Buckling Gaza Health Service Turns to Volunteers

Palestinians walk among the rubble of destroyed residential buildings following Israeli air strikes on Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, in Gaza City, 30 October 2023. (EPA)
Palestinians walk among the rubble of destroyed residential buildings following Israeli air strikes on Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, in Gaza City, 30 October 2023. (EPA)
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Buckling Gaza Health Service Turns to Volunteers

Palestinians walk among the rubble of destroyed residential buildings following Israeli air strikes on Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, in Gaza City, 30 October 2023. (EPA)
Palestinians walk among the rubble of destroyed residential buildings following Israeli air strikes on Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, in Gaza City, 30 October 2023. (EPA)

Gaza medical chiefs are turning to volunteers to help run an emergency service buckling under Israel's offensive as ambulances struggle to reach bomb sites past rubble-strewn roads and with ever-depleting supplies of fuel.

Medical and emergency staff have worked with little rest and are deploying in the most dangerous areas, witnessing the horror of violent death, terrible injuries and grief.

Gaza's health ministry has called on all trained paramedics to help staff hospitals and call-out teams, but though dozens have responded the system is still in dire need of more workers, it said.

"I have not gone home since the first day of the war. I shower here, sleep here and eat here," said Loay al-Astal, a volunteer emergency worker in Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave.

Health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave say Israeli air and artillery strikes have killed more than 8,000 people since Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters rampaged through security barriers to kill more than 1,400 Israelis and take more than 200 hostage.

After Israel began ground operations on Friday, many Gaza residents fear the destruction will intensify.

Israel has ordered civilians to leave the northern half of the Gaza Strip for the south, but has continued an intense bombardment across the enclave and many people are refusing to leave.

Shelling on Gaza's main north-south road on Monday meant the enclave was all but cut in two, with any attempts to flee south risking bombardment.

The health ministry said 116 medical staff had been killed in the bombardment since Oct. 7, along with 18 civil emergency department rescuers.

Astal, the volunteer who had trained at university to be a paramedic but was unemployed when the war began, described an incident in which some of his colleagues had nearly been killed by an air strike that blew out the windows of their ambulance.

"The glass was smashed and some of our volunteers were wounded," he said.

He is haunted by the memory of trying to save a woman who was buried up to her neck in rubble from an air strike. "There was a cut on her head and I rushed to treat the wound," Astal, 33, said.

She asked him to free her from the rubble so she could find her son, but she died minutes later, still trapped, he said. "I felt bad I couldn't save her," he said.

'Where should we go?'

The head of the Khan Younis ambulance service, Naseem Hassan, said the department was overwhelmed and needed trained medics. "We opened the door for volunteers and many young people answered that call and have been on duty since the war began," he said.

Along with the bombardment, Israel has imposed a blockade on the enclave, home to 2.3 million people, cutting supplies of electricity and fuel. Limited food and medical aid deliveries have entered Gaza since last week after international pressure on Israel.

"Ambulances are about to go out of operation because we have very limited fuel left. We have problems with communications. We lose touch with the ambulances that leave here," said volunteer driver Sari al-Najjar.

Phone and internet services in Gaza were cut off for nearly two days over the weekend as Israeli tanks started moving into the enclave. Communications gradually started returning from Sunday.

Without reliable power supplies, many residents were unable to charge phones, adding to the difficulties for ambulance crews trying to locate and coordinate rescues.

Thousands of people have gathered at hospitals in Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, many sheltering in makeshift tents hoping for some safety from the bombardment.

Medical officials said air strikes in the vicinity of the major Gaza City hospitals including al-Shifa, al-Quds and the Turkish Friendship hospital, have caused damage.

Israel has accused Hamas of placing command centers and weaponry near hospitals, which the group denies.

"Where should we go? It is all one death," said Hatem Sultan, sheltering near al-Shifa Hospital, the enclave's biggest medical center, where ambulances were constantly arriving with people injured in air strikes.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."