Gaza’s hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, pharmaceutical factories, and medical schools have been raided, bombed, and deprived of the basic resources needed for survival, including fuel, water, and medical supplies, writes Yara Asi. [GETTY]
After more than a year of seeing horrific images and videos from Gaza due to the Israeli military’s bombardment, raids, and siege, the past few weeks brought some long-awaited images and stories of hope. Palestinians who had been displaced from Gaza’s north—from Jabalia, Gaza City, Beit Hanoun—some for more than a year, walking back to the towns and homes they had been forced to leave, resisting their own erasure.
After nearly a century of ongoing displacement, which has historically been long-term if not permanent, the visuals of Palestinians returning to their towns were powerful and meaningful.
However, for many of those making the journey back, despite the joy of the ceasefire, they face a harsh reality; their home is no longer there, destroyed by one of the tens of thousands of bombs Israel dropped on the small territory since October 7.
The north was particularly targeted in Israel’s endless assault over the past fifteen months, but the south was not spared—for some hoping to return to Rafah, it was too dangerous due to the amount of unexploded ordnance left behind by Israel.
The scope, scale, and stated intention of Israel’s actions in Gaza have consequently been recognised as a genocide by an increasing number of human rights organisations and experts, with an ongoing case by South Africa against Israel under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Of course, this level of destruction means it is not just the homes of the people in Gaza that are gone—it’s their schools, their mosques, their shops, their greenhouses, even the roads connecting it all together. Entire communities are gone. Drone footage shows much of Gaza is in ruins, covered in rubble and the remains of the once vibrant society that existed, despite the limitations of the pre-existing blockade and multiple previous Israeli military assaults.
The harsh reality
Certainly, the reality of return is complex and harrowing. This was captured by the words of Palestinian photographer Osama Abu Rabee who in early February wrote on social media: “We are living in a self-made illusion, promoting a fictional image that Gaza is recovering and rising from the rubble, while the reality is far harsher and more bitter. The repair of a damaged house is portrayed as the beginning of recovery, ignoring the fact that entire cities have been wiped off the map and neighbourhoods remain buried under debris. Most hospitals in Gaza are out of service, while the remaining ones suffer from severe shortages of medical supplies.”
Indeed, part of Israel’s destruction of Gaza since October 7 was an assault on its healthcare system. Gaza’s hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, pharmaceutical factories, and medical schools have been raided, bombed, and deprived of the basic resources needed for survival, including fuel, water, and medical supplies.
At the same time, more than 1000 health workers have been killed. Thousands more were kidnapped and detained in Israeli prisons, with multiple credible reports of their torture and, in some cases, their deaths while being held there. Many remain missing or detained, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was taken by Israeli forces weeks before the ceasefire and has still been unable to speak to his family or lawyers.
While much remains unclear about the future of Gaza and the Palestinians living there, especially in the wake of a new Trump administration that has indicated an interest in displacing Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan, the pressing medical challenges that face the people in Gaza will not wait for political machinations.
Gaza currently has an overwhelming health burden, with tens of thousands of people injured by bombing, thousands more with other health needs (like cancer, high risk pregnancies, or infections), and hundreds of thousands of people who have been living in crowded, under-resourced, and unsanitary conditions and have not accessed any health care in over a year. That means no vaccinations, no preventive care, no health screenings, and no access to pharmaceuticals.
The health system in Gaza, with less than half of its original 36 hospitals even partially functioning at this point, cannot even begin to manage these cases. UNRWA, one of the primary providers of health services in Gaza, has also been stymied, with the United States ceasing contributions and Israel banning its operations outright.
A long path to recovery
In Gaza, before any rebuilding is even possible, assuming Palestinians are able to retain all their land, rubble, explosive remnants, and environmental hazards must be appropriately cleared. This alone has been estimated to take more than a decade.
Supplies must be brought in to painstakingly rebuild and stock not just hospitals, but the communities around them where their patients and workforce live. In terms of that very workforce, it may take decades before the loss of so many experienced health personnel, including highly trained specialists, medical school deans and faculty, as well as hospital directors, can be mitigated.
The loss of health infrastructure and personnel also presents significant challenges to Palestinians returning and being able to live on their land. As research has shown in countries like Syria, attacks on health facilities or the risk of being detained in one can be significant drivers of displacement. This is because people with health needs have no choice but to find places where the care is available. As such, it is no surprise that some, including Al-Haq in its report on the subject, have argued that Israel’s destruction of the health system was part of an “intent to…deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”
With the ceasefire process not even in its second phase, and explicit discussions by Israeli and American politicians of permanently resettling the people of Gaza—ethnically cleansing them from their land—there are multiple alarming dynamics that disrupt any meaningful plans to rebuild Gaza, let alone its healthcare system. Just the reconstruction of the healthcare system that existed before October 7, 2023, which was in many ways already insufficient, will require a massive investment of resources over many years.
In the meantime, people in Gaza require care now, and cannot rely solely on the services of underfunded NGOs or on a broken medical evacuation system that is itself controlled by Israel. Although the bombs have, for now, stopped falling, the health emergency in Gaza has not ended.
Yara M. Asi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, a Visiting Scholar at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and a US Fulbright Scholar to the West Bank.
Follow her on X: @Yara_M_Asi
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
