Returning from Gaza, French humanitarians testify before rebel deputies

Palmed’s French caregivers spent two weeks at Khan Younes, a European hospital in Gaza. On Tuesday, they testified about this mission in front of rebel deputies.

While Israel has announced the upcoming offensive on Rafah, the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian Territory is already catastrophic. Especially in the south, where French carers from La Palme, a doctors’ association, undertook a two-week mission. In Khan Yunis, the European hospital in Gaza, they witnessed the atrocities of war. They testified before rebel deputies on Tuesday, February 13.

When Iman Marifi, a nurse, recalls the hospital’s emergency room, she describes the department as the first door to horror: “Every day I have patients already dead, on stretchers or brought in by their families. I’ve seen patients arrive on donkey carts because paramedics are too scared to travel to certain areas.”

Paramedics have stopped traveling, so it’s families who bring in their dead loved ones. “You’re the only foreigner in the department, it’s estimated that you might have better skills than their local doctors. And no… you announce that he’s dead and we’re not going to do anything. So they go along. He yells but always respects you”, She said that.

“To them we represent protection, perhaps divine”

This link to the victims marked Dr. Khaled Ben Boutrif.“During the stay, we bond with the people, we bond with the children, we get to know them. They are happy that we are there. For them we represent protection, maybe divine.” However, he did not feel safe: “The bombings were day and night. Whether it was surveillance drones or killer drones, they were always there. We were sometimes forced to shelter ourselves in the corridors, because it was dangerous to stay near the windows.”

In addition to daily insecurity and unsanitary conditions, the doctor also had to contend with a lack of resources. “Medicines, painkillers, opioids, antibiotics, lack of something to make dressings… Caregivers live day to day. They make do with what they have.” In his eyes, most alarming “It’s the look of children, waiting to be comforted, to be reassured, to be safe, to be present by an adult. Where adults can’t provide that. It was very sad.”

Dr. Nizar Badran can’t help but compare these children to his own. “The children of Gaza, unlike me, they know what the sound of an F35 is. They manage to tell the difference between missile or tank fire. They manage to judge the distance. Based on the sound, they know what it is and how far. . it impresses me”, She said that. More than a ceasefire, Nizar Badran and other doctors in the association are asking the French government to equip the operating theaters of European hospitals in Gaza.