Dr. Rose:
I am Victoria Rose. I am a consultant plastic surgeon from London, UK, and I’ve just came back from working at Nasser hospital in Gaza.
Interviewer:
How would you describe what is that Israel doing in Gaza right now?
Dr. Rose:
Well, I think it’s doing two things. I mean, it’s systematically bombing a population indiscriminately. The bombing doesn’t stop, it’s constant. Even when we were out of the red zone it’s constant. There’s not a minutes goes by when you don’t hear some sort of attack in the background. But more than that, I think that the aid salutation is a systematic starving of the population. And strangling the healthcare system. And I don’t think that the system that’s coming the GHF (The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) is achieving anything other than forcing starving Palestinians to walk miles to a distribution to put their lives at risk. And it doesn’t really matter who is shooting who at this distribution centers. The fact is that the Palestinians have been reduced to such a level of deprivation that they are prepared to put their lives at risk for food, and I just struggle to understand how we can watch that happen.
Interviewer:
What did you see in Gaza this time as different from other times?
Dr. Rose:
I think that the biggest difference this time compared to when we were last in, which was August, is the number of children we saw. And I was going through the figures, and in August we were there for a month and we had, I had 20 children on my inpatient list, which is children that we were reconstructing, so doing more than one surgery on. This time I was in Gaza for a less amount of time and I had 34 children, so I was in for a week less and I saw more children. And it’s the ages of them. They are tiny. They are all like 7 and 6, that was the average age of the children I’m operating on. And the injuries were way more severe. They had bits of their arms and legs blown off, massive amounts of skin lost from faces. I mean it was really appalling injuries. It is as if somebody has specifically blown them up and they were the target of that bomb. It was really horrific.
Interviewer: What does it feel like for you as a doctor and fellow Palestinian medics around you, what does it feel like to have to deal with this?
Dr. Rose:
Well for me it is different because I am only there for a short period of time and I I’ve got a specific job to do, so I tend to just focus on it and try to get through as much as we can. But my colleagues were really exhausted this time, and I really noticed it. I mean there have been lots of comments about Palestinian resilience and, and I don’t think we can depend on that now. They are losing that, they are really, they’re on their knees, they are losing that.
Interviewer:
How does it feel Leaving Gaza?
Dr. Rose:
Terrible. Really bad. I feel very guilty about leaving because I’ve left so much work to do and there’s so many patients that need plastic surgery input, and we don’t have another plastic surgeon going until end of June, beginning of July, and we don’t know whether he’ll get in because COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) deny so many doctors’ entry now. So, it’s awful from that point of view. It’s awful from the point of view that Nasser just gone into the red zone, although they have not forced an evacuation. That means that the active fighting completely surrounds Nasser. Which means that it’s really difficult for the local staff to get in and out of work, because of the way the daily buses work to bring them in and out, they have to be deconflicted. So, I know that the first day they were in the red zone, the transport got cancelled altogether, so none of the nursing stuff, theater team, got into the block that we were working in. So that’s a day of operating lost. And obviously they are now putting their lives at risk walking to into Nassar, which is just not, not really on to be honest.
Interviewer:
What’s your urgent message to the British government now that you’ve come back, in relation to what you’ve seen and in relation to your account as a British doctor?
Dr. Rose:
I think my message is, we have to find a way to stop this as soon as possible because we are running out of time to help these people, and there has got to be a better way to sort out the politics of a piece of land than what’s happing at the moment.
Interviewer: What’s most needed right now at Gaza?
Dr. Rose:
I think what we most need now is aid, and that is unrestricted and huge quantities, and it’s food, it’s medical supplies, but we also need all of those organizations that have worked tirelessly before this ban has been put on, to deliver this aid. So we need UNWRA back, we need United Nations back, we need the WHO, the World Food Organization, all of those organization that do this job brilliantly need to be let back in, and they need to be able to work without the fear of being bombed.
Interviewer:
And the lastly, what was that experience like, leaving?
Dr. Rose:
Leaving Gaza is really difficult this time, because of the way in which we left. Because of the fact that Nasser is in the active fighting zone, we couldn’t do a direct journey from Nasser, which is about 3 miles to the nearest exit which is Kissufim. We had to go out onto the coast road, and then we had drive out to the Netzarim corridor, and driving through the Netzarim corridor was just horrific. It’s was like wasteland, it was as if a nuclear bomb had gone off. It was just dust and dirt, there wasn’t anything standing, no trees, nothing. And the IDF have taken over that corridor, so you see, you see concrete sort of bollards where they set up camps with sign posts on in Hebrew, which is something I’ve never seen in Gaza before. And as you leave that corridor and enter the perimeter road, on one side you see the remains of Gaza and on the other side is farmland being watered, and it’s very dystopian.