LONDON: Injuries inflicted during Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have become an “endemic disease,” a high-profile British-Palestinian surgeon has warned.
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a reconstructive surgeon, has made regular trips to Gaza since the 1980s to treat wounded Palestinians.
He returned to the war-torn territory last week amid renewed Israeli-Palestinian fighting. The 11-day conflict left more than 250 people dead in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
But the real toll is reflected in survivors who must live with life-changing injuries, Abu-Sittah warned. “War injuries are now something akin to an endemic disease in Gaza,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said almost 2,000 Palestinians were injured in the conflict, including more than 600 children and 400 women.
It added that about 10 percent of those injured could suffer from long-term disabilities that require extensive rehabilitation.
Previous flare-ups in Gaza have inflicted war-related disabilities on 5-10 percent of the entire population.
Abu-Sittah said he now commonly treats people who have been injured in multiple wars, and his current trip mostly involved treating crush injuries.
In past rounds of violence, the most common injuries were gunshot and shrapnel wounds, and the same surnames “keep appearing in operating rooms,” he said.
“Most people were injured in their homes. We have whole families in different rooms in the hospital,” he added.
“Most of the areas targeted (by Israeli airstrikes) were urban areas in the center of Gaza. They weren’t rural peripheral communities.”
Gaza requires highly skilled specialist surgeons who are not found in typical health systems, due to the complex injuries inflicted in the latest violence.
“It has turned the public health pyramid on its head,” said Abu-Sittah. “You need surgeons in a number disproportionate to the 2 million people who live in Gaza.”
The 51-year-old surgeon has volunteered in conflict zones since the 1980s, visiting Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.
His expertise in blast-related injuries led him to author several books on the subject and conduct research for Imperial College London.
Abu-Sittah’s family originally hail from Gaza, where they were refugees. He grew up in Kuwait before moving to the UK.
Treating wounded children is the most difficult part of his job, he said, and it “is what keeps me coming back to Gaza.”
Referring to his three children, he added: “Dealing with wounded children becomes much more taxing once you’ve had your own. With kids (in Gaza), you patch them up now so they’ll be injured in the next war.”
British-Palestinian surgeon: Gaza war injuries an ‘endemic disease’
https://arab.news/jybqf
British-Palestinian surgeon: Gaza war injuries an ‘endemic disease’
- Ghassan Abu-Sittah commonly treats people who have been injured in multiple conflicts
- “You need surgeons in a number disproportionate to the 2 million people who live in Gaza”
Son of jailed Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti demands UK do more to secure his release
- Arab Barghouti warns failure to free his father despite UK backing Palestinian statehood would give ‘false hope’
- Marwan Barghouti has been imprisoned by Israel for 22 years but regularly tops polls for next Palestinian president
LONDON: The son of renowned Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti has demanded that the UK government make his release from Israeli prison a central part of its efforts to support a Palestinian state.
Arab Barghouti said his father’s freedom is essential to continue the political process after the UK announced that it would recognize a Palestinian state last year.
“Simply saying ‘we support a two-state solution’ without doing anything about it is deepening the problem, because you are just giving the Palestinian people false hopes,” Arab Barghouti said.
His intervention comes amid a campaign by British MPs from across the political spectrum to secure Marwan Barghouti’s release.
He has been in prison for 22 years after being convicted of five murders, but the UK’s Inter-Parliamentary Union found in an inquiry in 2003 that his trial failed to meet several fairness criteria.
Simon Henderson, the author of the IPU inquiry, told a meeting in Westminster that of the 96 witnesses in the trial, only 21 could testify over Marwan Barghouti’s involvement in the deaths of the four Israelis and one Greek, but that none confirmed it and 12 specifically exonerated him of blame.
A Fatah member who is referred to as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, he regularly tops polls of who the Palestinian people believe would make a good successor to current President Mahmoud Abbas.
Arab Barghouti said: “The UK recognition of Palestine is going to be seen as symbolic in the history books as long as there are no actual steps being taken on the ground.”
He added: “Current Palestinian politics is dysfunctional and that can only be changed with democratic renewal, including a new leadership that really represents the people. We have not had elections for 20 years.
“My father does not have a magic stick, he cannot change everything overnight, but people look at my father as a source of hope.”
Over the past 15 years, Israel has released more than 500 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, but Barghouti has always been excluded from such deals.
His son said: “The reason he is not being released is because the Israeli government does not want a legitimate Palestinian leader, because it does not want a two-state solution.”
Adding that his father has been held in solitary confinement since Oct. 7, 2023, and is regularly assaulted by guards, he added: “If that is not an invitation to speak out against the violations of international law, I don’t know what is.
“I would expect the UK government, as an upholder of international law, to go further and call for his release.
“He can change the status quo, Palestinian politics, and take us on a path to where there is real hope for a political settlement.
“We have not yet had brave enough British politicians when it comes to the highest level of politics.”
The Foreign Office has not supported calls for Marwan Barghouti’s release, but said it affirms the right of Palestinians in Israeli prisons to have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
