Witness to the tragedy in Gaza
Tonight, Wits University is to host the local launch of a major medical fact-finding mission on the 2014 onslaught. Professor was on the team
IN MID-July last year, an urgent call was issued by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) for experts to visit Gaza and document the health effects of the war that Israel dubbed Operation Protective Edge.
At that stage, there were media reports of attacks on civilians, particularly children, as well as mass casualties. There had been bombing of schools, markets and homes.
We knew it would be important to fact-find as soon as possible, to interview survivors about their experiences of the bombings and the ground invasion, while these were still fresh in their minds, as well as to collect evidence for corroboration.
PHR-I had conducted a similar mission during the 2008 to 2009 Operation Cast Lead. I had been invited to participate but could not go. Instead, I worked with the organisers to connect them with colleagues who could.
That mission included two South African specialists, Professor Shabbir Ahmed Wadee, a forensic pathologist at Stellenbosch, and Professor Sebastian van As, a paediatric surgeon at UCT.
I felt ambivalent about having put these colleagues in harm’s way, although their report was critical in corroborating the Israeli Defence Force’s use of white phosphorous and other unconventional weapons.
So when the call came this time around, I could not ignore it. The decision involved family members, my husband and children, and close friends. All were worried but understood that I needed to go.
My interest in the association between people’s social conditions and their health dates back to before I began medical school in 1979. My background is in the social sciences. This has deepened over time to become both a clinical and academic passion to uncover the inextricable links between human rights, both their violations and promotion, and health.
In terms of imagining what I could encounter in Gaza, with social media and graphic press coverage, this was fairly evident. I realised that we would all need debriefing after our mission.
Medically, it was hard to separate the instinctual family physician, the “healer” who wanted to get involved in the care of patients, the need being so great, and the “fact-finder”, whose role it was to carefully and meticulously document what was happening to people A Palestinian boy rides between the ruins of houses that witnesses said were destroyed during the seven-week Israeli offensive in Gaza in August and September last year. The writer says many children were killed and injured during the war. on the ground. To conduct an assessment comprehensively, and not intervene, was difficult. I’m not sure I anticipated how tough it would be to hold back on intervening clinically.
This is no comment on the care being provided by the health-care workers in Gaza, either the local Palestinians or the volunteers who had come from the region and all over the world. They did everything they could with the resources available. Still, there was a certain helplessness in the face of such overwhelming suffering. Was producing a report “enough”?
As soon as all eight members of the fact-finding mission were identified, we began a robust exchange via e-mail and Skype about the scope of our research, methodology and technical issues.
There were two teams constituted depending on availability and the skills mix required. We knew we were going to be inseparable for the week we were together and there was great camaraderie, respect and collaborative effort.
Objectivity posed interesting and important questions – ones that don’t have easy answers. After all, we are all products of particular world views that affect our interpretation of what we experience.
Our team comprised a Roman Catholic nun, a Muslim, a Jew and an atheist – each bringing to bear some subjectivity to what we witnessed, although we had all been trained “clinically”. However, we also understood that we had a huge responsibility to be as “scientific” as possible, to question the evidence, to “see” for ourselves, to interrogate what was being presented to us, to cultivate scepticism.
This is why the report has a large section on “limitations”. We could not access everything we wanted to see. Our movements were limited. Within hours of our arrival, the ceasefire fell apart and there was a curfew and restrictions on travel within Gaza. The second team had visa and transport challenges. However, even with these limitations, we were able to conclude from our interviews and observations that what people went through during this latest conflict constituted violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. We only published what we could corroborate through definitive sources in the report.
The 3km crossing on foot into Gaza through Erez was surreal. A stripping away of one’s sense of security could not have been more clear, both physically and emotionally. Luckily, three of the team members had already been through this process several times before, so attempted to “normalise” it. In addition, we were taken for lunch to a restaurant, which we soon recognised as overlooking the beach where the three boys had been killed by gunboat fire about a month earlier. It was hard to enjoy the sumptuous food and great hospitality.
At the restaurant, within two hours of our arrival in Gaza, we learnt that the ceasefire had fallen apart with the attempted attack on a man called Mohamed Deeb. His wife and child were killed. We found ourselves in the middle of a war zone, which was not the intention of the mission. However, the border crossing had already closed. It was unsafe to be on the roads and we had not even begun.
We decided unanimously that we would stay as long as we could, although PHR-I was keen to abort the mission and bring us back. Yet, that would not have been easy either, since the funerals were in Jabaliyah, close to Erez (the way out), and our transporter was afraid.
We were fortunate to have been able to move around in Gaza and to reach the border crossing two days later without being harmed, as our exit was not guaranteed.
Ironically, when we were at the Erez crossing, we came under Hamas mortar fire, which further delayed our entry into Israel.
Yet another angle is that the Palestinians were grateful that we were there to witness what they had been experiencing continuously. The arrival of ambulances carrying the dead and wounded to Shifa Hospital and seeing how patients were received and triaged made the interviews with patients more real.
Also, trying to decipher the “warning” shots and respond to the hovering drones made me feel on high alert most of the time. It was hard to sleep. This made things like having no electricity, showering in salt water and non-potable water from taps pale in comparison.
We met many children who had been burnt, maimed and psychologically scarred. Yet even severely wounded children seemed resilient, interacting with our team.
The grief among those who had often lost their spouse or children, and were homeless, was palpable. We also reviewed hundreds of photographs of dead children, which was sickening. There is no excuse for this type of carnage. However, history indicates that at least 50% of all casualties in wars waged in the past 70 years were children. Gaza’s population consists of predominantly children.
Every encounter was a challenge – sharing in the human act of bearing witness; the futility in not being able to respond adequately to the trauma; suffering and disability; the burden of representation; the need to portray the situation accurately. Some doctors, health-care workers and paramedics were injured or killed during the onslaught.
Our team conducted at least eight interviews with health-care workers: doctors, ambulance crew, nurses, surgeons, ICU staff, the burn team.
What was striking was many of them had worked overseas, yet decided to come back to serve the population.
There was no political interference in our work from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, or Hamas. There has, however, been a backlash from some quarters to discredit the report by claiming the non-neutrality of some of the authors, including me. This type of mud-slinging is to be expected.
On the positive side, the Israeli military has requested details in order to conduct an internal investigation into some of the incidents documented in the report.
As a Jewish health professional, it was meaningful for me to participate in this mission. Having collected the evidence myself, I can say with certainty that what Israel is doing in Palestine does not merit exceptionalism to international human rights norms and standards.
Being able to witness and document this unacceptable tragedy in Gaza, as well as provide support to Israeli human rights advocates who are being marginalised for their opposition to the occupation, was both humbling and affirming.
Trying to decipher the ‘warning shots’ and respond to the drones made me feel on high alert most of the time
Baldwin-Ragaven is a physician and activist in the department of family medicine at Wits University.