The situation in Gaza has become painfully clear to the world. Over two million people are crammed into a small, besieged strip of land, subjected daily to starvation, displacement, and death. The world now knows Gaza has lost the basic conditions for life – hospitals are reduced to rubble, children are dying from hunger and disease. In 2025, Gazans are dying from the sheer absence of food and medicine.
The world knows that women have been shot dead while standing in aid lines, hoping to secure a handful of flour or sugar to feed their children after their husbands were killed. The world sees international law being trampled underfoot in Gaza, as if it never existed.
And amidst all of this, healthcare staff are caught between two fires: the fire of responsibility towards their families trying to secure food, shelter, and safety along the fire of duty, which necessitates continuing to save lives and care for the wounded in a war that has no logic, no end, and no mercy.
The Weight of Two Wars
Gaza’s medical staff are enduring exceptional circumstances. They are the first responders, the last hope for thousands of injured civilians and yet, they too are under fire. Hundreds of doctors, nurses, and paramedics have been killed. Some while tending to the injured people, others while holding their own children in tents, and some simply because they could not afford warmth or food.
I think of my colleague and friend, Ahmad Al-Zaharna, a nurse I worked with in the emergency department of Al-Shifa Hospital during this war. Ahmad was tireless. He stayed on his feet for hours, refusing rest, running from one critical case to another, crying silently over the lifeless bodies of children. He embodied compassion and mercy.
But once we were forced out of the hospital and into displacement camps, everything changed. Our lives became a cycle of standing in food lines by day, and returning to field hospitals and makeshift clinics by night. Most medical staff haven’t received salaries in months. Prices have skyrocketed. Many of us can’t afford food, clothes, or even basic hygiene products.
Ahmad became a victim of that war, the war of poverty, neglect, and cold. One bitter night, he was found dead in his tent, frozen, without warm clothing or blankets. Curled up like a sleeping child, Ahmad had passed away in silence. He wasn’t just another number. He was brave, essential, and irreplaceable. The war stole him from us forever.
Fear Within Hospital Walls
We feared what awaited us outside the hospital more than what we faced within. Our hearts trembled with the unspoken knowing that our families were in danger. The worst fear was seeing a relative brought into the ER—injured or lifeless. It was a nightmare that often came true.
I recall the story of my friend Ahmed Nasrallah, another nurse who worked beside me. One day, he was unusually tense. I asked him what was wrong, but he could only say, “I feel like there’s a knife in my chest.” Hours later, a loud explosion shook the ground, very close to where his family lived.
He tried to call. No answer. Minutes later, the emergency department was flooded with injured women and children. Among them, his brother, also a paediatric nurse.
I watched Ahmed collapse into shock. We tried to save the injured. We tried to save his brother. But we couldn’t. He died.
Ahmed was the one who received his brother’s body, the one who wheeled him into the morgue. That day broke something in him. Ahmed told me that he will never forget everything that happened to him because his brother was his role model and ideal. But he came back to work the next day. So did many others like him, those who lost their children, their spouses, even their entire families. Still, they returned. Still, they worked.
Why? I still don’t know. Perhaps because love for this land runs deeper than despair. Or perhaps, it is simply the only way to survive because we live to save others
Outside the Hospital
Outside the hospital walls lies another battlefield. Finding a single loaf of bread has become a deadly mission. Every day, dozens die trying to secure food and water for their families. Many of my colleagues begin or end their shifts searching for basic sustenance. Sometimes they succeed. Often, they return empty-handed.
They tell me: “We studied to become nurses, doctors, not to stand in food lines or beg our neighbors for scraps.” They are ashamed, humiliated, and angry. Even in war, they say, those protected by international law should be spared the suffering of starvation. They are not just numbers. They are human beings like anyone else in the world.
But the war on Gaza has defied every human logic.
In the ruins of hospitals and tents of grief, Gaza’s medical workers continue to carry a burden no one should bear. Between hunger and duty, fear and sacrifice, loss and survival they remain. Not because they are fearless, but because they have no other choice.
Their stories deserve to be heard not as statistics, but as voices of humanity echoing from beneath the rubble.
