The only thing that kept Dr. Ahmed Muhana going during his 22 months in Israeli prisons and detention centers was the dream of returning to his family and to Gaza. When he was finally released after 665 days in captivity, he arrived home to find that every place he had returned to in his mind had been erased.
While in prison, he and other detainees were, he says, “completely cut off from the outside world.” Upon his release, he was taken across the border and through Gaza to his hospital, al-Awda. The extent of the destruction he saw “made my skin crawl… my chest tightened and my tears flowed.”
When Israeli forces arrested Muhana in December 2023, al-Awda Hospital was under siege. Muhana is one of the most prominent anaesthetists and emergency medicine consultants in Gaza, the Guardian reports.
Now, barely three months after his release, even though the ceasefire is officially still in effect, he says he and his colleagues are facing a new wave of crisis, as the shattered health system struggles to cope with a wave of preventable illness and death.
Muhana says he returned to a hospital depleted of staff, medical equipment and medicines. While he was in custody, 75 of his colleagues from al-Awda were killed, he says. As of October 7, 2023, according to the NGO Healthcare Workers Watch, the Israeli military has killed 1.200 Palestinian health workers and detained 384.
"I feel so much pain and sadness about what we are facing," says Muhana.
Despite the ceasefire, 77 percent of the population, including 100.000 children, still face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Muhana and his staff continue to treat severely malnourished children who are developing complex medical problems as a result.
International human rights organizations, including a United Nations commission, have concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, often citing the blockade of humanitarian aid and the systematic destruction of the health system.
“The deliberate military targeting of the health system has been successful not only in destroying infrastructure, but now in denying medical care to the population and increasing the mortality rate,” says Muhana.
According to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), 94 percent of hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, leaving patients, including newborns, without basic health care. The report confirms that, despite the ceasefire, Israel has prevented the entry of medical supplies and nutrients “essential for the survival of civilians.” Muhana says this is leading to avoidable deaths.
The situation worsened after Israel announced that it would revoke the operating licenses of 37 international NGOs operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, citing that they did not meet the requirements of new registration rules. Among them are medical humanitarian organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
"Today, there is not a single functional MRI machine in Gaza. There is only one CT scanner," says Muhana, making it difficult for doctors, who rely on these crucial devices, to make informed decisions in life-threatening cases.
He says cancer patients are suffering as tumors spread because available treatments are blocked, and that there has been an increase in kidney failure due to a lack of dialysis machines.
"I am a doctor, but I am powerless and cannot do anything to help people," says Muhana, adding that this, at the same time, further motivates him to continue working.
He began working immediately after his release, and has not had a chance to rest or begin to process the trauma he experienced in Israeli detention. He says he was tortured, humiliated, and deprived of food and medical care. A recent UN report concluded that Israel has a “de facto state policy” of organized torture.
He was initially taken to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center, where he spent 24 days blindfolded and handcuffed. During his transfer to the al-Naqab detention facility, Israeli forces beat him so brutally that one of his ribs was broken. He says he asked for painkillers but was denied them. “There were no medical services whatsoever.”
He says he saw two men die due to a lack of medical attention – deaths he believes could have been entirely preventable, including the death of a 37-year-old man who had symptoms of an intestinal obstruction.
“I went to the prison guards and told them that he needed to be taken to the infirmary urgently and that he probably needed emergency surgery,” Muhana recalls. He says the guards did nothing. “He was in pain all night… his stomach was swollen and he started vomiting feces because of a blockage in his intestines.”
Muhana says he was “constantly hungry” because they were given minimal food. At one point, he was placed with 40 other detainees in a small tent surrounded by wire, where they had no access to a toilet every day from 4 p.m. to 5 a.m. “It was nothing short of a tragedy.”
Muhana was never charged.
When he was released, he was returned to Gaza. “The first person I looked for was my mother,” he says. “I hugged her tightly. I was so worried about her… We stayed in that hug for five minutes before anyone had the strength to separate us.”
Reuniting with his wife and children “felt like my life had come back to me,” he says. “It was an indescribable moment of happiness.” His middle daughter, Salma, who had been just a girl when he was arrested, was now almost as tall as he was.
As she recovers from the trauma of detention and faces a huge medical crisis in Gaza, Muhana says she feels very little hope for the future.
“There is no future for my children here. I want them to be safe, to have a future, to study at good universities and do good jobs,” he says. “When I’m not in the hospital, I try to think of a place where I could take them, to go out together, but there is nowhere to go. There is no green space. Gaza used to have life – restaurants, beaches. Now there is nothing left.”
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