Palestinian Doctor Who Saved Lives In Gaza On Healing The Invisible Scars Of War

The narrative of war is carried in the wounds it inflicts—who caused them, who fought and all the stories tied to the conflict. These wounds stay with the afflicted for life. The injuries sustained by Iraqi and Iranian soldiers during the Iraq-Iran War of the early ‘80s remain. Even though Saddam is gone, Khomeini and Reagan are dead, and many who fought the war are no longer alive, the narrative of the wound persists. Sometimes, this narrative clashes with the current political ideology or discourse. Iraq and Iran are no꧋w allies, but the story of those wounds remains unchanged, outliving the political projects that caused the war. Similarly, the wounds of South Vietnamese soldiers who fought alongside Americans in the Vietnam War serve as a constant reminder of the conflict and its civil war component.

As power dynamics shift, ruling elites either celebrate or suppress these narratives, often finding them inconvenient to current political projects. This is why I ♎say wounds act as a biological archive of the wars that caused them.

The Western notion frames wars as temporal events, starting and ending at specific moments—✃but this is far from reality. On the ground, the effects persist long after the official end. I am still treating victims of the recent war in Lebanon, as well as those from previous conflicts. Their wounds continue to need care. The idea of temporality pushed by the humanitarian sector—where you arrive, address the war and then leave—is misleading. Western narratives justify wars by claiming they begin and end cleanly, leaving no lasting impact. In truth, wars fundamentally alter the biosphere of those who live through them, causing injuries that endure.

What we’ve witnessed in Gaza—the most televised genocide in human history—proves it. People can see children being burned alive, mass killings and starvation, yet nothing is done. Western governments respond only by trying to silence systems like the International Criminal Court and officials highlighting the genocidal nature of this war. The so-called international community has always been a too𓆉l for policing countries in the Global South.

Love and compassion stand as resistance against the machinery of death. Doctors remain dedicated to their 𒐪patients, often refusing to leave hospitals. Families help each other, and in the aftermath of bombings, survivors dig through rubble to save lives. These are acts of rebellion against genocide. In Lebanon, I treated a two-year-old boy who lost an arm and his entire immediate family. ✨His father’s aunt came to care for him, becoming his mother. Such acts of love remind us that humanity will endure.

Each of us lives in a biosphere—a system shaped by our biological, physical and social environment. Our health is determined by the interplay of these conditions. War profoundly disrupts this biosphere, 𓂃creating a new one that reshapes health systems. Beyond the immediate harm of bombs, blasts and bullets, war damages water and sewage systems, spreads infectious diseases, impoverishes populations and tears apart communities, altering behaviour and health. The effects of war on health persist long after conflicts end, as the war-altered biosphere continues to shape people’s well-being. In regions like the Middle East, situ⛦ated on a geopolitical fault line with ongoing and intermittent wars, these changes become deeply entrenched and multigenerational. The resulting biosphere of war can be compared to an endemic disease—a persistent, geographically entrenched condition that continuously influences health in the region.

(This appeared in the print as 'Exhausted On The Cross')