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 one year into the First Intifada.
Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse
Date: December 1988
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 so 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.
The scene above is sadly familiar. The hospital was damaged and starved of resources by Israeli military forces during its 2023-2024 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. It was ultimately forced to shut down in mid-2024.