as Gaza during previous Israeli assaults. Since his return to the UK, the surgeon has filled his days advocating for justice for his patients and for a ceasefire. We spoke after he delivered a talk to an audience in London. Abu-Sittah has testified to the International Criminal Courts about the injuries and weapons he saw in Gaza. For someone who’s recently left a war-zone, Abu-Sittah is surprisingly calm and collected. He speaks softly with a Scottish lilt, a remnant from his medical school days at Glasgow University.

Why did you want to be a surgeon and what motivated you to volunteer in conflict zones?

I think it’s both that my father was a paediatrician and also being Palestinian. Health liberation has always been a critical part of the Palestine liberation movement. I went into medical school from a very political Palestinian tradition and that’s why I became active as a volunteer during the first intifada and then in Iraq.

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So becoming a doctor was an act of resistance?

Absolutely. And an expression of political identity, both ideological and national.

You arrived in Gaza on 9 October to volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. What were the first weeks like and when did you realize it was not going to be like the previous assaults?

On the day I arrived, I went to the family home, my uncle’s home, and within half an hour we had to evacuate because the area was being bombarded. That night there were 350 air raids. Whole neighbourhoods had been flattened and this was just one night’s work. And it was then that I realized that this was going to be quite different. I thought it was going to be a more bloody version of the 2014 war, I didn’t realize it was going to be a genocidal project.

When I got to Al-Shifa hospital on the Tuesday, it was already close to overflowing. Within a couple of days every hospital in Gaza was 100 per cent full to capacity. Very quickly we ran out of antiseptic; we had to improvize with vinegar and washing-up liquid solution. By week two we ran out of morphine and were giving paracetamol for pain relief after surgery. Every day it felt like quicksand. Every day you had more to do with less and you were just sinking and sinking.

‘Every day it felt like quicksand. Every day you had more to do with less and you were just sinking and sinking.’
Ghassan Abu-Sittah

A London-based plastic surgeon, specializing in conflict wounds, Abu-Sittah spent 43 days working in the Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza. PHOTO: EMMA HARDY

You were inside Al-Ahli Baptist hospital when it was hit by an airstrike on 17 October, killing more than 400 people. Among the dead were people who’d been taking refuge at the hospital. Can you tell me what happened?

There was this shrieking noise of the missile and then a huge explosion that shook the whole building. Then the ceiling fell on top of us. Through all the dust and everybody screaming, I was just trying to make sure my colleagues were okay. Then I went out of the operating-room suite and looked at the forecourt where all of those families had been seeking shelter. There were just hundreds of bodies on the ground, bits of people, arms and heads. We had to immediately start working, start resuscitating. I had one guy who had an amputation in his thigh, I had to take his belt and use it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. I still believe that was a new kind of hellfire missile that fragments into shrapnel, because of the number of amputations and the shallowness of the crater where the missile landed.

The Israeli military blamed the strike on a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket – a claim then accepted by news outlets and world leaders as well as groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW). What was your reaction to the international response?

It was horrendous. It was so unbelievable because you knew that even HRW had not bothered to speak to any of the victims, any of the medical staff. The media just accepted the Israeli narrative about a misfire of a Palestinian missile. They managed to throw enough doubt long enough to completely suck the anger out of that story and that’s it.

There are now no fully functioning hospitals in Gaza. Do you think the lack of scrutiny of Israel’s claims in the Al-Ahli case opened the door to further attacks on healthcare facilities?

It was a litmus test. The Israelis were testing out this project. Every single hospital with the exception of the European hospital has been attacked by the Israeli army and this started with the attack on the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital.

'I thought my wife has enough to worry about with me being out there, the last thing she wants is the police to show up at the door. It was an attempt to silence me.'

While treating the wounded in Gaza, you were also trying to get information out about what was going on. Did you feel a sense of responsibility to speak out?

I had a responsibility to my patients; to highlight the carnage to try and slow it down. With regard to the narrative of Western media, it was bizarre the way that the Israeli discourse about the militarization of the health system, as a way to justify these attacks, was going unchallenged. It was up to the victims to try to disprove it rather than the Israelis to try and prove it.

You left Gaza after 43 days. Why did you leave?

I realized staying would not add anything of any value because the hospitals were no longer functional. It was that that made me leave.

You’ve worked as a war surgeon in many conflict zones. How did your time in Gaza compare?

It’s the difference between a flood and a tsunami. I’d never seen anything on that scale. I’d never seen hospitals being a critical component of the military strategy in that way. I’d never been in a hospital that has been shelled, and had to treat patients around me that seconds ago had been walking around and now they’ve got amputations and they’re bleeding and they’re dying.

When you were in Gaza, counter-terrorism police visited your family home in London. You spoke on BBC Newsnight at the time accusing the Metropolitan Police of harassment. Have you had an apology since then?

There hasn’t been an apology. What they didn’t expect was me coming out on Newsnight. I did it because I was so outraged, I thought my wife has enough to worry about with me being out there, the last thing she wants is the police to show up at the door. It was an attempt to silence me.

You returned to London in November. What’s it been like to watch what’s going on in Gaza from the UK?

It breaks your heart because your friends are there, your patients are there. We started seeing the beginning of the hunger in the north, now it’s a full-blown famine. The destruction of the hospitals in the north is now happening in the south. You feel that nothing you said or did was able to slow down this genocidal project.

Recently we saw the UK Parliament descend into chaos over a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. What do you think when you see politicians block these demands?

I now understand how the genocides of the 20th century happened, how moral cowardice, moral complicity allows genocide to happen in societies where you would not otherwise expect it to happen.