They push wheelchairs, hospital beds, or carry wounded relatives in their arms: the Israeli evacuation order for the area came down on Sunday and the largest hospital in the center of the war-torn Gaza Strip immediately began to empty.
“To all residents and displaced persons of Block 128, the Israeli army will act with force against Hamas and terrorist groups […]evacuate immediately,” insist the messages sent by SMS and on social networks.
But at the heart of block 128, on the map distributed by the Israeli army, is the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir el-Balah, one of the last 16 hospitals still operational (and “partially” only, according to the UN) in the Gaza Strip, bombed by Israel since the deadly attack by Hamas on its soil on October 7.
Asked by AFP about this umpteenth evacuation order, the Israeli army declared that it had “informed” “those responsible for the Palestinian health system and the international community that they do not need to evacuate hospitals and medical infrastructure in the area.”
Clearly the message did not get through, or if it did get through, it was not understood or the Gazans do not give it any credence: the flight of patients continued on Monday, leaving corridors, wards and rooms empty.
Tamam al-Rai, carried on her bed on wheels by her family, cannot move after her “war injury”.
Caregivers “resist”
“I have a fracture and I had to have an amputation. They told us to ‘evacuate’, but where are we going to go? Where are we going to get treatment?” laments this grandmother, who has managed to pile on her bed a few blankets, a fan – useless in a territory without electricity – and bottles of water.
All around her, families are trying to make their way. The wealthiest pay for a donkey and its cart to move their belongings. There, two men advance, each carrying a little girl with arms or legs in casts. Here, another carries a teenager whose legs are paralyzed, a bag of serum still planted intravenously in his hand.
The Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza said it was concerned about the fate of “100 patients still in the hospital, including seven in intensive care.”
The ministry announced that the hospital was “still functioning,” but people, and even “some medical teams, panicked after learning that the surrounding areas were zones of military operations,” said Khalil al-Daqran, a spokesman for the ministry.
“Most people [craignent de connaître] the fate of other hospitals,” he said, referring to establishments affected by the fighting when they were not simply stormed by the Israeli army, which continues to accuse Hamas fighters, or other armed groups, of using hospitals as bases to shelter or launch attacks, something the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.
Iyad al-Jabri, director of this hospital which had around 200 beds before the war and has always been the only general hospital in the centre of the Gaza Strip, assures that his teams are “resisting”.
“We are staying, we will continue to treat the patients and the wounded,” who are increasingly numerous in the area now that the fighting is concentrated around Deir el-Balah.
Here, as elsewhere, since October, hospitals have had to deal with permanent shortages of electricity, fuel, water, medicines and medical equipment.
“Where are we going to go now?”
In August, the evacuation orders of “blocs” defined by the Israeli army have already forced, according to the UN, 250,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to leave, or 12% of the population. In the small devastated territory are crammed 2.4 million Palestinians, almost all displaced and threatened by various epidemics after the resurgence of polio.
But it is not this disease that first worries the families of displaced people who are crowded into the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
All have in mind the Israeli assault on al-Shifa hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza, now reduced to an “empty shell” strewn with human remains, according to the WHO.
Maha al-Sarsak and his family are therefore preparing to hit the road again.
Nine months ago, they left their home in Shujaiya, in the northern Gaza Strip.
“First we went to Rafah (far south), then they told us to leave. We went to Khan Younis (a little further north), they told us to leave. We came to Deir el-Balah and once again, we have to leave,” the young girl laments.
“We’ve had enough! Where do we go now?”