This article contains the reflections of Stanford doctors and healthcare workers who attended a panel called “Gaza Unseen: Perspectives from the Frontlines of Healthcare,” held at the Stanford School of Medicine in December 2024. The authors of the piece are a part of the Stanford Medicine Coalition for Palestine. All speakers consented to having their words shared publicly, in the hopes of increasing awareness of the dire manmade humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
An image flashed on the screen — red and purple stumps pierced by a small white spike, not clearly identifiable as any known object. Dr. Mohammad Subeh M.A. ’06 described the photo with the precision of a Grand Rounds presentation, first explaining how the Israeli military had planted booby-trapped cans of food in Gaza. During revision, the linked article was updated with the following sentence: “Booby traps are not a threat UN specialized agencies have documented in Gaza.”
He went on to describe how his patient’s young niece had picked up one of the explosive-laden cans, and, when the patient called to her to place it down carefully, she unwittingly threw it to him. The audience silently observed the five charred stumps of what was once a hand, set against a backdrop of rubble and a sliver of blue sky.
Dr. Subeh is an Emergency Medicine (EM) physician who spent several weeks in Gaza treating patients, including hundreds of children horrifically wounded during the genocidal campaign carried out by the Israeli military. He reminded us that even before checking the ABCs of airway, breathing and circulation, one must assess “X” for exsanguination, as he drew our attention to a black-and-gray band on the patient’s wrist: the single tourniquet permitted to the medical team. Categorized by the Israeli military as having potential dual use as both medical equipment and a weapon of war, these life-saving devices were in extremely short supply.
From the comfort of our auditorium seats, we watched slide after slide of harrowing images: maimed children, crowded operating tables and overworked doctors and nurses struggling to save lives amidst almost unimaginably limited resources. The lone tourniquet appeared repeatedly, wrapped around a thigh, arm or wrist, often while other limbs on the same body were missing. Ketamine, one of the only scarce anesthetics available in Gaza, is used for general anesthesia; there is no lidocaine, local anesthetic or pain medications available for most procedures. Antibiotics are scarce, and rubbing alcohol — often diluted to 7% to make it last — is unavailable half the time. Scalpel handles, also deemed “dual use” items, are embargoed, forcing surgeons to hold bare scalpel blades with gloved fingers, striving to maintain sterile conditions.
Dr. Subeh’s field hospital, a complex of large tents replacing the bombed hospital, was initially designed to treat a few hundred patients daily but averaged a thousand per day, dwarfing the 100 to 150 patients in a typical U.S. emergency room when at capacity. After frequent mass casualty events, dozens of patients would arrive in droves. Sixty percent of the patients he saw were children, many with bullet entry wounds to the head or chest; these were inflicted by machine guns mounted on quadcopter drones that continuously surveil overhead in Gaza. Despite these dangers, Dr. Subeh attempted to return to the field in the fall of 2024. His mission was canceled, however, as the Israeli military refused to deconflict the proposed hospital in Gaza City.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad, an EM physician who has also completed medical missions in Gaza, described how he was barred from returning in October 2024 due to the Israeli government’s discriminatory ban on healthcare workers of Palestinian descent returning for service. He showed photos from his service, including those of completely overflowing hospital corridors where patients and their loved ones would try to get rest. Due to bed shortages, emergency procedures would also take place in these same corridors. Family members and non-clinical staff were tasked with holding IV bags above their heads for gravity drips due to the lack of IV poles. The demand for blood donations was unrelenting, given the constant bombings. Blood was sourced daily from civilian volunteers sheltering in the hospital courtyard, with no place to store it, due to electricity being cut off from infrastructure damage to the local area and building.
Gaza, which is approximately the size of Las Vegas but with a population of more than 2 million, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. By May 2024, the Israeli military had dropped an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza; more tonnage than was used in all of World War II. Due to the destruction of essential services, humanitarian aid to Gaza has been estimated by the number of trucks allowed to enter the region, with the figures reported by the Israeli government consistently exceeding the number provided by the U.N. The Israeli government’s occupation and full blockade of Gaza by land, sea and air violates international law, and it has failed to comply with U.S. humanitarian access demands. In November 2024, approximately 67 to 89 trucks entered Gaza per day. This is far below the 350 trucks per day that the U.S. set as a 30-day condition for continuing weapon supplies to Israel. Worsening the problem, trucks carrying humanitarian aid have been barred entry if they contain even a few items categorized arbitrarily as contraband. The list of these items, constantly changing and unpublished due to “security concerns,” has included essential items like blankets, firewood and tents. Medical personnel also face serious difficulties in entering Palestine. Doctors attempting to enter Gaza for humanitarian missions often face prohibitive delays or outright denials; one of the onerous requirements included a 4-week preprocessing period in Israel per Dr. Subeh and Ahmad.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Network, Doctors without Borders, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices and the majority of U.N. member states, have recognized the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza as constituting genocide. A survey of 504 Gazan households revealed that 96.2% have been displaced, with 88% displaced multiple times and one in five families forced to relocate six or more times in the past year. The extreme physical harms have been accompanied by equally damaging mental harm. Children in Gaza are experiencing a profound and unprecedented mental health crisis, with 96% of caregivers reporting their children fear imminent death, 83% have constant exhaustion and 77% feel sadness; nearly half express a wish to die. Many children photographed by Dr. Subeh were barefoot, as their shoes were confiscated by the Israeli military during forced crossings from North to South Gaza. This left them vulnerable to injuries from rubble and broken glass.
According to Stanford researcher Bailey Ulbricht, executive director of the Stanford Humanitarian Program, by the end of November 2023, 88% of health facilities and 70% of water facilities in North Gaza were damaged, compared to only 10% of health facilities damaged in a year of war in Ukraine. To date, over a thousand healthcare workers in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, and even foreign healthcare personnel and ambulances were targeted. Despite over a year of well-documented war crimes and genocide, American medical organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), have failed to speak out against the destruction of healthcare infrastructure in Gaza. This is in stark contrast to the situation of Ukraine, where the AMA promptly condemned civilian deaths and offered generous humanitarian assistance.
The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling on the AMA to advocate for the release of Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatric critical care specialist and director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital. He has been unlawfully detained and tortured, along with hundreds of other medical professionals and patients from Gaza, in an Israeli prison since late December under unfounded accusations of the hospital being used for military purposes. Petitions for his release have garnered tens of thousands of signatures. Other major healthcare organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have called for accountability from the U.S. government to determine Abu Safiya’s location and health status given his crucial role in providing pediatric emergency services in North Gaza.
As members of the Stanford Medicine Coalition for Palestine, we call upon our community to uphold core principles of protecting human life by adopting the Not Another Child, Not Another Hospital commitments below, endorsed by over 40 organizations and more than 5000 signatories. These commitments remain necessary following the declaration of a ceasefire on January 19, 2025.
The Israeli occupation forces still killed 19 Palestinians in three hours during a delay of retrieving hostage names, and 269 ceasefire violations by the Israeli occupation occurred between Jan. 19 and Feb. 11. In the days following the ceasefire, Israeli snipers killed two children and injured several others in southern Gaza, while the Israeli military killed nine people and wounded 40 others in Jenin, after launching a new military operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank.
Calls to Action with Not Another Child, Not Another Hospital:
- Stop bombing hospitals and attacking healthcare and aid workers.
- Call for the protection of children in Gaza and Lebanon.
- Call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the ongoing genocide to allow health operations to resume.
- Support a comprehensive and immediate embargo on weapons to Israel and divestment from Israel to stop the ethnic cleansing of civilians and destruction of healthcare.
- Advocate for unrestricted humanitarian and medical access to Gaza.
- Establish healthcare education and training for patient-facing staff to provide informed care to patients affected by war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The petition may be viewed here, and welcomes both individuals and organizations to sign: https://doctorsagainstgenocide.org/not-another-hospital-1
Any interested students, staff and faculty at Stanford Medicine who would like to join the coalition may sign up here.
This article has been updated to reflect that it was authored by a group called Stanford Medicine Coalition for Palestine.
This article has been updated to reflect that booby traps are not a threat UN specialized agencies have documented in Gaza.