The Gaza Hospital, a community hospital in Nahariya, Israel, during the 2006-2007 War of the Second Lebanon-Israel War, and a “limited spillover”
Galilee isn’t just going underground for safety. The hospital’s first floor is fortified to withstand a missile attack, protecting the trauma department, ambulance bay and other surgical rooms from an attack out of Lebanon.
A father caressing the feet of his newborn, family members crowding around the bed of a ailing loved one, and a nurse drawing blood are typical hospital scenes.
The community hospital in Nahariya is just 6 miles from the border with Lebanon — where tensions and fighting between Israel and Lebanese militants are intensifying.
“We are underground with the patients because we are preparing ourselves to continue taking care of our patients, even under fire,” explains Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director of the hospital. He’s wearing a protective vest over his dress shirt.
Palestinian attackers killed more than 1,200 people in Israel on October 7. They also took about 240 captives back to Gaza, including civilians and Israeli soldiers.
On Oct. 31, an Israeli airstrike hit the densely populated refugee camp of Jabalia, north of Gaza City. There are reports that the largest refugee camp in Gaza has been hit. Israel says the attacks killed many militant, including Hamas commanders. The Health Ministry in Gaza says that 195 people have been killed.
The war has also ignited what experts are so far calling a “limited spillover” of conflict between Israeli forces and militants in neighboring Lebanon.
Dr. Bahir Sirhan, who works in the Galilee hospital’s emergency department, says there’s no need to wait for future escalation. He says that the threat is real. The war is going on. It’s here.
Galilee’s wartime protections were used in Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon. During that conflict, a missile from Lebanon hit the fourth floor of the hospital. Staff had already moved their medical care underground, so no one was injured in the attack.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, has said he’s ready to escalate the war further at any moment, depending on the course of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its behavior toward Lebanon. He said in his speech on Friday that all scenarios are open on the southern side of the country.
The trauma center in Gaza: “It’s a nightmare!” Sheffer recalls the first hospital worker injured by a rocket attack
“I’m not afraid myself,” says Dr. Vered Fleisher Sheffer, who runs the unit, “but the safety is so important to our parents and our most vulnerable babies.” When NPR visited late last month, there were babies being treated who were delivered early and received the same treatment as if there wasn’t a war.
It’s a stark contrast to what’s happening with the health care system in Gaza, which was already struggling before Israel launched its response to the Hamas attacks. The Health Ministry in Gaza says that 18 hospitals and most of the primary care centers have stopped functioning due to attacks or lack of fuel.
Heavy steel doors guard the opening to the first floor trauma center and emergency room. Nearby there’s a shower ready in case Lebanon uses chemical weapons.
For the last few weeks, the hospital has been receiving Israeli soldiers wounded from fighting in Gaza, as well as more than 200 northern residents who have been injured in rocket attacks from Lebanon.
A few weeks ago, Sirhan was working when he received a call about a rocket attack near the border with India that injured four people and forced the cancellation of an ambulance ride. Some of the patients, it turned out, were his relatives.
The patients called his name when they saw him, and he calmed them down. Their injuries weren’t critical and they have since recovered. The experience still hurts him. “I don’t wish to treat my family again,” he says. “That’s a nightmare.”
The practice exercise was held in the underground garage, and it was the first time many staff had used that space.
“I cannot lie and say it’s not a terrifying and frightening situation because it is,” says Alina Maister, an internal medicine nurse who is part of the training exercise and describes the last month in Israel as “one long day.”
She says she looked at her fellow nurses as she toured the facility. It is hard to imagine how our jobs would look down here. Where is everything? People will be where? What is the plan?
During the drill, dozens of staff members begin to practice triage and treatment of pretend-patients played by their coworkers and members of the Israeli military. The acoustics in hospitals make it difficult to hear the patients, which is why the staff needs to practice rolling the beds in the right direction.
Maister is confident that they’ll figure out what to do in time. “We know how to handle most situations. I think it is one of the strengths of a nurse.
Rambam, Israel, as a pediatric dialysis facility: When the kid’s room becomes comfortable in the street, Israel launches its ground assault on Gaza
At Rambam, the pediatric dialysis is already fully functional in the garage. That section of parking spots is buzzing with the hum of nurses, children playing video games and a father listening to a pop song with his daughter.
The son of Tal Romano is getting a transplant. “It makes me feel more comfortable,” Romano says, sitting next to his son. It seems very safe down here.
While Romano speaks to NPR, a nurse draws a flower in pen on Hadar’s leg to make him laugh. Romano says his only critique of getting treatment underground is that Hadar misses the colorful kid-friendly decor of the upstairs unit.
Days before Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, it was closing in on a deal for Hamas to release up to 50 hostages in exchange for pausing the bombardment unleashed in response to the militants’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to Arab and Western officials with knowledge of the talks.
After Israel launched its ground assault on Gaza, the negotiations came to a screeching halt, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The talks are still going on a few days later.
“There will be no pause without the return of hostages and missing persons,” Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said in a written statement to The New York Times this week. “The only way of saving the hostages is if Israel continues its ground operation.”
Israel claims that Hamas uses fuel for rocket attacks and has a large amount of fuel meant for civilians. But aid organizations have said that fuel is one of the biggest needs in Gaza, to keep everything from hospitals to bakeries running.
But as Hamas rocket attacks continue, and artillery shelling and small-arms fire intensifies within the territory, determining the source of the damage detected by satellite imagery becomes increasingly difficult.
It was estimated that 27% to 30% of the northern half of the territory had been damaged since the beginning of the war. Throughout the Gaza Strip, they estimate that between 13% and 18% of all structures have been destroyed or damaged, a range of 38,000 to 51,500 buildings.
“It’s just steadily increasing,” said Van Den Hoek, a satellite imagery and remote sensing expert who has been studying this imagery since the war’s onset. There’s damage in areas where people live.
Hamas in Gaza: the number of displaced people in the Gaza Strip and Israeli airstrikes near Bureij refugee camp
The Gaza Strip lies between the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel. Its footprint is roughly equal to that of the city of Philadelphia, but with a half million more people, many packed into concrete high-rises in tight cities up and down the coast.
It is not clear how many people still live in the northern part of the Strip. According to the UN, over 160,000 displaced people are being sheltered in schools across the northern part of Gaza. A further 117,000 displaced people are sheltering in hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza, they estimate. The World Health Organization said on Oct. 29 that “evacuation of hospitals is impossible without endangering patients’ lives.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 45 people were killed late on Saturday when bombs fell on Al-Maghazi refugee camp. The Israeli military said Sunday that it was looking into whether or not it was active in the area at that time. Nearby, The Associated Press reports that Israeli airstrikes struck near Bureij refugee camp, killing at least 13.