“As long as there are patients, I won’t leave,” Dr. Hossam Abu Safia tells Drop Site. News from Kamal Adwan Hospital.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS and ABUBAKER ABED, DROP SITE NEWS, OCT 9, 2024

The director of the besieged Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza is refusing Israeli orders to shut the hospital down and evacuate. “As long as there are patients, I won’t leave,” Dr. Hossam Abu Safia told Drop Site News. “I’ve been here since the genocide started, and I am determined to continue helping my people.”

The attack on the hospital comes amid a wider, vicious assault, with Israeli forces issuing new displacement orders for nearly all of northern Gaza on Sunday, where at least 400,000 people remain. Last month, reports emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering a plan to lay siege to northern Gaza and ethnically cleanse the entire area of Palestinians. The plan, known as the “General’s Plan,” was launched in an Israeli television campaign in September. Over the past week, Israeli forces have moved into areas of northern Gaza, conducting heavy airstrikes and shelling, and besieging the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Shortly after Drop Site spoke with Abu Safia, there were reports that the hospital received 16 bodies and 17 injured in an Israeli attack on Al-Yaman Al-Saeed Hospital in Jabaliya.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three hospitals in northern Gaza, including the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals, to receive evacuation orders on Tuesday by the Israeli military to clear out all their staff and patients within 24 hours, threatening that if they didn’t, they would face “the same fate as al-Shifa hospital, with destruction, killing and arrest,” according to a statement by the ministry of health in Gaza. The statement also said Israeli forces had surrounded the Kamal Adwan hospital and opened fire on its administration office. Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa hospital — Gaza’s largest — for a second time in March, setting buildings alight and destroying much of the complex. Mass graves with hundreds of bodies were found in and around the hospital after Israeli troops withdrew from the area in early April.

Kamal Adwan is the only partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza that specializes in treating babies and providing dialysis. There are some sixty patients remaining in the hospital from newborns to the elderly. “They are mostly war-wounded,” Abu Safia said. “We also handle other types of patients and treat viral diseases, but Israeli forces are encircling the hospital and we lack everything here, we are unable to continue doing our work properly.”

“Patients are still receiving medical care in the hospital. People are forced to walk the streets under the bombs to try and come for treatment,” Abu Safia said. “But we are operating at a very minimum capacity. There is not enough medical equipment and supplies and not enough fuel to run the hospital. This place is just devoid of everything.”

On the one-year anniversary of the launch of Israel’s assault, the health ministry issued a series of reports on the attack on the health care system over the past 12 months, including a total of 23 out of 36 hospitals being destroyed or ceasing to function, 130 ambulances destroyed or rendered inoperational, 986 people in the health care sector killed, and more than 300 medical staff imprisoned.

“Israel needs to cease its attacks on medical facilities,” Abu Safia said. “To keep our people safe and enable us to carry on offering healthcare services, it must adhere to the law. It cannot continue to harm us and target hospitals when there are just one or two hospitals treating thousands of patients. Dialysis, pediatric care, and numerous other treatments are offered here. The hospital serves as a major medical hub in this area. We call out the world to stop them.”

“These forced mass evacuations of homes and bombing of neighborhoods by the Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the Strip of Palestinian life.”

Sarah Vuylsteke, Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator in Gaza

Israeli tanks and troops have encircled and invaded the Jabaliya refugee camp, laying siege to the area for days with reports of house demolitions, artillery shelling, and dead bodies in the streets. On Wednesday, the health ministry said 45 people were confirmed killed and 130 wounded over the previous 24 hours across Gaza. 

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif today reported: “Since the beginning of the war, attempts to displace the residents of the north have not stopped, but what is happening today in terms of a stifling siege on Jabaliya camp and a complete disruption of the medical system due to the intensive bombing of homes, hospitals and shelters represents the most dangerous stage.”

Meanwhile, the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA has been forced to shut down lifesaving services in the north with seven schools sheltering displaced people being evacuated. Only 2 out of 8 water wells are now operational in Jabaliya and Israeli troops also shelled the al-Shulufa bakery, in al-Fallujah, setting it alight and destroying the only bakery in northern Gaza.

“These forced mass evacuations of homes and bombing of neighborhoods by the Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the Strip of Palestinian life. To make matters worse, no humanitarian supplies have been allowed to enter the area since 1 October,” Sarah Vuylsteke, Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement.

Abubaker Abed is a journalist from Deir al-Balah.