[News] Gaza's battle-hardened medics always on duty

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/content/gazas-battle-hardened-medics-always-duty/25381 



  Gaza's battle-hardened medics always on duty

Amjad Ayman Yaghi 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/amjad-ayman-yaghi> - 30 August 2018

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return at the end of March, 
the Israeli military has left no doubt that it will not feel restrained 
in dealing with Gaza’s demonstrations.

With rules of engagement that have left at least 125 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-kills-two-palestinians-gaza> 
demonstrators dead, more than 5,000 wounded by live fire, among them 
over 800 children, the message is clear: Protest and risk death and injury.

But even those not protesting are not safe. Israeli forces have killed 
two journalists 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/icc-must-investigate-israels-crimes-against-journalists> 
and at least 90 have been injured. Three medics 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-medic-during-gaza-protests> 
have also been killed.

Still they come: demonstrators 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-we-continue-march-gaza/25291>, 
journalists 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-snipers-targeting-journalists-gaza/24081> 
and, of course, medics.

According to 
<https://www.facebook.com/Ashraf.ability/posts/1059731907537738> the 
Gaza Ministry of Health, there have been at least 370 instances of 
paramedics being injured during the demonstrations and nearly 70 
ambulances have sustained damage.

“I believe in the saying, he who saves a life, saves all humanity,” said 
43-year-old Muhammad al-Hissi, a paramedic with two decades of experience.

Al-Hissi, now director of emergency medical services at the Palestine 
Red Crescent Society 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestine-red-crescent-society> in 
Khan Younis <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/khan-younis>, in the 
southern Gaza Strip, is an ever-present figure at the demonstrations of 
the Great March of Return. And his 20 years on the job also make him a 
veteran of the entire second intifada and all three Israeli wars on Gaza.

He has the scars to prove it.


    A sense of duty

He was first injured, he told The Electronic Intifada, in an Israeli 
airstrike 2002 that left him needing several surgeries to remove 
shrapnel from his right hand.

In 2014, during Israel’s 51-day offensive on Gaza, he was injured again 
in the same hand in another airstrike, and this time needed a metal 
implant that he still carries around. And during the latest protests he 
was hit in the chest by a tear gas canister leaving him out of action 
for five days.

Yet he is not discouraged.

“Our humanitarian work is greater than the Israeli occupation,” al-Hissi 
told the Electronic Intifada.

A sense of duty, he said, carried him through the tear gas, the blood 
and rubble.

“It’s hard to save people from buildings that have been shelled. The 
rubble keeps coming down over our heads. When that happens, I try to 
remember the injured, and I decide to pull myself together,” al-Hissi 
said. “My job is to save people’s lives.”


    In the line of fire

Al-Hissi said he has been shocked at the number of casualties and not 
just among protesters. He has reached out to international organizations 
including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World 
Health Organization to help them pressure Israel not to target 
paramedics doing their jobs.

Among the many injured multiple times in the line of duty during the 
Great March of Return is Ibrahim Talalqa, 23. Talalqa volunteered in a 
civil defense medical services team for three years to become a 
certified paramedic.

He has been wounded three times in the past three months, most recently 
on 3 August when he was strafed by shrapnel while attending to an 
injured youth. The shrapnel, he said, came from an exploding bullet that 
detonated near his ambulance as it was approaching the injured person.

“In Gaza, paramedics leave home not knowing if they will ever come back 
to their families,” Talalqa said. He does his best to ease his family’s 
concerns, he added. “My mother worries about me, but she stands strong 
before me and supports my choice. When I get injured, I do not tell her 
until I am back home.”

Talalqa remembers the 14 May protests 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-slaughters-palestinians-marching-return> 
as the worst – these also claimed the most casualties of any of the 
series of demonstrations to date. He was not wounded on this occasion, 
but it was close.

At one point, he had to crawl on his stomach to reach a youth who had 
been injured near the boundary. When he finally got there, he had to try 
to carry the young man, who had a chest injury, back to an ambulance. 
Yet he initially could not reach the ambulance because of the intense 
shooting. Talalqa ended up having to drop to the ground and wait with 
the wounded man until an ambulance could finally pick them both up.

Perhaps worse was when he saw a colleague shot in the leg as he was 
carrying an injured 12-year-old who was then again wounded with a shot 
in the back. Eventually the medical teams nearby succeeded in 
extricating both child and medic from the scene. Both survived.


    Battle-hardened medics

Adel al-Masharawi is another veteran paramedic. The 41-year-old began in 
2000 and says the situation has only become worse.

He has fainted four times during the recent protests as a result of 
inhaling tear gas and is convinced that the chemical composition of the 
gas has changed over the years. He worries that too much exposure will 
result in future diseases.

But, like the other medics, he is determined to carry on.

“We are part of the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “It is our duty to 
work and save lives whatever their injuries and where they may be.”

It may be a duty for these battle-hardened medics, but those who are 
rescued will always be grateful.

On 3 August, Bashar al-Muzaini, 18, found himself on the edge of the 
protests waving a flag and wearing the distinctive black-and-white 
Palestinian /kuffiyeh/.

He and friends were staying at a distance of 500 meters from the 
boundary, a distance they thought would be safe. But at one point, as a 
thick cloud of tear gas descended on the group, al-Muzaini found himself 
alone, nauseous and disoriented.

Eventually al-Masharawi found his way to the confused youth, helping him 
get away from the gas and providing him with medicine to take away the 
nausea.

Al-Muzaini later realized that he had been lucky to escape only with 
tear gas poisoning. The area had been the site of heavy shooting while 
he was lost in the fog. But when he tried to thank al-Masharawi he was 
almost rebuffed.

“When I went to thank the medic he told me this happened every day,” 
al-Muzaini told The Electronic Intifada. “I wasn’t the first, and I 
won’t be the last that he will rescue like this.”

/Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza./


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