'140,000 People, 40 Beds And A War'
By Chris McGreal
20 May, 2004
The GuardianThe first day was not even over and Dr Raed Tafesh was despairing.
"One hundred and forty thousand people, 40 beds and a war. It makes you laugh," said the anaesthetist at Rafah's only hospital.Except it is not a hospital. The tiny building was designed for primary healthcare and minor emergencies, before anyone imagined that Rafah would become the frontline in Israel's war on the Palestinians. Those who needed more serious care were dispatched up the road to the grander European hospital near Khan Younis.
But an Israeli tank now straddles the road, helping to seal off Rafah from the rest of Gaza as the Israeli army pursues those it calls terrorists and the Palestinians call "the resistance". The casualties have nowhere else to go but the Rafah clinic-cum-hospital.
The director, Dr Ali Moussa, said that the hospital's 40 beds were filled yesterday, the first night of fighting, and that the hospital would be unable to cope if there was an escalation. The morgue is also full, with 13 bodies, and more corpses stored in a neighbouring shop.
Some of the dead and wounded do not even make it that far.
"We received calls that there are dead in the streets, in the houses, in the mosques but we can't reach them," said Dr Tafesh. "Our ambulances are trapped and a target for the Israelis if they move.
"We got a call from a man who was shot in the stomach.
"They wanted to know how to save him but it sounded very bad and we said he needed surgery but there was no way to get him out. They called us back and said he died."
Rafah hospital has no intensive care unit or specialists to help the wounded who arrive with brain damage. It has all the drugs it needs but not much equipment, and only two operating tables.
"We have to make difficult choices when a lot of wounded come in and some people get left aside to die," said Dr Tafesh.
On the hospital's walls are plastered a handful of posters of "martyrs" - Palestinians killed by Israel in the intifada, some of them fighters and some of them not.
"They all worked in the hospital," said Dr Moussa. "We lose a lot of staff."
The staff were laying mattresses in the corridors, ready for the influx. The hospital administration had also prepared a makeshift maternity ward at the back of a nearby building because the shock of fighting drives some women into early labour.
As evening beckoned, and the prospect of another Israeli push under the cover of dark, Dr Tafesh said he did not expect to go home for many days.
"If this is the first day with no fighting, no resistance and this large number of casualties, what's the situation going to be like when the fighting really starts?"