Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta exposed the health consequences of modern wars at the LARRUN (Ecology of War, New Wounds of the Never-Ending 21st Century Conflict) in November 2017, interviewed by journalist André Vltch. The doctor born in Gaza and with a Lebanese and British nationality, specialized in plastic surgery, reported the damage observed in the wars that have had him intervene from Iraq to Gaza, through Syria, and that constitute a new “ecology of war”.

On 10 May, when the street conflict caused by Israel to expel Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem spread to Gaza, Abu Sitta attended a telematic conference, at the seminar “Health Geopolitics in the Middle East”, organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Well aware of the consequences of the asymmetric war between Gaza and Israel, a few days later he worked in Gaza with the Médecins Sans Frontières association, sponsored by the World Health Organization.

Born in a refugee family in Gaza, he has gone to serve the wounded volunteers in all the wars that have taken place since the first intifada in 1987. The last in March 2018, when the Gacatarras organized the Great Return to Israel, confronting every Friday the Jewish forces during the weeks. At that time, doctors were primarily to care for young people shot to death, to whom the most evil whales, including internationally prohibited whales, left some sbans of life if they did not die. In the Battle of May 2021, almost all victims have been civilians of all ages massively bombed in fireworks and aircraft.

The fire of the Israelis kills two well-known doctors, colleagues from previous crises in Abu Sitta. One, Ayman Abu al-Ouf, head of Al Shifa Hospital and responsible for the devastating campaign against COVID-19 – wife Reem, who died together with two of her three children and more family members – and another, the neurologist and psychiatrist Moen al-Aloul. In all the interviews, Abu Sitta recalls these facts to denounce that when Israel planned “surgical” bombings with big calculations, it sought
to harm the inhabited neighborhoods and the skeletal health system of Gaza as quickly as possible.

The doctor specializing in plastic surgery has underlined to journalists that at Al Aoudeh Hospital that have been caught in the work, Israel's attacks this year have been different from the previous, massive: “Here you are seeing a human-induced humanitarian catastrophe, which has not been caused by volcanoes, earthquakes or tsunamis: this area is intentionally besieged in an incessant humanitarian
crisis. (…) Most of the wounds have been caused by the sinking of homes over people, the fire of explosions, the wounds caused by the metal splinters of the bombs, the broken bones of people trapped by the walls of the house…”.

In the short but violent battle between Hamas and the Israeli army, they have managed to get rockets further than ever before, they have responded with massive bombing… but the list of victims and damages shows the asymmetricity of the conflict. In Israel, ten civilians have been killed, two of them children and 119 wounded. 253 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 66 children and more than
1,900 wounded. 1,500 homes in Gaza have been completely destroyed, another 1,500 must be demolished by the irreparable and 17,000 more have been damaged.

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Most of the injured are beaten inside their homes. In Gaza hospitals, entire families can be found in different rooms. Most of the wounded under the Israeli wool bomb or aircraft were living in the central districts of the city, not in the suburbs or outside the populated areas.

The fact that 40 per cent of the injured are children, especially dislikes Abu Sitta, a surgeon hardened to care for so many wars and injuries in conflicts, because he knows that children have only started a long road: “If you have worked in this work you realize that they have years of operations and problems ahead of them, because as the body grows they will need successive reconstruction surgeries until they reach adulthood.”

He says that the hardest part of the job as a surgeon is to work with injured children, and that's why he comes back to Gaza every time, even the three children he has in Lebanon: “Caring for the wounded children is even harder when you have them. Here you are doing them today so that the wounded children will be injured again in the next war.”

She has especially in mind a girl, including the one who had diabetes and who has lost half of the nose and one side of the face through the iron splinter of a pump. These are war wounds, which require surgeons trained to work in the special ecology of war, the complex wounds caused by war violence, many surgeons, much more than a conventional health system needs.

Gaza is an extreme example of the ecology of war: the wounds caused by war, which the health system that has been plunged by a total siege used as a weapon of a long war cannot be well served in the midst of misery, hunger and lack of public service. And if all this wasn't enough, add the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is what war and siege bring to people this life that is not living.”

And there... make war medicine in war more asymmetrical: “For the operation of a thigh you must use a tourniquet, a inflatable hose to prevent the emptying of blood. Here it is not, we are talking about rubber tapes. There are no drills. Antiquated, hardened or perforated forceps and gloves. If you need a scalpel to cut the skin, you have it from the 1950s, those old ones for manual use, and not the traditional motorized knife.”

And the hope of resolving the Palestinian issue? Suddenly to international pressure? “There is no possibility of inviting the international community if it is an arbitrator. The Arab world has also disappeared; Syria and Iraq are drowned in their blood, unable to have someone in the region of Egypt, the Gulf States have left Palestine aside to reconcile with Israel… and there is no more.”