“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could – remember us.”
These were the words Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila wrote on October 20, 2023, at al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp. He scribbled them in blue ink on a whiteboard used for surgery schedules. They were a testament to resilience, a final message of defiance.
A month later, Nujaila redefined the moral dimensions of the medical oath not with words, but with his own blood. An Israeli air strike on the hospital killed him and two of his colleagues, Dr Ahmad Al Sahar and Dr Ziad Al-Tatari.
Nujaila’s words stayed with me for 15 months, as I watched in horror how the medical system in Gaza I had hoped to work in was bombed to rubble, the doctors I had hoped to learn from – killed, tortured, forcibly disappeared.
Every aspect of life was stained by death. Every warm memory was invaded by horror. Every certainty was replaced by an abyss of the unknown.
Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where I had volunteered in the emergency department just a month before the genocide started, was raided, ransacked and burned. It was Gaza’s biggest hospital, which provided critical care that could not be received elsewhere and which had assembled a staff of highly skilled doctors.
It was not only a place of healing but also a shelter for the displaced. Ultimately, it was turned into a graveyard.
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, where I had joined a university project on breast cancer awareness, was bombed, then besieged and shut down, its patients left to die slowly, helplessly. The fate of the only cancer hospital in Gaza was sealed by its location – lying within the “axis of death” – what the Israeli military calls the Netzarim Corridor, which it had established and occupied to divide Gaza into north and south.
Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, where my grandmother had a critical surgery performed by Dr Mohammed Al-Ron, a dedicated and skilled surgeon, was attacked and shelled. Then it was besieged, cut off from the world – its medical staff, patients and displaced civilians trapped inside without food or water. Eventually, everyone was forcibly expelled, and the hospital was rendered out of service.
I later learned that Al-Ron was forcibly disappeared from another hospital in northern Gaza and tortured in Israeli dungeons. When he emerged two months later, he had lost 30kg (65lb). He was still one of the fortunate ones.
Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, a leading surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, was tortured to death.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, remains in Israeli captivity, where he has been tortured and abused.
More than 1,000 medical workers have been killed in Gaza. More than 300 have been forcibly disappeared.
It is blatantly apparent that healthcare workers are targets in Gaza. Practising medicine has become a deadly profession.
Yet I do not feel scared or discouraged. The doctors who have stood up for their patients and risked their lives during the genocide have become an inspiration: Abu Safia, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya and so many others.
My own sister Dr Mariam Salama Abu Helow has been a bright example for me. She works as a paediatrician at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the only remaining functional hospital in the south, overwhelmed and stretched beyond its limits. She fights alongside her colleagues, bearing witness to the horror – children wounded, orphaned, burned, malnourished, frozen to death.
Despite witnessing the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and the mass murder of Palestinian health workers, my determination to become a doctor has only grown stronger in the past 15 months. Gaza needs its sons and daughters more than ever. So, it’s my moral, patriotic and human obligation to study hard and become the best doctor I can be.
In January 2024, I had the opportunity to leave Gaza, but I refused. How could I abandon my home when it needed me most?
Displaced from Nuseirat refugee camp, I carried my medical books in my backpack and clung to the dim hope that e-learning provided after all six of Gaza’s universities were badly damaged or destroyed.
I was going through research papers minutes before my second evacuation order arrived. I didn’t know where I would go. I didn’t know if there would be an internet connection. I didn’t even know if I would survive. But in that moment, I couldn’t leave my work unfinished.
I begged my father to wait. Just let me finish this one task.
I endangered my life. I endangered my family. And yet, I stayed two hours longer – under bombardment, going through research papers.
I am one of hundreds of medical students in Gaza who, despite everything, want to stay. We are all in various stages of training, eager to start our professional careers amid the shattered remains of Gaza’s hospitals, guided by the survivors of this onslaught.
There are medical students and workers desperately waiting to return home and serve. One of them is my sister Dr Intimaa Salama Abo Helow, who earned a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery in Gaza and then pursued her master’s and doctorate in public health and social justice abroad.
In December, against all odds, 80 medical students at Al-Azhar University graduated and became doctors ready to save lives.
I myself am scheduled to graduate in 2028. I am determined to become a neurosurgeon. For Gaza. For my grandmother, martyred last year. For my parents, who sacrificed everything to help me pursue this dream. For every stolen future. For every destroyed hospital. For every doctor lost.
I made it through, Dr Abu Nujaila. And I will carry your story and those of other brave Palestinian doctors with me.
We will not be defeated.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.