The human cost of the Israel-Gaza war

A veteran volunteer surgeon laments a well lived life.

Tim Goodacre

Tim Goodacre is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, and volunteer at a hospital in Gaza.

AbdulRahman at work.

Tim Goodacre.

The Israel-Gaza war rages on. Every few days a new tragedy hits our dulled senses. The West Bank and now Lebanon are getting dragged into the conflict. Palestinians and hostages continue to die, and hunger and disease threaten Gaza's displaced people as autumn and winter approach.

Yet what is often lost is the human face of this conflict. This is the story of one such life.

AbdulRahman was an intelligent, gentle and diligent young third year medical student in his early twenties, with judgement well beyond his peers. Towards the end of 2023, as the war spread more viciously towards southern Gaza, he was one a group of around 10 students who volunteered to join the team of health care workers at the European Gaza Hospital (EGH). I was volunteering there as a reconstructive plastic surgeon and and met him in the hospital.

Both medical schools in Gaza before the war began were in the north alongside their parent universities. They had been destroyed during the onslaught in the early months of fighting. In the southern town of Khan Younis, the EGH was the sole surviving operational facility to which the wounded could be transferred. It was overwhelmed by the vast numbers of families also taking refuge in what was deemed a safer space than most of the surrounding war zone.

Many of the senior medical staff and surgeons had retreated to scattered parts of the strip, displaced frequently by the ever-moving conflict and driven by the need to support their families and stay together. ‘Live together-die together’ is an understandable feature in the horror show of war. Students, frequently left with no money or resources, started to volunteer to serve in hospitals in exchange for a little food and a sense of worth in the work they could offer. Any functioning hospital, if briefly ‘deconflicted’ so they could provide relatively safe care, found itself staffed by a disparate crew of local staff, displaced students, and an indeterminate number of more senior surgeons from both Gaza and humanitarian agencies.

His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.

It was into this chaotic mix that young AbdulRahman walked having fled his family home in the east of Khan Younis in November 2023. A bright young man, with great aspirations to qualify as a surgeon and serve his community, he had spent the first six weeks of the war at home, unable to attend his medical school in Gaza City to the north, but working hard at his studies regardless, using every online and library resource available to him.

At some point in late November, the battle zone moved south, and his family home was shelled along with many dwellings in the vicinity. Caught in crossfire, he sheltered in his neighbouring relative’s house after his parents and other close family had escaped to Rafah.

Abdulrahman told me the dramatic story of his escape into the house in which he survived for a week alongside his relative’s family when I spoke to him in late January 2024. This young man not only survived an ordeal of indescribable fear and potential slaughter, but he was then arrested and interrogated in brutal fashion by IDF forces.

On his release after a harrowing week, he made his way barefoot to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the EGH. In that place of safety, he was given food and water and after recuperation, volunteered to work alongside a reconstructive plastic and burns surgeon who had recently returned to Gaza after training in the UK.

Although his family were still all alive in Rafah in displaced makeshift shelters, he opted to stay and throw his weight into whatever he could do to support the hospital whilst continuing to learn his profession as a doctor. Travelling occasionally at great personal risk to see and support his family, he devoted all his waking hours to surgical work in EGH operating theatres and wards. His excellent command of English made him immensely valuable to any visiting surgeons who managed to access Gaza during the war months. He was always cheerful, always willing to respond to requests for his time, however stressful the surrounding clamour from desperate patients and relatives might become.

When his working day was done, in the middle of the night he would arrange for his fellow students to have informal teaching seminars from whoever he could cajole to deliver them, and would absorb knowledge and ideas about best practice like a sponge. His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.

I had every intention of supporting this fine young man in achieving his professional aspirations by whatever means I could once a ceasefire arose and he could be brought safely to Europe to continue his training.

In the last week of August, AbdulRahman was sheltering in a relative’s house in Khan Younis. In the small hours of the morning an Israeli attack was launched on the neighbourhood and the house took a direct hit. AbdulRahman was killed instantly.

He knew, as does every Gazan in these troubled times, that nowhere was safe, and all lives in that tragic zone are at risk. His is a story of a life tragically cut short, of the randomness and destructiveness of war. His death strikes right at the heart of my hopes for the remnant of the fine young population of such a desperately sad nation state. He, and those like him, could have been at the heart of the re-building of Gaza, able to live in what now feels a far-off peace. I cannot translate this into anger, as AbdulRahman himself had a passionate concern for peace and reconciliation, and never once spoke to me in many conversations of support for Hamas, or of hatred for those who had destroyed his country.

What can be done however, is to honour his life and commitment with similar tenacity in supporting the pursuit of peace, justice for his people, learning and education for the remnant of the nation, and reconstruction of a Palestine that can proudly and honourably reflect the finest values it possesses. AbdulRahman was a great Palestinian, and his all too short life was one which I want to celebrate as one of the finest I have seen in many students of the next generation of doctors. May he rest in peace, and may a lasting peace come quickly to Gaza, to all of Palestine and the whole of the Middle East.

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Middle East

Christmas survival

16 December 2023

4 min read

Last Christmas in Bethlehem

With its Christmas displays cancelled, Bethlehem resident Christy Anastas writes about a bleak future for its Christian Palestinian community.

Christy Anastas

Christy Anastas is a Bethlehem resident. She is a Palestinian advocate for nonviolent ways of mediating a more stable Middle East.

A church gable featuring a cross, a Madonna and angel Christmas decorations.

2017 Christmas decorations on the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Jana Humeedat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Religious minority groups, like Christians, represent about one per cent of the overall Palestinian population. We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place in this conflict. As a consequence of this war, many of us are already planning to emigrate once the opportunity arises. If this happens, Bethlehem will virtually become a non-Christian city. This would be a sad outcome given it was the birthplace of Jesus Christ and that in the early 1900s the Christian population used to be just under 85 per cent. Now Bethlehem's population is approximately five per cent Christian. After this war we fear that these statistics would decrease even more. The main source of income of the city heavily relies on tourism, with almost 70 per cent of Bethlehem’s GDP due to religious pilgrims from all over the world visiting Jesus Christ’s birthplace, especially during Christmas.

This is the first year for decades, when all Christmas festive displays have been cancelled in Bethlehem. This decision taken by Bethlehem municipality and the Palestinian church is a sobering and poignant one and comes with a financial heavy price paid by locals. Such traditions have been kept for decades, even during the second Intifada, so that between 2000 to 2005 a Christmas tree in Manager Square was still displayed each year. Even the Covid-19 pandemic did not stop Bethlehem from decorating the entire city. However, today many Palestinian Christians are not in a festive mood. The Israel-Hamas war is in its second month and has already a higher death toll than during the whole of five years of the second Intifada.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction.

In my opinion it feels fitting to stand in solidarity with those who mourn, inspired by Paul’s letter to the Romans encouraging Christians to “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn”. During such devastating circumstances of the civilians in Gaza, Palestinian Christians are heartbroken at the enormity of lives lost and the desperate conditions experienced especially by children. The desire to celebrate the birth of the most important child in Christianity’s history is dimmed by the death toll of children in Gaza during this war. An ancient biblical proverb offers a powerful depiction of what it would be like for us Christians to celebrate Christmas as usual. It would have felt “like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”

However, the announcement of the cancellation issued by the head of Bethlehem municipality, was made exclusively in honour of Palestinian “martyrs”, in Gaza and the West Bank. This disappointing statement distorts the church’s role in the region as a peace builder and the bridge amongst different communities and ethnicities. In fact, it is an utterly missed opportunity for the church to demonstration its ethics and values in the region, especially when confronted with losses of lives across all ethnicities and religions. A more inclusive nuanced statement that could have honoured the suffering of all, could have been worded along the lines of offering tributes to the devastating losses of lives in the Israel-Hamas war since the 7th of October, without any discrimination or prejudice. That old proverb continues to say, “if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The exclusivity of the statement's approach made by the churches was a lost opportunity to express a more authentic side of Christianity to the world revealed from its birthplace. It could have counteracted the way the church was portrayed in Europe during the Holocaust. It could have been the chance to respond in a less indifferent manner to the plights of the Jewish people in the region, rather than reiterate a similar stance of the European churches during World War II.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction, inspired by what our brothers and sisters in Gaza have conveyed to us in private communication. Christians in Gaza are pleading for peace and stating that as a community, they oppose violence. The zero-sum approach towards this war has made it difficult for us Christians to be true to our faith without being condemned or oppressed for it. When we call for a ceasefire, we are accused of supporting terrorism and denying Israel’s right to self-defence. However, when we want to acknowledge the suffering of the Israeli side during the 7th of October, we are deemed to be traitors. Our objective isn’t to attempt to prevent Israel from defending itself; rather, to suggest that the consequences of inflicting violence and bloodshed in retaliation could reinforce a stronger hold for violence and extremism in the region.

Therefore, most Palestinian Christians do not feel they have the freedom to stand for their beliefs and the churches in the region are not portraying the best paradigm. In my opinion, this is one of the main factors behind the drastic decline of the Christian population generally especially in Bethlehem. It is also why they no longer hold as much power as they used to in influencing the culture and mindsets in the area. Their roles became more politicised which has gradually led them to neglect standing up for truth until it has become too dangerous to even express it. This could well lead to a reality where this would be the last Christmas in Bethlehem for a majority of Christian families.