A British-Palestinian doctor accustomed to war who returned from Gaza described to AFP on Sunday a deadly conflict of unprecedented intensity and hoped his testimony to British police would lead to a prosecution for war crimes.
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Ghassan Abu Sitta, a 54-year-old plastic surgeon who specializes in war injuries, spent 43 days volunteering in the Palestinian territory, mostly at al-Ahli and al-Chifa hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to the doctor, the intensity of the conflict exceeds that of others where he has already worked, in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and southern Lebanon. “It's the difference between a flood and a tsunami, the scale is completely different,” he explains in an interview with AFP.
It is characterized by “the number of wounded,” “the number of children killed, the intensity of the bombings and the fact that the health system in Gaza had completely collapsed in the days after the start of the war,” he points out.
The war was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli figures.
According to a recent Hamas report, the Israeli offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip has left 22,835 dead, mostly civilians. The bombings destroyed entire neighborhoods, forced 85% of the population to flee and sparked a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.
Dr. Abu Sitta, born in Kuwait and based in the United Kingdom since the late 1980s, arrived in Gaza from Egypt on October 9 as part of a team from Doctors Without Borders.
“From the beginning, the capacity was less than the number of wounded we had to treat. Increasingly, we had to make very difficult decisions about who to treat,” he recalls.
He mentions the case of a 40-year-old man who was hospitalized with shrapnel in his head. He needed a CT scan and had to see a neurosurgeon, but there was none.
“We told his children and they stayed around his stretcher that night until he died in the morning,” he said.
The hospitals also quickly ran out of anesthetics and painkillers, so Dr. Abu Sitta had to carry out “very painful wound cleanings” without any relief being possible.
“It was a choice between doing this or watching them succumb to the infection of their wounds,” he notes.
Raise your voice
The doctor assures that he treated burns caused by white phosphorus, whose use as a chemical weapon is banned under international law but which remains permitted to illuminate battlefields or create a smoke screen.
Lebanon has accused Israel of using white phosphorus in the conflict.
“It is a very characteristic injury,” explains the doctor. “Phosphorus continues to burn into the deepest parts of the body until it reaches the bone.”
Dr. Abu Sitta explains that he left Gaza because the lack of medical equipment prevented him from carrying out operations.
Since his return to the UK, he has spent most of his time making politicians and humanitarian organizations aware of the urgency of help.
“I try to help the patients I left behind as best I can by getting their voices out there,” he notes.
The doctor explains that he told the London police about the injuries observed, the type of weapons used, the use of white phosphorus and “the attacks against civilians.”
He also told how he survived the Oct. 17 attack on Al-Ahli Hospital, which Hamas blames on Israel while Western countries blame it on a mistaken Palestinian rocket launch.
Scotland Yard emphasizes that it is responsible for international justice to collect evidence of possible war crimes by both sides.
“Ultimately,” the doctor believes, “justice will come to these people, if not in five years, then in ten years, when they are 80 years old, when the balance of power in the world will allow justice for the Palestinians.”