Horrors of war and leaving loved ones: Palestinian doctor shares ordeal after Gaza evacuation

By Dilara Hamit

ANKARA (AA) – It was the last week of September when Moamen Shabet returned home to Gaza, eager to see his family and friends.

They had a few days filled with love and laughter before everything suddenly changed.

Joy gave way to horror as bombs began raining down on the besieged Palestinian territory, with Israel launching an all-out assault in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Shabet, a physical therapy and rehabilitation physician, knew what he had to do.

He reported for duty at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, and so began an ordeal that the Palestinian-Turkish doctor says he will never forget.

“We were helpless. The number of patients was so high that we cannot treat all of them. We were choosing patients based on the extent of their injuries,” he said.

“It wasn’t like we were caring for 100 or 200 people. Suddenly, there could be 1,000 people coming in.”

There were “patients in (hospital) corridors, in tents on the streets, in schools,” said Shabet, who was in the thick of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza for over two months before being evacuated to Türkiye.

Shabet has Turkish citizenship because he studied and worked in the country for several years.

“Even before the war, medical services were limited in Gaza, and the reason is the illegal blockade. We have been living under blockade for 17 years. Gaza is described as a large prison, and this is a fact. Medical supplies are limited there in every aspect,” he told Anadolu in the Turkish capital Ankara.

“Now, everything is destroyed … There are only two or three hospitals left and their capabilities are really limited. There are no medical supplies … we cannot treat the patients … The health system has completely collapsed.”

The situation was so bad that patients were in the corridors with people walking around and over them, he said.

After Al-Shifa was “completely destroyed,” Shabet worked at the Al-Aqsa Hospital, where he saw, day in and day out, more of the same scenes of “indescribable pain.”

“It was a heartbreaking situation. We saw our patients, our wounded really deteriorating. We saw … doctors perform some surgeries without anesthesia. It’s really hard. It’s really painful. And suddenly, your closest relatives could come in as patients – your mother, your brother, your family,” he said.

“Sometimes you couldn’t hold back the tears when treating someone … But in the end, you wipe away the tears, remind yourself that you are a doctor. You pull yourself together and continue.”

Surrounded by death and destruction, Shabet recalled how doctors and medical staff would “forget even to eat.”

“When you have a purpose, a goal … you forget about yourself there,” he said.

“We made do with whatever we had to provide first aid to our people. We did surgeries with whatever we had, but the situation is really very difficult.”

- ‘Unimaginable’ situation

Having seen countless of his colleagues falling prey to Israeli bombs and bullets, Shabet is convinced that these attacks on health workers are part of an intentional strategy.

“More than 200 healthcare personnel have been martyred. They are deliberately doing this. There have been abductions as well,” he said.

He said Israel soldiers would enter medical facilities and brutally attack people.

“When you go to the hospital, you say goodbye to your family because there is no security … Al-Shifa Hospital had become like a graveyard. All the hospitals were in the same situation,” said the doctor.

He said they were forced to dig mass graves in Al-Shifa, Al-Aqsa and Al-Nasr hospitals.

“The situation is unimaginable. For example, we are sitting here and, next to us, there would be a makeshift cemetery, while there will be wounded people on the other side,” he said.

These conditions, coupled with the breakdown of all sanitation and water infrastructure, have led to a situation that is rife for “every type of outbreak, from skin diseases to flu and everything you can think of,” he added.

“Controlling these outbreaks is impossible. There have been many outbreaks inside hospitals, where there are 20 people living in one room. There can be four or five patients in one room … There are also refugees in the hospitals,” he said.

“There is garbage everywhere in Gaza because the municipalities are not working … We are talking about four months of no garbage collection … There will inevitably be outbreaks.”

He said there is now “great hunger” in Gaza, with “people resorting to eating animal feel, especially in the north.”

The most painful part, Shabet said, was the deliberate blockade on humanitarian aid.

“There are about 2 million refugees in the region, and on the other side, just 50 meters away, there are 15,000 trucks waiting to help,” he said.

- ‘Pain is greater’ after leaving Gaza

Shabet was evacuated from Gaza after two months, a decision the doctor said he was forced to make because he had “no choice.”

That was made possible because of Shabet’s Turkish citizenship, with his Turkish friends applying for him since he had no internet in Gaza.

“I would never want to leave, especially during this war. Leaving my family behind and coming here is another kind of pain for me. Right now, I am sitting comfortably in a chair here, but it really hurts inside because my mother, my father, people I love the most are currently on the streets, in tents. Did they eat, did they find water? My mind is occupied by these thoughts,” he said.

“There is no sleep for us here. It’s just three or four hours of rolling around in bed. The only sleep I get is because of exhaustion. Frankly, I suffer more after leaving because I am away from Gaza, but there was nothing I could do.”

As for the psychological impact, Shabet acknowledged that he has “not been able to recover yet.”

“I still haven’t fully processed how I lived there, how I came here. I slept on the streets. We have a very large family … we stayed with 50 people in a shop, right on the street. There was always the thought that if a missile hits, the whole family would be gone,” he said.

“The incredible thing is … we didn’t feel it that much over there. It was like we are living in a war and we may become martyrs here. It’s just a fight and resistance. A person is not aware of the self in such a time … but our pain is greater now that we’ve come here.”

For everyone who survives in Gaza, psychological treatment is “definitely necessary,” he emphasized.

Talking about the future of Gaza, Shabet shared his memories from the first time he left the Strip for education in 2015.

“I went to Egypt … There was this famous shopping mall and I started crying when I went there. Why? Because I saw so much electricity. Even on the streets … there is so much electricity, even in an empty area,” he said.

“We have such a small Gaza, if they just send a cable from Egypt, it would be enough for us. It’s very painful for me to see this,” he said, adding that he hopes to see Gaza and its people have a chance at a better life.