Gaza’s hospitals stretched by wounded from Israeli army fire
GAZA CITY — Raed Jadallah belonged to an exclusive club — a small band of surfers who escaped the claustrophobia of blockaded Gaza by riding the waves of the Mediterranean. Now he’s immobile, a metal fixation device clamped to his left leg after an Israeli bullet fractured his femur in two places.
The 25-year-old plasterer from a seaside refugee camp said he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to walk again, let alone surf.
“Sea and surfing are everything to me,” he said on Wednesday, a day after being discharged from the hospital, his lower body covered by a blanket as he rested on a sofa at his home. Jadallah is among 1,297 Palestinians shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers, including snipers, during the past two weeks of mass protests on the Gaza-Israel border, according to a computerised count by the Gaza Health Ministry. An additional 1,554 Gaza residents have been treated for tear gas inhalation or injuries by rubber-coated steel pellets. The surge of patients has severely taxed Gaza’s clinics and hospitals.
In addition, 33 Palestinians have been killed during this period, including 26 in border demonstrations. The latest casualties came on Thursday, when Israel said it bombed Hamas militant targets in the Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and wounding another.
The Israeli military has disputed the Gaza count of wounded, saying that at most dozens were struck by Israeli fire, but it has not offered supporting evidence. Gaza
I don’t know when I’ll be able to walk again, let alone surf. Sea and surfing are everything to me Raed Jadallah, a Palestinian youth
has endured more than a decade of border closures, imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas seized the territory in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliament elections.
More bloodshed on the border is likely, with organisers calling for protests to continue until mid-May and Israel saying it won’t change its rules of engagement. Already, the recent surge of patients with gunshot wounds has severely taxed Gaza’s clinics and hospitals. Gaza’s health system has been buckling under years of shortages of essential medicines and equipment caused by the blockade and Hamas’ power struggle with the rival Palestinian National Authority, doctors say. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority accuses Hamas of selling medicines it sends, while Hamas accuses it of delaying medicine shipments.
The violence comes at a time when 40 per cent of basic medicines are no longer in stock in Gaza hospitals, according to the World Health Organisation. Equipment is also in short supply. At Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, half of 200 available fixators had been used up for bones broken by bullets, officials said. —