Jerusalem – Saeb Ali al-Tanani, 14, has a tumor in his leg. Last Wednesday, Suhaila, his grandmother, was with him as he drove down the corridor of Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem.
“He has to do genetic tests and blood tests, so he will be here for a while,” Suhaila said, remembering their family in Gaza. “Our hearts break for what our family is going through in Gaza.”
Saeb echoed his grandmother’s concerns. “We are afraid for our family,” he told Al Jazeera. “I want to go back to my house.”
A day later, fear would haunt the hospital itself.
On Thursday, Israeli forces arrested Suhaila. She is one of 12 Palestinians in custody who either received treatment at Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem or acted as medical attendants for patients.
According to a statement from the Israeli police, the Palestinians were staying “illegally” in the hospital after their medical permits issued by the Israeli army expired.
“During a joint operation between the Jerusalem District Police and Jerusalem Security Guard soldiers, twelve female and male suspects staying illegally in Israel were identified and arrested,” police said in a statement, adding that the hospital’s deputy director was also called in for questioning.
“Of these, 11 residents of the Gaza Strip are suspected of having been hospitalized in violation of the law in recent weeks, and the other suspect is a Palestinian who [is] illegally residing in Israel.”
Four men and seven women from Gaza were arrested, the statement said.
Press reports: “Part of the occupying forces storm Al-Maqasid Hospital in the city of Al-Tur in occupied Jerusalem.” pic.twitter.com/Ux5gV5YrpB
– Palestine Post (@PalpostN) November 2, 2023
(Translation: [Israeli] occupation forces storm Al-Makassed Hospital in the city of al-Tur in occupied Jerusalem.)
Samira Aweina, a hospital worker in Makassed, said dozens of Israeli police officers and soldiers raided the hospital on Thursday.
“They all came in at the same time and immediately closed off the other entrances,” she said.
“They arrested a group of elderly women from the emergency room with the young children they were with,” she continued. “They arrested the father of one of our patients, and the grandmother of another patient.”
Qaddoura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, told Al Jazeera that the PA did not have any information about those arrested.
“The occupation authorities have not provided us or the Red Cross with any details about the Gaza prisoners,” he said from the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. “We don’t even know where they are being held or what their names are.”
Israel normally provides the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the names of Palestinians it has arrested. The Red Cross in turn informs the PA. The ICRC’s role typically involves visiting detainees and re-establishing contact between family members.
‘I want mommy and baba’
Other patients and their accompanying relatives said they were left in limbo, unable to return home and forced to stay in hospital.
Imm Taha al-Farra is with her nine-year-old granddaughter Hala, who underwent spinal surgery on October 7.
“We would go back after a few days,” Imm Taha said. ‘We can’t go back now. We know nothing. How are we supposed to go back?”
Hala, who said she wants to become a doctor so she can treat children, has been asking to go home for weeks.
“I want Mommy and Baba,” she said. “I miss my brothers Omar and Ali.”
Their family lives in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Imm Taha said her cousins’ families, all 16 members, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home.
Another patient, Mahdiya al-Shanti, has also been in hospital for over a month.
“I was supposed to go home at the end of October, but now I can’t because of the war,” said the 20-year-old from northern Gaza.
“It’s hard to always know how my family is doing because the internet is down and sometimes they can’t charge their phones,” she continued. “They fled north to Khan Younis, but because there is no safe place in Gaza it is as if they have gone from one danger zone to another.”
Mahdiya’s father had accompanied her as a medical attendant. He was also among those arrested by Israeli forces last Thursday.
Mahdiya said the troops stormed the hospital and entered patient rooms and rooms where medical attendants stay.
“They said they were looking for someone from Gaza,” she said.
She quickly sent a message to her father, who was in one of those rooms, warning him that Israeli forces were nearby. But it was too late.
“I don’t know where they took him,” Mahdiya said. “How can they do this in a hospital? Now I’m all alone and sick with worry. My family is in Gaza, my father is missing and I am a patient here all alone.”
Hospital stay is at stake
There are six Palestinian hospitals in occupied East Jerusalem that offer medical specialties that the Palestinian Ministry of Health cannot provide in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), more than 50 percent of patients in these hospitals are referred from the occupied territories.
The Makassed Islamic Charitable Society Hospital was founded in 1968 and included 60 beds. The hospital continued to expand and now has 250 beds, making it the main referral hospital for the Palestinian community in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
According to Makassed Hospital management, there were 53 patients from the Gaza Strip, each with one accompanying family member, when Israeli security forces raided the facility. The hospital, which said it was not authorized to make statements about Thursday’s raid to the media, declined to say how many of the Gaza patients and attendants remained.
Doctors have spoken of the fear of reprisals if they speak out – including the prospect of arrest or loss of their job.
As for Gaza patients, their anxiety about what is happening to their families in the coastal enclave is compounded by their own unfamiliar situation.
Nafez al-Qahwaji, who was referred to Makassed Hospital by the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, spent three days in the hospital before the war started.
“Israeli intelligence called my number and told me to evacuate my house in Khan Younis,” al-Qahwaji said. “I immediately called my children and told them to leave the house for fear of being targeted. Now they are taking shelter in a UN school.”
Al-Qahwaji refused to reveal what he was being treated for and initially thought he would only stay for a week or two.
“I don’t have any suitable clothes now that winter is coming,” he said. “I don’t know how I will get back home if Erez is destroyed,” he added, referring to the Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza also known as the Beit Hanoon crossing.
(Linah Alsaafin reported from London, United Kingdom)