"The tragedies repeat each day": life on the ground in Gaza

Four remarkably brave Palestine Red Crescent Society staff and volunteers reflect on a year of delivering life-saving aid, amid vast challenges.

“In the ambulance, you witness immense suffering,” says Yehya. “The scenes of loss are incredibly difficult.

 

You feel you are sharing the grief of those who have lost loved ones.

 

Yehya Awni Khattab is a volunteer at the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s Deir al-Balah centre, and has been a Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) volunteer for over 10 years. Helping others is in his blood – both of his parents are emergency medical technicians with PRCS.

Yehya’s father Awni is currently director of emergency medical services in Khan Younis, Gaza. He has worked as an EMT (emergency medical technician) for 34 years.

“The work we do as a family is an honour,” says Awni. “It is not just my duty, but my family’s duty, too.”

Delivering life-saving support on the ground in Gaza

Since October 2023, PRCS staff and volunteers, including Awni’s family, have been working around the clock to provide life-saving support amid an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

More than 43,000 people have been killed, with over 100,000 injured. Along with those numbers is the unquantifiable pain of hundreds of thousands of people who have lost family, loved ones, homes and livelihoods.

“The workload and the tragedies we witness take a toll on us,” says Awni. “The only time we truly rest and disconnect from the world, even briefly, is when we sleep and give our bodies a moment to recover. But the tragedies repeat every day.”

Tragically, 21 PRCS staff and volunteers have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank in the past year. Despite these losses, challenges and risks to their own lives, PRCS has so far distributed 1.6 million emergency relief items, including food and water, as well as providing emergency medical services and other vital support.

But their work can’t stop now. With famine looming, clean water scarce, and diseases like polio re-emerging for the first time in decades, the situation in Gaza is desperate.

Most people have fled their homes, but there is nowhere safe left to go.

Risky and exhausting work as an emergency medical technician (EMT)

Tahreer has been an EMT in Central Gaza since 2005. She is also Awni’s wife and Yehya’s mother.

“My work involves coordinating ambulance movements and working directly as an EMT,” she says.

It's risky and exhausting, but there's always the drive to serve society and provide humanitarian services.

“Sometimes, when I’m on my way home in my Red Crescent uniform, I hear encouraging comments from people like, ‘May God give you strength,’ ‘May God bless you,’ or ‘You serve us with all your heart and risk your life.’ Hearing such positive feedback is uplifting.”

Risking her life to help others in Gaza

Hanadi is an PRCS EMT and mother of two who had to flee her home following an evacuation order. In doing so, she was separated from her husband.

“My husband stayed home until the last moment, and suddenly the road was closed, and he couldn’t catch up with us,” she recalls. “We would get signal every three to four days and connect with him – sometimes we went an entire month without being able to speak to him.”

Hanadi, who has a son and daughter, says that her work and the safety of her children occupy her every thought. She knows only too well how dangerous life can be.

“You are heading to a place that was bombed, and it could be bombed again while you’re still there,” says Hanadi. “The hardest was when our colleagues were killed while on duty – they left us smiling, heading to save a life, and returned dead.”

In spite of the pressures and realities of everyday life as an EMT in Gaza, Hanadi says there are moments of lightness, and that she is proud to work for PRCS.

“Our profession is one of hardship, exhaustion, and psychological pressure,” she says.

 

You feel happy when, after some time, you see someone on the street who remembers you once saved their life.

“That erases all the fatigue you had been feeling."

How is the Palestine Red Crescent supporting people in Gaza?

The Palestine Red Crescent Society is working day and night, risking, and losing, their lives to deliver assistance, including distributing aid to where it is most needed in Gaza. In Gaza PRCS teams have:

• had nearly 1,600 staff and volunteers on duty
• provided almost 900,000 health services
• processed more than 22,000 trucks of humanitarian aid
• operated 27 medical points and clinics
• set up 27 camps for displaced people.