An Egyptian eye surgeon performed around 500 complex operations during two visits to the Gaza Strip, after bringing specialised medical equipment and supplies through the Rafah crossing to the European Gaza Hospital in the south of the strip. There, he treated critical injuries including retinal detachment and fragments lodged inside the eyes, amid medical conditions shaped by the nature of war injuries.
Film documents sight-saving mission in Gaza
In a documentary film, the doctor recounts the journey, which he said had shifted for him from merely a humanitarian choice to ‘divine facilitation’ and a destiny that led him to treat women and children for whom a delay of only a few hours could have caused permanent blindness. His mission came at a time when life-saving surgery was the priority of medical work, before eye injuries revealed different and highly complex treatment needs.
According to statistics presented by the film and attributed to the hospital director, around 700 people in the Gaza Strip lost their eyes during the war. The figure included 600 people who each lost one eye, as well as nearly 100 people who lost both eyes. Among the cases treated by the doctor was a Gaza child aged no more than 5, who was sitting inside his tent, playing and watching a film, when shelling struck him and injured both his eyes.
The surgeon described the journey from the operating theatre to the child’s parents as the longest corridor he had ever walked, because he had to tell them that their son had permanently lost his sight and that the injury had gone beyond what a surgeon’s hands could do. In another case, a woman rushed to the doctor, astonished that he was still at the hospital after the Israeli army’s closure of the crossing delayed his departure by a week.
Delayed departure from Gaza saved a girl’s sight
The mother asked him to examine her daughter, who had developed severe pus in her right eye after an operation he had performed on her two days earlier. The doctor said that his presence during that week allowed him to intervene and treat the girl, and that she would have lost her sight for ever had he left as scheduled. He considered the forced delay to have revealed the reason for his remaining in Gaza and given him the opportunity to deal with a difficult case whose recovery depended on rapid intervention.
The doctor’s second visit to the strip had been scheduled to last one month, but it was forcibly extended after an Israeli decision prevented him from leaving. During his two visits, he performed around 500 surgical operations: 150 during the first visit and 350 during the second.
The surgeon pointed to a medical paradox: no case of pus was recorded during his first visit, while one difficult case appeared during the second visit — that of the girl whose treatment ended in recovery.
The experience left a profound impact on him, according to people close to him. At the end of his account, he said Gaza’s harshness and its human fabric had changed him significantly, making him calmer, less tense and more deeply aware of the doctor’s mission to preserve the light in people’s eyes.
