In July 2025, when Israeli forces suddenly ordered Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah to evacuate under threat of imminent bombardment, my friend Ahmed Shabat, a junior doctor, found himself facing a choice that defined the thin line between life and death.
Around him, the hospital was descending into panic as staff and patients scrambled to flee. Amid the blinding chaos, Dr Ahmed spotted a young man who had been brought into the emergency department, entirely overlooked as everyone rushed to escape.
He was bleeding heavily from a deep shrapnel wound to his thigh; a major artery had been severed and his life was running out in seconds.
Repairing a ruptured artery is the high-stakes work of a specialised vascular surgeon, but the specialists had already been forced to leave. Left with a decision to make in a rapidly emptying room, Dr Ahmed refused to walk away.
"I looked at him and thought, what if this was a member of my own family?" he recalled later.
