ISRAEL has struck six countries in the last week because it is “drunk on impunity” gifted by the UK and other Western governments, a leading surgeon working with war-injured children in the Middle East has said.
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Palestinian medic who also serves as rector of Glasgow University, spoke to the Sunday National from Beirut, where he has been treating patients wounded by Israel’s strikes on Lebanon and Palestine for the past year.
On September 17 and 18, 2024, Israel detonated explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies in attacks intended to target Hezbollah fighters. They also killed 12 civilians – including children – and injured more than 3500 others.
Abu-Sittah called it an “act of mass mutilation”. “We had children, we had women, we had men – everybody had some level of amputation to their hands,” he said. “Some completely at the wrist, others mangled hands with amputated digits.
“I'm still operating on the kids that were injured, who've lost digits and have lost eyes and have horrendous facial injuries,” he said. “Five of the kids lost both eyes.
“The problem with working with injured children is it's a growing body, so you're trying to plan the surgery according to their development.
“But at the same time, there are certain exigencies so that they can at least be able to socially integrate, like reconstructing the eyelids so that they can have glass eyes fitted, or reconstructing the thumbs so that at least they can get back to schooling.”
But despite the human cost of the attacks, Abu-Sittah – whose experience during Israel’s devastating siege of Gaza saw him cited in South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – said that Israel has moved “from one outrage to the other because every time it tests the water, it gets away with it”.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog visited the UK last week, being welcomed to Downing Street by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and hosted at the Foreign Office-funded Chatham House.
Maddox further listed Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Yemen, and Tunisia (where an aid flotilla was docked). Of those countries, all but Iran have been struck by Israel in the past week, Al Jazeera reported.
Abu-Sittah said: “The fact that Keir Starmer did not cancel his meeting with the Israeli president on the day the Israelis bombed Doha means that the Israelis will bomb again, because there's really zero repercussions.
“We should not underestimate the seriousness of what just happened in Doha. The thread that runs from what they did in Lebanon, what they have been doing in Syria, what they're doing in Qatar, the thread that runs from Gaza to Beirut to Damascus to Yemen to Doha, is impunity.
“What we're seeing in terms of Syria and what we're seeing in terms of the continuous bombing in Lebanon, Israel is just unhinged. It is drunk on impunity.”
The surgeon called the attack on Doha “unprecedented”. “It's the equivalent of the US bombing Paris during the Vietnamese peace accords, or the French bombing Geneva during the peace accords with the Algerian Liberation Front,” he said.
“Nobody's ever bombed a country that is the negotiating space in a war. They then say that ‘the enemy is hiding out there’.
“They're ‘hiding out there’ because you're negotiating with them. That's where you're going to negotiate.”
Abu-Sittah said that a serious threat of sanctions from the UK and other Western governments would, he believes, see Israel rein in its attacks on other nations.
“You don't even have to get to the point where you have sanctions,” he said. “I think when the Israelis believe that the West is serious about sanctions, it will stop.
“You [the UK Government] can't ‘do so much’ and then meet the president on the day after they drop bombs on Doha.
“Everything indicates, in real terms, support for the genocidal project.”
Abu-Sittah said he intends to continue working in Beirut despite his fears that a “wide-scale” Israeli attack on Lebanon may be imminent.
“I'm working on a project with Unicef to treat the war-injured children, from the Israeli war on Lebanon,” he said. “Seventy kids have been wounded since the ceasefire, since the official ‘end of the war’, as a result of continued Israeli air raids. Seventy children wounded – 18 have been killed.
“These are people's lives that are being decimated.”
Abu-Sittah said he is also involved in a project with the World Health Organisation to get children out of Gaza for medical treatment. However, he said work was often frustrated by Israel.
“What happens is you sort out everything, and then at the very last eight hours, they [Israel] will tell you which patients are allowed to leave. So you find out when you find out.
“If you can imagine what it means to find accommodation for 30 families, do all the logistics for everybody, and you’re unable to know for sure that they're coming.”
Asked if he was concerned for his own safety, he said: “I don't think anybody in the Middle East should feel safe.
“Nobody envisaged that Israel would bomb in the Gulf. So long as Israel is on this spree, nobody should ever feel safe in the region.”
