Every single day, Mohammad Bahloul gambled along with his personal life within the hope of saving others. As a medic within the Palestine Pink Crescent Society (PRCS), he would step into the unknown every workday, by no means realizing if he would return to his household.
Per week earlier than Eid al-Fitr, Mohammad was dispatched to Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood to recuperate the wounded and useless within the aftermath of Israeli assaults. Shortly after he and a workforce of medics and first responders arrived on the scene, Israeli floor troops encircled the world and closed off all of the roads out and in. Because the PRCS misplaced contact with its workforce, rumours started to unfold throughout Rafah that these caught inside could be massacred.
Through the makes an attempt of rescue groups to achieve the world, UN staff witnessed civilians making an attempt to flee being shot useless. On March 29, they have been lastly capable of attain the world the place the PRCS groups have been attacked. There, the groups found the mangled stays of ambulances and UN and Civil Defence automobiles in addition to a single physique – that of Muhammad’s colleague, Anwar Alatar.
On March 30, the primary day of Eid al-Fitr, they went again and uncovered 14 extra our bodies buried within the sand in a mass grave. All of them have been nonetheless dressed of their uniforms and sporting gloves. Amongst them have been Mohammad and his colleagues Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Sha’at, Saleh Moammar, Rifaat Radwan, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammad al-Hila, and Raed al-Sharif.
The killing of those paramedics isn’t an remoted incident. Israel has been systematically focusing on medical and rescue staff as a part of its genocidal battle – a battle in opposition to life itself in Gaza. Solely in Gaza, medical uniforms and ambulances don’t provide safety, which worldwide legislation affords. Solely in Gaza, medical uniforms and ambulances can mark folks as targets for execution.
For the seven agonising days by which Mohammad’s destiny remained unknown, his father Sobhi Bahloul, a former principal at Bir al-Saba’ Excessive Faculty in Rafah, whom I’ve identified for many years, and his mom Najah, prayed for a miracle to avoid wasting their son.
They imagined that Mohammad had escaped simply earlier than the world was sealed, or that he was hiding beneath the rubble of a home, or maybe that he was kidnapped by Israeli troopers however was nonetheless alive. As Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian nationwide poet, mentioned, Palestinians are affected by an “incurable illness: hope”.
Though the Bahloul household dared to hope, in addition they carried inside them the dread that Mohammad would by no means be seen once more. They knew the tales. In January 2024, the paramedics despatched to rescue six-year-old Hind Rajab who lay in a automobile, injured and bleeding, beside her slain family, have been additionally focused and murdered. Likewise, in December 2023, the medics dispatched to rescue Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, who was bleeding in a avenue in Khan Younis after being hit by an Israeli drone, have been additionally killed.
For seven lengthy days, hope battled worry. “Might God return you and all of your colleagues to us protected and sound,” Sobhi wrote on Fb above a photograph of his selfless son.
The household had already suffered a lot throughout the genocide, having misplaced many family members.
Early on, they needed to flee from their dwelling in japanese Rafah to al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, looking for an phantasm known as security.
When the ceasefire was introduced, the household marched again to their dwelling within the japanese a part of Rafah with hundreds of others.
They discovered their dwelling destroyed however did their greatest to revive two rooms to performance the place they might sleep. Throughout that interval the kids resumed their schooling in makeshift tents as a result of so many faculties had been destroyed.
Only a week earlier than Mohammad disappeared, an air raid flattened the home throughout the road from the household dwelling, and his father’s automobile was severely broken. As soon as once more, the household fled, carrying what little that they had left. With every displacement, their possessions dwindled – an insufferable reminder that as belongings shrink, so too does dignity.
However Mohammad had no time to assist his father pitch one other displacement tent. He instantly returned to his obligation, working across the clock along with his fellow medics in Khan Younis, answering limitless requires assist, dashing from one horror to the subsequent. Even throughout Ramadan, the holiest month of the 12 months, he barely had a second to interrupt his quick along with his household and play along with his 5 youngsters – amongst them Adam, his three-month-old child boy.
The holy month ended with the heartbreaking information of his homicide.
On Eid, I attempted to achieve Sobhi, however there was no reply. On his Fb, I discovered these painful phrases: “We mourn our son, Muhammad Sobhi Bahloul, a martyr of obligation and humanitarian work. To Allah we belong, and to Him we will return.”
Regardless of the Israeli military’s try to cowl up its crime by burying it within the sand, proof speaks for what occurred. A press release launched by the Palestinian Ministry of Well being on March 30 mentioned the Israeli forces carried out an execution and that a number of the victims have been handcuffed and had accidents to the top and chest. The chief of the UN humanitarian affairs workplace in Palestine, Jonathan Whittall, mentioned the paramedics and first responders have been killed “one after the other”.
Israel, after all, used the acquainted playbook of denial and obfuscation. It first claimed the paramedics have been members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then it claimed that its troopers fired on the ambulances as a result of they have been “advancing suspiciously towards” them.
In the meantime, in an act of blatant cynicism, the Israeli authorities introduced it was sending a rescue mission of twenty-two to Thailand and Myanmar following the lethal earthquake. Ten days earlier, it despatched a medical delegation to North Macedonia. From Asia to Europe, it appears acceptable {that a} nation that has massacred greater than 1000 well being staff and first responders in a territory it occupies illegally can feign humanitarianism overseas.
The Geneva Conventions, which explicitly defend medical personnel in battle zones, have clearly been rendered meaningless in Gaza. Worldwide our bodies, designed to uphold human rights, proceed their performative outrage whereas failing to behave. Western governments proceed to be actively complicit within the genocide by sending weapons and welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regardless of the warrant for his arrest issued by the Worldwide Prison Court docket.
How for much longer will the world watch this genocidal violence in silence? There appears to be no finish to the barbarity and crimes. The executions of those medics ought to have been a turning level, a second of reckoning. As an alternative, they’re one more testomony to the impunity granted to the Zionist apartheid regime.
Might the souls of those that died in Tal as-Sultan relaxation in peace and should the political leaders of the Western world relaxation in disgrace.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
