New Delhi: On 2 July, a photograph flashing on the news sent a wave of grief across Gaza’s medical fraternity.
It was that of Dr Marwan al-Sultan, a prominent cardiologist and director of the Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip. A report in The Guardian said the doctor was killed when an Israeli missile hit an apartment block where he and his family were staying. His wife, daughter, sister and son-in-law died as well.
Dr al-Sultan was one of just two remaining doctors in Gaza capable of treating heart problems, Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Gaza’s prominent Al-Shifa Hospital, told AP. A 2022 photograph carried by AP showed Selmia, al-Sultan and other top doctors smiling at a graduation ceremony at the Islamic University. At least four of those seen in the picture are now dead, the report said.
The list of Palestinian doctors who have been killed, injured or detained continues to grow as Israel bombards Gaza while truce talks falter. The Gaza Health Ministry has reported 1,580 medical personnel killed since 7 October 2023. According to the United Nations (UN), 1,400 healthcare workers have lost their lives. Healthcare Workers Watch—an initiative by Palestinian healthcare professionals—says 162 medical staff were in Israeli detention as of February 2025, including senior physicians.
As the pillars of Gaza’s already-collapsing healthcare system fell one by one, a 23-year-old Palestinian woman, an English language graduate, contemplated how she could be of service to her people.
Ultimately, she decided to give up on her plans of becoming a teacher. She has now begun to attend medical school, so she can be a neurosurgeon.
“My people and my country will need me more in the coming years. We need more and more doctors,” Donya Ahmad Abu Sitta tells ThePrint. “This is the right time…they (Israel Defence Forces) are targeting and abducting doctors. They are not even allowing many foreign doctors to enter Gaza.”
“During the war, we are only thinking that we, ourselves, may die. I think that after the war, it will be a more difficult time, more than the war itself,” she adds.
Donya and her family were first displaced from their house in Qizan al-Najjar, a suburb in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, to a school building in the city on 11 October, 2023, days after the Palestinian militant outfit Hamas carried out ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’, killing at least 1,200 Israelis and abducting another 255 including foreign nationals.
Hamas claimed the attack was retaliation for Israeli aggression, raids, and assaults on worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel declared war on Hamas and launched a series of ground and air military offensives in Gaza, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and leaving countless dead.
Hardly a month after her graduation, Donya admitted herself to the medical college at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. On 24 June, she bought cakes for her sisters to celebrate her new career path.
She says, “I have always loved teaching children, so I studied English. It is not easy to transform from a teacher to a doctor, still, with attacks on medical personnel increasing, I took the difficult decision to study medicine to help the wounded and sick among my people.”
And she is hopeful of achieving her new goal, “There are many difficulties due to the lack of necessary resources to study medicine, but I will overcome them. I am now about to finish the midterm exams for the first semester of medical school.”
She also plans to continue writing and teaching, but her students in the future may be junior resident doctors.
Doctors who perished
“Resistance is when doctors stay back at hospitals, treating patients for days and nights, without payment or the comfort of seeing family or friends,” says Donya. “Doctors want to stay with patients. If I become one of them, I would also keep working, no matter the cost.”
On 18 December 2023, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, orthopaedic department head at Al-Shifa Hospital, refused to leave his patients during an Israeli raid and was detained. He died on 19 April, 2024, in Ofer Prison, reportedly after he was tortured. Two more doctors, Dr Ziad Mohammed Al-Dalou and Dr Iyad Al-Rantisi, were tortured to death as well, in Israeli prisons, according to the UN.
Dr Hammam Alloh, Gaza’s only nephrologist, was killed in November 2023 in an airstrike on his home. Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, Dr Ahmad Al Sahar, and Dr Ziad Al-Tatari, with Doctors Without Borders, were killed in an Israeli strike on Al-Awda Hospital later that same month.
Dr Hamdi al-Najjar died from injuries sustained in an airstrike on his home in Khan Younis—which also killed nine of his 10 kids—in May. His wife, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, was then providing care to patients in Nasser Hospital.
Among doctors detained by the Israeli forces is Dr Hussam Abu Safyia, a paediatrician and Kamal Adwan Hospital director. Till before his detention, Dr Hussam, according to the NYT, chose to remain with his patients while grieving his son, killed earlier by the Israeli forces and buried on the hospital grounds by the medical staff.
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Nowhere is safe
Donya and her family moved to a school building in Khan Younis, thinking it would keep them safe from Israeli strikes. Under international humanitarian law, hospitals and schools are protected during a war, but almost all of Gaza’s hospitals and many of its schools and universities, have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli strikes.
She recalls that Israel “targeted a house next to the school, and when I woke up, I saw shattered glass covering my sisters and brothers”. Donya has seven siblings—three sisters and four brothers. One of the brothers lives abroad.
“The windows (of the school) had broken on us …. we just ran out without even putting our shoes on. I will never forget that day … I did not hear my phone ringing nearly 20 times. One of my brothers, who was out volunteering at a hospital, was calling me after being informed of the explosion,” she says. The classroom next to theirs collapsed, with the injured later hospitalised, she adds.
After the bombing, Donya and her family moved to Al-Shaboura camp in Rafah on 10 December 2023 and, for the first time, took shelter in a tent. “In the school, we at least had a classroom. In a tent, you start from zero and establish a place, then add food, and so on. It was unfamiliar for us, no lavatory, and in the first week, no food. Those five months in the tent were my worst.”
When the bombing turned dangerous in Rafah, they returned to their home, only to find it partially destroyed. Out of options, the family reached the Khan Younis camp in the west of the city and later shifted to a rented room.
Through all this, Donya, then a student of English Language at Al-Aqsa University, continued her lessons. It included advanced translation classes with the head of the English department at her university, Ahmed Junina.
‘Used to studying at night now’
Donya graduated in English Language from Gaza’s Al Aqsa University on 28 May. Al Aqsa, the oldest university in Gaza, has been heavily damaged in airstrikes, and what remains of its compound has now turned into a shelter for displaced Palestinians.
Donya, however, continued online classes, studied translation under the English department head, Ahmed Junina, and analysed the Gaza coverage in The Guardian and The New York Times for her thesis. Now, she writes for two news sites.
A sixth displacement took Donya away from her city to where she is currently living—Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip, in a room partitioned for men and women of the family with what they could find. “We were displaced a week ago, and we are still fixing everything because we cannot bring our home with us. We only take what is most necessary, and when we find a place to stay and need this or that, we realise we left it where we came from.”
Before the war, Donya used to study in the silence of the central library of the Al Aqsa University. Israeli soldiers, however, burnt the library down while recording themselves before the flames, The Times of Israel reported. Her mother no longer allows her to go out and study in workplaces or cafes. So, she, like many Palestinians, is forced to study in the room she shares with all of her family members.
“But, I am so used to learning in silence that now, I stay up at night to study. The mornings are for my two sisters, who, by now, have got used to learning quite different subjects at the same time,” she adds.
With the Gaza education ministry suspending the school year, temporary classes for children are ongoing under individual initiatives, but these do not cover many. University students who have not dropped out are managing classes in alternative buildings or online.
Apart from classes, Donya also wrote a book called Pieces. Author Chana Basha Helfand, whom she knew from before the war, helped her edit it.
“The world is silent. 1948. 1976. 2023. 2024. 2025,” reads a line in her book Pieces. “…Ready again for the same story to be told? We will rebuild Gaza from its ruins.”
Her final thesis—supervised by Hashil Al-Saadi from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman—discussed the limited number of articles on Gaza in English media outlets, such as The Guardian and The New York Times, as well as what gets lost in translation, and war propaganda.
‘Books lost, memories on every street’
Most books have disappeared amid the destruction and displacement. Hard copies, if intact, are passed among students, but nowadays, most are downloading e-books, says Donya. Often, however, they have no internet where they live. So, students like her walk kilometres to get a signal, and that too is available at fixed times, such as early morning.
Writing helps Donya remember things she does not want to forget. “Writing gives me power. We (Gazans) try to keep our memories alive by writing and reading.”
In pursuit of memories, Donya also wants to document destroyed cultural sites that she once frequented in Khan Younis. Many of them have now turned to dust. “Al Basha Palace, Omari Mosque, and Al Qarara Cultural Museum lie fully or partially destroyed; this is an attack on Palestinian culture and identity,” she says.
“I knew every place in Khan Younis. I have memories on every street, at every corner, as I was engaged in voluntary work and community service before this war and had to go places,” she says, adding that a local project documenting older Palestinians—who experienced the start of the ‘Nakba’ involving the displacement of Palestinians from their ancestral land, massacres, and burning of villages—now stands suspended.
She also tried to teach the Palestinian children around her. “When I was living near Nasser Hospital, I was teaching children English. More than teaching, I wanted them to forget about the war and have a childhood. So, I mostly engaged them in play and fun activities.”
But displacement ended this.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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People reach all sorts of conclusions except the ones closest to the truth – that this entire war would not have happened if Gazans had not elected Hamas, had not made room for Hamas in their society.
Some would rather distort the truth by believing figments of the imagination like the IDF is deliberately targeting the medical profession.
What is wrong with India media houses? Is there no editorial oversight at The Print?
How can such garbage be passed off as journalism?
Are we really supposed to believe that the Israeli armed forces are selectively targeting Palestinian doctors, nurses and para-medics?
This is nothing but a disinformation campaign. Much better standards were expected of The Print.