By Quds News Network
Gaza (QNN)- Amid the ruins of Gaza’s largest hospital, 168 Palestinian doctors received their advanced medical certifications after the facility was destroyed in repeated Israeli attacks and raids during the two-year genocide.
The graduation took place on Thursday in front of the destroyed facade of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.
CalIing themselves the “Humanity Cohort”, the doctors completed their Palestinian Board certifications under harsh circumstances as they had studied and sat for examinations while working nonstop inside Gaza’s hospitals during two years of Israeli starvation, forced displacement and genocide.
Some were also injured, arrested or had family members killed.
[https://twitter.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/2004383065121169664]
Gaza Health Ministry official Youssef Abu al-Reish described the ceremony as graduation from “the womb of suffering, under bombardment, among rubble and rivers of blood”.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, Al-Shifa’s medical director, said Israel sought to destroy Palestine’s human capital throughout its attacks on healthcare facilities, “but it failed in that”.
Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, Director General of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said, “We make today a platform of life, from evidence of crime to testimony of resilience and rebirth.”
The ceremony included empty chairs displaying photographs of healthcare workers killed during the Israeli war.
Al-Bursh noted that among this cohort were 10 doctors “who once stood with us, and then rose as martyrs. They departed in body, but remained in every certificate, every restored ward, and every life saved. If they kill one of us, hundreds rise in return.”
Healthcare in the Gaza Strip has been pushed to the brink of collapse following repeated attacks by Israeli forces.
Human rights groups and United Nations-backed experts have confirmed that Israel has been systematically destroying Gaza’s healthcare system.
Several medical facilities across Gaza were bombed, burned, and besieged by the Israeli military since the start of the war. Dozens of other medical clinics, stations, and vehicles also came under Israeli attack.
The targeting of health facilities, medical personnel and patients is considered a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
According to the World Health Programme (WHO), 18 out of 36 hospitals and 43 percent of primary health-care centers in Gaza were partially functioning.
A World Health Organization assessment conducted in early April 2024 found Al-Shifa Hospital had been reduced to what WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described as “an empty shell with human graves”.
The hospital has since been partially renovated but still largely lies in ruins.
The WHO Health Cluster has documented 825 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities since October 2023. These attacks have killed 985 people and injured approximately 2,000 others.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 1,722 healthcare workers have been killed in Israeli strikes over the past two years. An additional 306 individuals have been detained over the course of the war, according to the WHO Health Cluster.
At least five healthcare workers have died while in detention, with other released detainees, and the bodies of Palestinians returned showing signs of severe torture and abuse.
The graduation also comes amid a fragile ceasefire that has been violated repeatedly by Israel, killing over 400 civilians and blocking much-needed aid.
27 December 2025
Source: countercurrents.org