KYIV: In war-torn Ukraine, he is Alya Shabaanovich Gali, a popular doctor with a line of patients waiting to see him. To his family thousands of kilometers away in the besieged Gaza Strip, he is Alaa Shabaan Abu Ghali, the one who left.
For the past 30 years, these identities rarely had cause to merge: Gali moved away amid instability in Gaza, settled into his new home in Kyiv, adopted a different name to better suit the local tongue, and married a Ukranian woman. Through calls, he kept up with his mother and siblings in Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah. But mostly, their lives played out in parallel.
In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threw Gali’s life into chaos, with air raids and missile attacks. Nearly 20 months later, the war between Israel and Hamas turned his hometown into a hellscape, uprooting his family.
Both are violent conflicts that have upset regional and global power balances, but they can seem worlds apart as they rage on. Ukraine has lambasted allies for coming to Israel’s defense while its own troops languished on the frontlines. Palestinians have decried double standards in international support. In each place, rampant bombardment and heavy fighting have killedtens of thousands and wiped out entire towns.
In Gali’s life, the wars converge. A month ago, his nephew was killed in an Israeli strike while foraging for food. Weeks later, a Russian missile tore through the private clinic where he’s worked for most of his professional life. Colleagues and patients died at his feet.
“I was in a war there, and now I am in a war here,” said Gali, 48, standing inside the hollowed-out wing of the medical center as workers swept away glass and debris. “Half of my heart and mind are here, and the other half is there.
“You witness the war and destruction with your family in Palestine, and see the war and destruction with your own eyes, here in Ukraine.”
Gaza to Kyiv
There’s an Arabic saying to describe a family’s youngest child — the last grape in the bunch. Gali’s mother would say the last is the sweetest; the youngest of 10, he was her favorite.
When Gali was 9, his father died. Money was tight, but Gali excelled in school and dreamed of becoming a doctor — specializing in fertility, after seeing relatives struggle to conceive.
In 1987, the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted in Gaza and the West Bank. Gali joined the youth arm of the Fatah Movement, a party espousing a nationalist ideology, long before the Islamist Hamas group would take root. One by one, friends were arrested and interrogated; some went to prison, others took up arms.
Gali had a choice: Stay and risk the same fate, or leave.
There was good news: an opportunity to study medicine in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Gali bade tearful goodbyes to his family, not knowing if he’d see them again.
He traveled to Moscow, expecting to catch a train. Instead, he learned Almaty was no longer an option. But there was a spot in Kyiv.
And so a young Gali arrived in Ukraine in 1992, just after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
It was like leaving one bedlam for another, he said: “The country was in a state of chaos, with no law and very difficult living conditions.”
Many peers left. Gali stayed, enrolling in medical school.
New life, new name
In the Ukrainian language, there’s no equivalent for Arabic’s notoriously difficult glottal consonants. So in Kyiv, Alaa became Alya. He assumed a patronymic middle name, adding the usual suffix to his father’s name — Shabaanovich.
While learning Russian — spoken by most Ukrainians who’d lived under the Soviet Union — Gali struggled with errands. Neighbors helped. Through them, he met his wife. They would have three children.
He finished medical school, becoming a gynecologist specializing in fertility. His career’s early days were long, seeing dozens of patients. Eventually, he landed at a practice at the Adonis medical center, where he thrived.
When Gali drives to work, listening to songs in Arabic, he passes Kyiv’s Maidan, a square where anti-government protests set the stage for Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014. There was a war in Gaza that year, too, he remembers.
Gali mouths the lyrics as Ukrainian street signs whiz by: “You keep crushing us, oh world.”
Wars collide
On July 8, Gali was at work, but his mind was on Gaza.
A week earlier, a relative reached out — Gali’s 12-year old niece had been killed as Israeli tanks advanced to the edge of the Mawasi camp for displaced Palestinians, northwest of Rafah. Like tens of thousands of Gazans, his family had fled there on foot after Israel designated it a humanitarian zone.
Gali had already been mourning. A nephew, Fathi, was killed the previous month. Gali saw it himself, he said, on television — his nephew’s lifeless body on the screen, headlines flashing in Arabic. He described the image and Fathi’s clothes to a relative, who confirmed it was him.
Their deaths weighed heavily on Gali. For nine months, he’d lived in fear for his family, of a text message saying they’d all been killed.
In the medical center that day, air raids rang out all morning. Before greeting his next patient, he shared a few words with the center director. She’d just driven by Okhmadyt Children’s Hospital, struck hours earlier by a missile — a terrible sight, Ukraine’s largest pediatric facility in ruins, she told him. He told her about the deaths of his niece and nephew, the darkness of his grief.
Not long after, Gali’s world went even darker.
A Russian missile came hurtling toward the center, triggering an explosion that obliterated the third and fourth floors.
Gali worked on the fourth. In the dense cloud of debris, he sought out shadowy figures covered in blood. He saw a patient and, using his phone for light, pulled her out from under the collapsed roof, as colleagues and others died around him — nine killed in all.
He led the woman to his office to wait for rescuers. Amid bodies on the floor, he found a colleague, Viktor Bragutsa, bleeding profusely. Gali couldn’t resuscitate him.
A room holding patients’ documents had been reduced to debris, their records spanning decades up in smoke.
He felt pangs of deja vu.
For months, he’d seen images of Gaza’s war. It was as if they’d somehow bled into his life in Ukraine.
“Nothing is sacred,” he said. “Killing doctors, killing children, killing civilians — this is the picture we are faced with.”
Only pain
Two weeks later, Gali stood in the same spot, gazing at bombed-out walls as workers sifted through rubble. “What can I feel?” he said “Pain. Nothing else.”
The center director’s office is destroyed. So is the reception area. Ultrasound machines and operating tables lay haphazardly.
He had stayed in Ukraine, didn’t evacuate his family — he took comfort in his office, in helping patients. And still, he said, he’ll stay.
In Gaza, he knows, there’s no safe place for his family to evacuate.
Communicating isn’t easy, with telecommunications blackouts. Weeks go by without word, until a nephew or niece finds enough signal to tell him they’re alive.
“No matter how difficult and impossible the situation is,” he said, “their words are always filled with laughter, patience and gratitude to God.
“I am here, feeling the weight.”
From Gaza to Kyiv, a Palestinian doctor lives between two wars
https://arab.news/pmfgd
From Gaza to Kyiv, a Palestinian doctor lives between two wars
- Gali moved away amid instability in Gaza, settled into his new home in Kyiv, adopted a different name to better suit the local tongue, and married a Ukranian woman
- Both are violent conflicts that have upset regional and global power balances, but they can seem worlds apart as they rage on
US airs frustration with Israel’s military about strikes in Gaza
- Thomas-Greenfield said the United States expects Israeli military leaders to implement “fundamental changes” in their operations
UNITED NATIONS: The US ambassador to the United Nations on Monday accused Israel’s military of striking schools, humanitarian workers and civilians in Gaza in a sign of growing American frustration with its close ally as the war approaches its first anniversary.
Israel has repeatedly said it targets Hamas militants, who often hide with civilians and use them as human shields, in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and launched the war in Gaza.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was unusually outspoken against the Israeli military at a UN Security Council meeting, saying many of the strikes in recent weeks that injured or killed UN personnel and humanitarian workers “were preventable.”
Many council members cited last week’s Israeli strike on a former school turned civilian shelter run by the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, in which six UNRWA staffers were among at least 18 people killed, including women and children.
Israel said it targeted a Hamas command-and-control center in the compound, and Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, asserted Monday that Hamas militants were killed in the strike. He named four, claiming to the council that they worked for UNRWA during the day and Hamas at night.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation.
Thomas-Greenfield told council members that the US will keep raising the need for Israel to facilitate humanitarian operations in the Palestinian territory and protect humanitarian workers and facilities like the UNRWA shelter.
She also reiterated US “outrage” at the death of Turkish American activist Aysenur Eygi, who was shot and killed during a protest in the West Bank last week. Israeli Defense Forces said it likely killed Eygi by mistake, and the government has begun a criminal investigation.
“The IDF is a professional military and knows well how to ensure that incidents such as these do not happen,” the US envoy said.
Thomas-Greenfield said the United States expects Israeli military leaders to implement “fundamental changes” in their operations — including to their rules of engagement and procedures to ensure that military operations do not conflict with humanitarian activities and do not target schools and other civilian facilities.
“We have also been unequivocal in communicating to Israel that there is no basis — absolutely none — for its forces to be opening fire on clearly marked UN vehicles as recently occurred on numerous occasions,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
At the same time, she said Hamas is also hiding in — and in some cases, taking over or using — civilian sites, which poses “an ongoing threat.”
She said it underscores the urgency of reaching a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza. While the United States works with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to try to get both sides “to agree that enough is enough,” she said, “this is ultimately a question of political will” and difficult compromises.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt this week for talks partly about refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas.
The United States urges “all council members with influence over Hamas to join others in pressing its leaders to stop stalling, make these compromises, and accept the deal without delay,” Thomas-Greenfield.
She spoke after the top UN humanitarian official in Gaza said the territory is “hell on Earth” for its more than 2 million people, calling the lack of effective protection for civilians “unconscionable.”
Sigrid Kaag, the UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told council members and reporters that the war has turned the territory “into the abyss.”
Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Humanitarian operations are being impeded by lawlessness, Israeli evacuation orders, fighting and difficult conditions for aid workers that include Israeli denials of access, delays, a lack of safety and security, and “poor logistical infrastructure,” Kaag said.
Danon insisted that Israel’s humanitarian efforts “are unparalleled” for a country forced to go to war and urged the Security Council and the UN “to speak to the facts.”
Over 1 million tons of aid have been delivered via more than 50,000 trucks and nearly 1 million land crossings, he said, adding that hardly a fraction have been stopped.
When asked about Danon’s statement, Kaag pointed to recent strikes on humanitarian convoys and schools and health facilities where Israel had received prior notification.
“It’s not about trucks. It’s about what people need,” she said. “We’re way, way off what people need, not only daily, but also what we would all consider a dignified human life.”
Houthi official says US offered to recognize Sanaa government; US official denies claim
- The remarks came a day after a Houthi ballistic missile reached central Israel for the first time
CAIRO: The US offered to recognize the Houthi government in Sanaa in a bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group’s attacks, a senior Houthi official said on Monday, in remarks that a US official said were false.
The Houthi official’s remarks came a day after a ballistic missile from the Iran-aligned group reached central Israel for the first time, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say Israel would inflict a “heavy price” on them.
“There is always communication after every operation we conduct,” Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi movement’s political bureau, told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. “These calls are based on either threats or presenting some temptations, but they have given up to achieve any accomplishment in that direction.”
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the remarks “a total fabrication.”
Separately, a US State Department official said: “Houthi propaganda is rarely true or newsworthy. Coverage like this puts a guise of credibility on their misinformation.”
Al-Bukhaiti said the calls after attacks included some from the US and the United Kingdom indirectly through mediators and that the threats included direct US military intervention against countries that intervene militarily “in support of Gaza.”
Beside attacks on Israel, the Yemeni group has also continued to launch attacks on ships they say are linked or bound to Israel in support of Palestinians amid the war in Gaza.
The Houthis have damaged more than 80 ships in missile and drone attacks since November, sinking two vessels, seizing another and killing at least three crew members.
The war in the Gaza Strip started after Hamas gunmen launched a surprise attack on Israel which left 1,200 people killed and around 250 foreign and Israelis taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent offensive on Gaza has so far killed 41,226 Palestinians and wounded 95,413 others, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Yemen has been embroiled in years of civil war. In 2014, the Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, and ousted the internationally recognized government. In January, the United States put the Houthis back on its list of terrorist groups.
Returning residents to north Israel is now a war goal, Netanyahu says
- Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rocket fire and they have yet to return
JERUSALEM: Israel on Tuesday expanded its stated goals of the war in Gaza to include enabling residents to return to communities in northern Israel that have been evacuated due to attacks by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The decision was approved during an overnight meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, Netanyahu’s office said.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel a day later and fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border has since escalated, threatening to ignite a regional conflict.
Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rocket fire and they have yet to return.
Israel’s defense minister said on Monday: “The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict. Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action.”
Hamas chief says ready for ‘long war’ in Gaza
- Israel has killed at least 41,226 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry
- Independent UN rights experts meanwhile warned that Israel risked international isolation over its actions in Gaza and called on Western countries to ensure accountability
Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories: Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said Monday the Palestinian group had the resources to sustain its fight against Israel, with support from Iran-backed regional allies, nearly a year into the Gaza war.
Sinwar, who last month replaced slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said in a letter to the group’s Yemeni allies that “we have prepared ourselves to fight a long war of attrition.”
Deadly fighting raged on in the besieged Gaza Strip, where medics and rescuers said Monday that Israeli strikes — which the military has not commented on — killed at least two dozen people.
The latest strikes came as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that prospects for a halt in fighting with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon were dimming, yet again raising fears of a wider regional conflagration.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP at the weekend the group “has a high ability to continue” fighting despite losses, noting “the recruitment of new generations” to replace killed militants.
Gallant last week said Hamas, whose October 7 attack triggered the war, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza.
Sinwar, in his letter to Yemen’s Houthis, threatened that Iran-aligned groups in Gaza and elsewhere in the region including Lebanon and Iraq would “break the enemy’s political will” after more than 11 months of war.
“Our combined efforts with you” and with groups in Lebanon and Iraq “will break this enemy and inflict defeat on it,” Sinwar said.
Independent UN rights experts meanwhile warned that Israel risked international isolation over its actions in Gaza and called on Western countries to ensure accountability.
Spain, which recently joined several European countries in formally recognizing the State of Palestine, is due to host Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday, an official in his office told AFP.
Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and holds little sway in Gaza, is set to meet Spanish King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, before heading to New York for the UN General Assembly.
The October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,226 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
Tensions have surged along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, amid fears the violence could explode into an all-out war.
“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas and refuses to end the conflict,” Gallant told visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein, a defense ministry statement said.
Israeli media outlets said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering firing Gallant, one of several officials who have been at odds with the veteran leader on war policy. Netanyahu’s office denied the reports.
Netanyahu told Hochstein later Monday he seeks a “fundamental change” in the security situation on Israel’s northern border.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since October in stated support of ally Hamas.
Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said Saturday his group has “no intention of going to war,” but if Israel does “unleash” one “there will be large losses on both sides.”
The violence has killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side.
In central Gaza, survivors scoured debris Monday after a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Ten people were killed and 15 were wounded when an air strike hit the Al-Qassas family home in Nuseirat in the morning, said a medic at Al-Awda Hospital, where the bodies were taken.
“My house was hit while we were sleeping without any prior warning,” said survivor Rashed Al-Qassas.
Gaza’s civil defense said six Palestinians were killed in a similar strike at night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood.
Emergency services later reported six more deaths, with Al-Awda Hospital saying it received the bodies of three people killed in Israeli strikes on Nuseirat.
The Gaza war has drawn in Iran-backed Hamas allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis, whose maritime attacks have disrupted global shipping through vital waterways off Yemen.
On Sunday the rebels claimed a rare missile attack on central Israel which caused no casualties, prompting Netanyahu to warn that they would pay “a heavy price for any attempt to harm us.”
In a televised speech, the Houthis’ leader said the rebels and their regional allies were “preparing to do even more.”
“Our operations will continue as long as the aggression and siege on Gaza continue,” Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said.
Israeli airstrikes destroy residential buildings in Hula as casualties rise
- Israel minister tells visiting US envoy time ‘running out’ to stop Lebanon war
- Hezbollah says Netanyahu is incapable of expanding the southern front
BEIRUT: One Hezbollah member was killed, and three were wounded in intense Israeli airstrikes on Monday on the border town of Hula.
The airstrikes destroyed several buildings, adding to the destruction of other residential areas that were leveled in the town, which has seen its residents flee.
The escalation of Israeli hostilities in southern Lebanon coincided with the arrival of Amos Hochstein, US envoy to the Middle East, in Tel Aviv.
His visit aims to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Hezbollah and avoid a full-scale war after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intent to “expand military operations in the north.”
BACKGROUND
Hezbollah has traded regular cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack sparked war in the Gaza Strip, in a campaign the movement has said was in support of its Palestinian ally.
The explosions from the missiles “felt like an earthquake,” Samer, a resident living near the targeted border area, told Arab News.
“The ground shook under our feet, even though we were dozens of kilometers away from the airstrikes.
“Now, the strikes target groups of houses at once, unlike before when it was just a single building or home.”
Israeli artillery also shelled the outskirts of the towns of Kfarkela, Kfarchouba, Aita Al-Shaab, and Hanine in the Bint Jbeil district.
Ali Shbib Shehab, the mayor of Hanine, told Arab News: “The town is being destroyed daily. It is a town about 2,000 meters from the border and has lost four civilian martyrs so far, women and children, while eight other civilians were injured. Around 50 homes have been destroyed either partially or entirely.
“It is a small town, and those who remain are farmers who hold on to their land and insist on staying despite the daily shelling.”
A security source stated: “The area from Odaisseh to Kfarkela is now empty of residents, while in the Bint Jbeil — Mays Al-Jabal — Hula axis, some residents remain in their homes, relying on aid.”
Israeli leaflets were dropped on Saturday over the Lebanese agricultural border area of Wazzani, calling on the remaining residents to evacuate by 4 p.m.
However, the Israeli army denied dropping the leaflets, claiming it was an “individual act” by an officer in the northern brigade.
An Israeli artillery shelling on the border town of Adaisseh on Sunday evening resulted in injuries to four residents of the city, who were in the process of transporting household items outside the area.
Previously, owners of commercial establishments storing their goods in warehouses located in border towns, particularly in Mays Al-Jabal, coordinated with the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, which in turn liaised with the Israeli side.
Over the past two weeks, goods and household items from homes and shops were evacuated in phases to prevent damage, as the conflict approaches a year since its inception.
Israeli media reported on Monday that “the commander of the Northern Command of the Israeli army, Ori Gordin, recommended during closed sessions that the military be permitted to take control of a security buffer zone in southern Lebanon.”
The Israeli side aims to distance Hezbollah forces to ensure they do not pose a threat to the northern residents while also exerting pressure on Hezbollah to reach a lasting settlement.
Netanyahu has threatened to carry out a large-scale military operation against Hezbollah.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the visiting Hochstein on Monday that prospects were dimming for a halt to nearly a year of fighting with Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Gallant on Monday met with Hochstein to discuss Israeli military operations against Hezbollah and the plight of Israelis displaced by the cross-border strikes, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
He “emphasized that the possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas and refuses to end the conflict,” the statement said.
“Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action.”
Earlier on Monday, the ministry said Gallant delivered a similar message by phone to his US counterpart Lloyd Austin about time “running out” for an agreement to end the conflict.
Israel “is committed to removing Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and ensuring the safe return of Israeli residents to their homes in the northern and border areas,” Gallant said.
In response to Netanyahu’s remarks on Monday concerning the potential expansion of the conflict to the northern front, Hezbollah MP Hussein Ezzedine asserted that Israel was “unable to extend the war to any additional front.”
He said the exhausted and worn-out army in Gaza had not yet reached an end to the current operations and could not assert victory in Gaza.
“Therefore, how can it contemplate opening a new front with Lebanon or any other location?”
Ezzedine affirmed that “the resistance is strong, capable, and prepared for any unexpected developments that the enemy may attempt to surprise us with, and it continues its daily operational activities that deplete the capabilities of the Israeli army.”
Israeli Channel 12 reported on Monday that several rockets launched from Lebanon struck the Metula settlement, resulting in damage to a building and the outbreak of fire.
Hezbollah announced that it targeted the positions of Israeli enemy soldiers in the vicinity of the Metula site using missile weapons.
It also targeted the Birkat Reisha site with artillery shells and the Israeli army’s artillery positions in Za’oura with rockets.
On Sunday, Hezbollah executed military operations against 10 Israeli military installations, which included an assault on the headquarters of the 188th Brigade’s armored battalions located in the Rawiya barracks with numerous Katyusha rockets.
Additionally, an attack drone was deployed to strike a technical system at the Al-Malikiyah site, achieving a direct hit. Another attack drone targeted Israeli soldiers at the Metula site.
Espionage equipment at the Ruwaysat Al-Alam site in the occupied Kfar Shuba hills was struck with a guided missile, while Israeli positions in Za’oura and further espionage equipment at the Ramya site were also targeted using guided missiles.
The Samaka site in the occupied Kfar Shuba hills was attacked with rocket weaponry, and buildings utilized by soldiers in the Shlomi settlement were also hit.
Furthermore, Hezbollah conducted an aerial assault employing a squadron of suicide drones on the headquarters of the Golan Division’s military assembly battalion in the Yarden barracks, accurately targeting the positions and settlements of their officers and soldiers, resulting in multiple casualties.
Additionally, Israeli artillery positions in Dishon were targeted with rockets.
