A Palestinian youth receives emergency medical care at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City after being wounded by Israeli forces during a demonstration, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
There is so much emotion to unpack in this still. Anguish, concern, focus, dread — not one person mimics the other. There is pain, there is threat to life and limb, and there is work to do.
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital is one of Palestine’s oldest medical facilities, opened by Christian missionaries in 1882. It is also one of the Gaza Strip’s most comprehensive hospitals and the territory’s only cancer center. Al-Ahli has been described as a frontline hospital in the past, tasked with managing trauma patients injured by Israeli forces, as in the photograph above during the First Intifada.
Tragically, the hospital was damaged and denied resources by Israeli military forces during its 2023-2025 assault on Gaza. Al-Ahli functioned at a severely limited capacity for as long as it could, providing crucial services for thousands of injured Palestinians, before it was forced to close in mid-2024.