Some Palestinians wounded in Gaza have been taken to Egypt for treatment. Nesmahar Sayed heard the sound of pain On the fourth floor of the Nasser Institute, many injured Palestinians lay weakly on their hospital beds. Each one has a different medical problem, different job and they vary in age but all share the same suffering and hope. In Room 404, Ahmed Hussein told Al-Ahram Weekly that if Israel strikes Gaza for another 14 years -- not days -- "the victory will still be ours." Hussein, a 25-year-old policeman, recounted the day when a missile struck his police station where 80 people had once been. "Sixty died immediately and the rest were transferred to Al-Shefa Hospital in Gaza, then to Arish Hospital in Egypt. Then I came here on Tuesday," Hussein said. It was Hussein's first time to leave Gaza. Waiting for two more operations, he said he believed this was not a war at all. "A war should be between forces that are equal in equipment and arms." "Israelis are not targeting Hamas," Mohamed Bashir, who arrived with his nephew who works in the police department and who was injured in an Israeli strike, told the Weekly. "My nephew works with the Palestinian Authority, with [President Mahmoud] Abbas. They hit his house but God saved him." Bashir said the Israeli attacks actually began two years ago after Hamas won the parliamentary elections of 2006. "We lived without cement or gas. During this time we proved we are able to live under siege. We ate seeds used for pigeon feed on the days we could not find anything else." Nasser Institute was the first hospital in Egypt to receive Gaza's injured and has received the largest sum of cases. "Thirty-six cases came to the hospital on the third day of the strikes on Gaza," Bahaa Abu Zeid, Nasser Institute's general manager, said. "Among them one died and two became well enough to leave the hospital. The youngest patient was a one- week infant. He was transferred to Abul-Rish Hospital for children in Qasr Al-Eini because he needs an open heart surgery," Abu Zeid added. All the patients were casualties of the Gaza conflict. Many were injured from direct hits or when their houses collapsed on top of them. Abu Zeid said a state of emergency was announced in Nasser Institute on Saturday 27 December at 2pm, immediately after the strikes on Gaza began. The first case arrived in the hospital on Monday at 3pm. More than 180 Palestinians who were sent to Egypt on the fourth day of the strikes were taken to other hospitals in Cairo. Some Palestinian cases who could make the journey were flown to Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. "I hope the strikes will stop so that we can receive the critical cases because as long the strikes continue the team of doctors in Arish cannot help all those who are in urgent need," Abu Zeid said. Abdel-Rahman Shahin, official spokesman of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population, said there was coordination between the ministry and its Palestinian counterpart. "Next Tuesday, a conference of Arab ministers of health in Saudi Arabia will discuss how to rebuild the health infrastructure of Gaza which was destroyed," Shahin told the Weekly. He said there were 120 ambulances in Arish. Khalil Mahmoud, 19, who lies in Room 26, on the ninth floor of Helal Hospital on Ramses Street, told of the day he was injured. "It was the second day of the strike and I returned with my brother from our farm in Khan Younis, leaving our parents behind. A missile killed my brother, 18, instantly. Both of us were carried on a donkey cart. After almost five kilometres I stopped an ambulance that took us to Nasser Hospital in Gaza." Mahmoud's father who accompanied his son on his medical journey to Egypt, completes the story. "When I heard the sound of an explosion, I hurried home with my wife. My cousin told me that my sons were injured. When I took the same cart I wondered where all the blood was coming from. After a while I realised it was the blood of my sons. "When Khalil was in hospital, I was welcoming relatives and friends congratulating me on my youngest shahid [martyr]. We never call it a funeral. It is always ors al-shahid [wedding of the martyr]." Um Ahmed, grandmother of seven- year-old Nour, currently in the intensive care unit, relived that day when Israeli forces fired at the house where they live in Meit Serene. "A helicopter shot at us bullets almost 15 centimetres in length. Bullets came from the window and hit the girl in her head. We ran towards the basement, then out of the house. I took my purse which had my identity card. That's how I was able to accompany Nour." Um Ahmed echoed what many Palestinians keep repeating: that this is not a war but a massacre of a nation. "If they cannot hit the resistance, they hit their families." Mohamed Ahmed, 21, who used to work for the PA, told the Weekly that he had been injured before, in March 2008, in the Jabalya refugee camp. Israeli attacks left him deaf in one ear and he still has to undergo surgery for bone transplants in his leg. Next to him rests Magdi, from the resistance forces of Hamas, injured in the jaw, and waiting for a fifth operation. On the walls of their hospital room hang photos of some of those killed by Israeli forces and pictures of their city Gaza. "They [Israelis] want to erase the Palestinian cause, but we do not accept this at all," Abu Rami Farahat, 50, who lost two of his sons in 2006 and 2008, said. Farahat said he was born into a large family, like all Palestinians, and for good reason. "This is inherited from our Palestinian culture because I know I might lose a son or daughter. So I may have one or two others who survive."
