On April 29, 2024, six months into Israel's ongoing genocide, Dr. Alia Kattan joined a U.S.-based medical nonprofit on a mission to southern Gaza. At the start of their mission, Dr. Kattan and her team resided in a safe house in West Rafah, operating in the European Gaza Hospital (EGH) situated between Rafah and Khan Younis. On May 6, exactly one week into the team's mission, Israel initiated a ground invasion of Rafah.

In the Spring of 2023 – before the genocide – Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency medicine specialist, was preparing for an important visit to Gaza in the Fall. Med Global planned to send a team of doctors to spend two weeks at Nasser Hospital teaching emergency medicine residents how to use portable ultrasound machines in trauma and critical care. The trip was intended to uplift skills vital in a region where the Israeli blockade creates relentless obstacles to health care delivery.

“I cannot unsee what I saw. I cannot unhear the cries and the screams that I heard and unsmell the smell of festering wounds.”
–Ghassan Abu-Sittah, A State of Passion

I wasn't expecting my hands to shake so much while watching directors and documentary filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi's documentary, “A State of Passion.” The documentary debuted at the Cairo International Film Festival in November 2024.

Content warning: graphic image used.

In July of 2024, Palestine Square sat down with Dr. Abdullah Ghali, a Palestinian doctor based in Houston, TX who visited Gaza in April of 2024 alongside a contingent of medical staff from FAJR Scientific. While in Gaza, Dr.