Eyes in Gaza (From The Oxford Times)

Eyes in Gaza

9:00am Thursday 14th October 2010 in Leisure

EYES IN GAZA by Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse

(Quartet, £20)

Two Norwegian doctors, working for the Norwegian Aid Committee, spent 16 days treating severely injured patients in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. This is their diary of those days, one chapter per day. It’s a shocking read.

The horrific injuries and the treatments given are described in detail, as are theappalling state of the facilities and the severe lack of resources and food. Many of the injuries were caused by new weapons, such as the heavy metal Dime (Dense Inert Metal Explosives) bombs. Their effects on human tissue are particularly awful.

Conditions in the hospital were pretty bad: beds and equipment were limited; the windows had no glass, as it had all been blown out and was not replaced to avoid further flying splinters of glass, so the hospital was cold; and the doctors and nurses were working flat out, very stressed and worried about the safety of their families. There was constant noise from unmanned drones and helicopters and the occasional scream of F-16s, often at night.

As you might expect, the tactics of the Israeli forces in general and the alleged wanton behaviour of some of the individual soldiers come in for criticism.

The doctors had to make difficult decisions, often having to leave untreated a patient who might have survived in other circumstances. Some of the individual stories are heart-breaking, including nine-month-old Jumana, who had to have part of her left hand amputated. She stares out of her photograph with a bemused look in her wide brown eyes.

For a while, the pair were the only Western witnesses in Gaza and this was named “best book of 2009” by a Norwegian newspaper when first released there.

It’s worth bearing in mind that there are no descriptions of the injuries caused to Israeli citizens by the Hamas rockets, but nevertheless it seems an honest account of a truly harrowing experience.