(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Washington Post
Battle wounds and grisly injuries don't often faze Adam Hamawy. The 53-year-old reconstructive plastic surgeon and US army veteran who served as a combat trauma surgeon in Iraq has seen the burned skin of children after a firework exploded, and a soldier whose legs were blasted away by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Two weeks at the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis have brought together a harrowing combination of the two as Hamawy and a skeleton crew of doctors on a volunteer mission with the Virginia-based Palestinian American Medical Association see a steady stream of child patients wounded by weapons of war.
"Think of the injuries that you see in war, with blood everywhere, with shrapnel that's supposed to kill soldiers and military personnel and take out tanks and bunkers,” Hamawy said. "Now think about that going through a child's body.”
Hamawy and his colleagues from a two-week volunteer medical mission to Gaza are urgently calling for a cease-fire and for the US government to halt arms sales to Israel and use its leverage as an allied nation to get Israel to reopen the vital Rafah crossing.
Israeli forces seized and closed the border May 7, marking its first ground incursion into Rafah and cutting off desperately needed food, water and medical supplies. With a relief team in Cairo unable to enter Gaza, the closing had also trapped Hamawy and his colleagues less than 10 miles from the crossing, even though the World Health Organization had pre-coordinated an exit for them on May 13.
On Friday, five Americans from PAMA's international team were evacuated through the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel, while two green-card holders were denied entry and three Americans opted to remain, according to PAMA Executive Director Marwan Ahmad and Samaiya Mushtaq, whose husband, Mahmoud Sabha, was among the five Americans evacuated. A source familiar with the evacuation said 12 Americans volunteering with other medical missions were also evacuated in the operation, which was assisted by the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
For weeks, airstrikes by the Israeli Defense Force have shaken the hospital walls while Hamawy and his team work; one came during his phone interview with The Washington Post on Thursday. As injured patients pour in, the staff has run low on alcohol pads, gauze and other supplies, while burn cream is applied in ever-thinning layers.
The strikes have also reduced to rubble the homes of Gaza medical students and staffers at the hospital, further reducing the ranks as locals are forced to evacuate or move their families to safety.
After the home of a medical student at the Gaza European Hospital was shelled, he retrieved the munition and showed it to Hamawy, who says he read the lettering: "Made in the USA, Lockheed Martin.”
As a doctor, an Army veteran and a Palestinian American, the sight, Hamawy said, was "disheartening.”
While the Biden administration has embraced calls for a cease-fire, it has also continued to send funding and weapons to Israel; the administration moved forward Tuesday with a $1 billion arms deal with Israel despite concerns that its assault on Rafah was worsening civilian casualties.
The White House continues to struggle with condemning Israel's attacks on Gaza, which have killed civilians, humanitarian aid workers and journalists.
Illinois State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid (D), who is serving as a liaison between the medical workers' families and congressional Democrats such as Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, said the situation creates a "troubling tension.”
"We're doing both things: trying to make sure our government is pushing for basic protections for aid workers, and more globally, trying to stop our government from funding the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Rashid said.
Hamawy thinks the decision to halt arms shipments to Israel would be far less fraught if American leaders saw with their own eyes what he has witnessed for more than two weeks. Hamawy said the devastation he has seen undermines any claim by Israel that its attacks on Rafah are in "self-defense.”
Hamawy said he saw a 1-year-old girl with burns across 40 percent of her body, while her 3-year-old brother had burns across his arms, legs and chest; two other siblings with less severe wounds were being treated in a nearby field hospital. Hamawy amputated a 14-year-old boy's right leg below the knee before hearing the telltale whistle of a nearby airstrike through the window. Soon after, a girl Hamawy estimated to be 5 or 6 came in with a missing arm. A 4-year-old girl who came into the ER did not survive.
And that was all before dinnertime Thursday.
"There are children everywhere in Gaza - everywhere. And so anywhere that's going to get hit is going to have children,” Hamawy said. As he spoke, he described his view from a balcony where he counted more than a dozen children playing below.
"Dinnertime” in Gaza also means little when food supplies are dwindling and malnourishment is rampant. Hamawy said what little food there is for Gazans now costs about 20 times the normal price because of scarcity; families can stand in line all day for a jug of barely-drinkable water.
Hamawy said the medical staff eats about once a day, as they are able to pay the inflated prices; his most recent meal was bread, a bottle of water and later, a piece of candy. Gazans have been generous in looking after their foreign guests, he said, assuring that the doctors are healthy. But loved ones back home are worried.
Nidal Hozien, Hamawy's brother-in-law, said the medical professionals are probably reluctant to say anything that would take attention from their suffering patients or worry their families. Still, Hozien said the signs are showing.
"When we see him, Face Timing, Zoom calling, we can see that he's lost a lot of weight,” Hozien observed.
Omar Sabha has watched from afar as his brother, Mahmoud Sabha, puts in 20-hour days at the hospital. Omar Sabha understands the high-pressure environment of working in Gaza's depleted health-care system, some that have been pushed to more than 300 percent capacity; in April, the U.S. Marine Corps veteran and OR nurse did a 10-day medical mission at al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, where he described the scenes as "apocalyptic.”
Sabha managed to see his brother for one day as they crossed paths while Mahmoud was on his first tour. More than a month later on Mahmoud's second tour, Sabha said he could tell from pictures his brother was "mentally wearing down.”
Samaiya Mushtaq, Mahmoud Sabha's wife, told The Post he was emotionally wrecked and in tears after his evacuation Friday.
"When I FaceTimed him [Friday] outside the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] he was in tears in the courtyard,” Mushtaq said. "He said, 'I saw Khan Younis, and it's completely gone. Every single building is gutted and destroyed.'”
Before Friday's evacuation, the medical workers acknowledged the fear, shared by their Gazan counterparts, that the hospital will become a target if foreign aid workers leave.
The threat of strikes on humanitarian workers in Gaza has also been weighing on the mind of Sen. Duckworth, who invoked the UN staffer killed in an Israeli strike Monday while driving a car in Rafah marked with a UN flag.
"We had a UN vehicle just get hit by a tank shell, so of course I'm worried about his safety,” Duckworth told The Post Wednesday in reference to Hamawy.
"I owe a great debt to Dr. Hamawy,” Duckworth later said in a statement to The Post. "[He] took care of me when I wasn't able to take care of myself.”
Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, has credited Hamawy for saving her life in 2004 after the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit with an RPG. In her 2021 memoir, "Every Day Is a Gift,” Duckworth described the attack that made her a double amputee and mentions Hamawy by name as one of the surgeons who saved her.
When Duckworth learned that Hamawy was trapped in Gaza, she quickly got his phone number and said she remains in close contact with him.
"I am doing everything I can - including pushing the State Department, the NSC and both the Israeli and Egyptian governments - to ensure the safe and swift evacuation of this group of medical professionals from Rafah through whatever crossing we can get them to,” Duckworth said in her statement.
Despite Friday's partial evacuations, the Rafah border closure remains steeped in uncertainty. What Hamawy knows for sure is that as he works side-by-side with a global cohort, the United States he "grew up in and believe in is represented.” It's made him recall his time in Iraq when he and other Army surgeons cared for every wounded person who came their way, regardless of which side they were on.
"When we fight wars, when you're wounded and you're a civilian, you're not a target,” Hamawy said.
As US funding and weapons continue to flow into Israel, Hamawy's time in Gaza has left him wondering, 20 years after his Army service, if that's an idea the United States still believes in.
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