Doctors: Israel Targeting Health Care  04/06 06:10

   

   SIDON, Lebanon (AP) -- Two years ago, Dr. Mohammed Ziara watched Israel 
ravage Gaza's health care system, shelling hospitals, striking ambulances and 
forcing patients to evacuate.

   Now Ziara -- along with many other medical workers, human rights groups and 
civilians -- warns that the same scenario is unfolding in Lebanon.

   Israel is pushing deep into the southern part of the country in its campaign 
against the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, a powerful militant force and 
political party that long has exercised de facto control over much of Lebanon's 
Shiite community.

   To describe its strategy in this war, the Israeli military has invoked the 
devastation it wrought in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. At 
one point last month, Israeli warplanes even dropped leaflets over Beirut 
warning that after "great success in Gaza, a new reality is coming to Lebanon, 
too."

   "I've lived this before," Ziara, a surgeon from Gaza City who specializes in 
burns, told The Associated Press on Thursday at the government hospital in the 
Lebanese port city of Sidon.

   "I cannot go back to Gaza now," Ziara said. "But I can be here, in Lebanon."

   As it did with Hamas in Gaza, Israel accuses Hezbollah of hiding in and 
operating from civilian areas, and using hospitals and ambulances for military 
purposes. Israel has increasingly targeted Lebanese first responders and 
medical centers, forcing several hospitals to evacuate.

   "I was besieged in a hospital," Ziara said of his time at Gaza's Shifa 
Hospital, where he worked before evacuating to Egypt with his family. He then 
joined the U.K.-based nonprofit Interburns, which sent him to Lebanon in 2024 
to respond to the outbreak of the previous Israel-Hezbollah war. "I feel what 
these people feel."

   An Israeli offensive threatens a health system, again

   Since the war between Israel and Hezbollah reignited on March 2, Israeli 
airstrikes have killed at least 54 health professionals as of Sunday, according 
to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

   Israel has carried out 152 attacks against emergency medical workers and 
ambulances, and forced the closure of six hospitals and 49 health clinics 
through attacks or threats, the ministry says.

   Ziara and his team from Interburns, which trains medics around the world in 
burn care, have set up the Lebanese public health system's first specialized 
burn unit -- a critical resource in this crisis-stricken country where the war 
has killed 1,461 people and wounded 4,430, according to the ministry. Israel 
claims to have killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the latest 
bombardment and ground invasion.

   The Israeli military argues that Hezbollah's use of medical facilities makes 
them legitimate military targets under international law. It does not offer 
evidence to support its claims.

   Hezbollah denies conducting militant activities within civilian sites. 
Although the group's presence in residential areas is well-documented, there 
has been no independent verification of its use of hospitals for military 
purposes.

   Based in the first city just north of Israel's evacuation zone that covers 
nearly all southern Lebanon, Sidon Government Hospital takes more wounded 
people every day.

   The rising toll of rescue work

   Kamal Fakih, 27, hates when people ask him what happened on March 17.

   It's not that it pains him to recall the Israeli airstrike. It's that he 
doesn't remember anything at all. He regained consciousness a day later at the 
hospital in Sidon, his body burned and cut by shrapnel.

   Once stabilized, Fakih tried to connect with the paramedic who pulled him 
and his friend Hassan from the burning rubble, hoping to hear his account and 
thank him for saving their lives. But by the time Fakih got his contact, 
Muhammad Tafili was already dead, killed with a fellow paramedic in an Israeli 
airstrike on ambulances in the southeastern village of Kfar Tebnit on March 28, 
according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.

   That same day, Israeli attacks killed seven other medics across four 
additional villages, the World Health Organization said. Among the dead was a 
medic targeted while responding to an Israeli airstrike that killed three 
journalists working for pro-Hezbollah TV channels. Footage of the incident 
shows two strikes in quick succession -- the first hitting journalists in their 
car, the second crashing into paramedics as they rushed to the rescue.

   Israel's military accused the two medics, and two of the three journalists 
killed, of being Hezbollah operatives. Its claim alarmed watchdogs that 
witnessed similar justifications for killing more than 260 journalists and 
1,700 health workers in Gaza, according to figures from the United Nations 
humanitarian agency.

   Although Lebanese medical workers and journalists were killed during the 
2024 war with Hezbollah, "this time is different," said Ramzi Kaiss, the 
Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.

   He pointed to a startling promise by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz 
last week that Israel would flatten all the houses in southern Lebanon to 
protect its border towns from Hezbollah rockets "in accordance with the model 
used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza" -- two cities that Israel almost 
entirely razed in its offensive against Hamas.

   "There's a new kind of brazenness in declaring an intent to commit unlawful 
attacks," Kaiss said. "It appears impunity has emboldened the Israeli military."

   Hospitals in the line of fire

   Sweeping Israeli evacuation orders in recent weeks have sent over 1 million 
Lebanese flocking north. As the south came under heavy bombardment, clinics 
shuttered or suspended operations. Nabih Berri Hospital was swamped by an 
influx of casualties. To make room, it evacuated dozens of patients.

   Such transfers involve coordination with the Lebanese army, Health Ministry 
and U.N. peacekeeping force -- a game of telephone, doctors say, that creates 
potentially life-threatening delays. Admitting patients isn't easy either; the 
Sidon burn unit must discharge a patient to free up a bed.

   But the referrals keep coming, straining a health system already crippled by 
economic collapse.

   "The health system is on its knees," Ziara said, as the hospital was plunged 
into darkness until backup generators kicked in 10 minutes later, a result of 
Lebanon's long-running electricity crisis. "Now front-line hospitals are 
lacking staff and supplies. They're overwhelmed."

   Civilians search for answers

   Lebanese civilians say that Israeli bombs often come without warning and hit 
indiscriminately, feeding a growing feeling that Palestinians in Gaza know well 
-- that nowhere is safe.

   Mohammad Qubaisi, 53, said his neighborhood of Zuqaq al-Blat in central 
Beirut had not received Israeli evacuation guidance before March 18, when 
Israeli munitions slammed into his seventh-floor apartment.

   Carrying his wife from the smoldering ruins, he shouted for his sons. His 
eldest, Adam, called to him. But he couldn't hear Jad.

   Qubaisi ran back into the skin-searing steam to search for his 15-year-old. 
When he woke up at the hospital hours later, his face raw with second-degree 
burns, he knew his son was gone.

   The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah. Qubaisi pushed back.

   "These are civilian buildings, not military targets. They hit us and we 
still don't know why," he said from the Sidon hospital. "We were sleeping 
safely in our home, and look what happened to us."