GAZA- Before the war devoured his home and his body, Dr. Ali Al-Nuwairi was a man of healing. An orthopedic and trauma surgeon at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, he spent his days repairing shattered limbs and broken bones, never imagining that one day, he would be the patient, not the doctor. Never imagining he would lose almost everything: his family, his home, and his legs.
On the morning of October 29, 2023, an Israeli airstrike struck his house while he was asleep. Within seconds, his life collapsed, literally and irreversibly. The blast killed his pregnant wife, his three-year-old son, his parents, siblings, and two young nephews. He himself survived, barely, pulled from beneath the rubble, unable to breathe, his spine crushed.
“I woke up and couldn’t move. I was under the rubble, and I could hear the voices of my relatives yelling, ‘This man is still alive!’” he recalls. “They pulled me out. I kept asking about my wife and son, but no one would answer.”
It was a cruel silence, one he would soon understand.
From Surgeon to Survivor
Before the war, Al-Nuwairi, 34, was part of a deeply rooted medical family. His late wife was an emergency doctor, his sister a nurse, and his brother-in-law a dentist. Healing was not only his profession but also his heritage. He had worked at the European Hospital before transferring to Al-Aqsa Martyrs, where he treated countless victims of bombings, never knowing that his own name would be added to the roster of the wounded.
In the aftermath of the attack, he was rushed from hospital to hospital across Gaza: first to Al-Awda, then to Al-Aqsa, and finally to the European Hospital. There, after surgery, doctors gave him the devastating diagnosis: his spinal cord had been irreparably damaged. He would not walk again.
About six weeks later, he was evacuated to Türkiye for treatment. In Ankara, he began months of intensive physical therapy, hoping to regain some degree of mobility. Slowly, against the odds, some signs of improvement appeared.
“When I arrived, I couldn’t move my left leg at all. They said I’d need crutches forever. But I started feeling something in my knee. Now, my left leg works at about 60 percent,” he says, hope lighting up his face. “I want to walk again. I want to wear the white coat again.”
Despite the shattering loss of his loved ones, Al-Nuwairi holds tightly to his profession; medicine remains both anchor and compass.
“My job is to help people and heal wounds. That hasn’t changed,” he says. “Even if I am injured, even if I lose everything, I still want to return to that role. That’s who I am.”
He speaks with deep admiration for Turkish hospitals, praising their cleanliness and the professionalism of the doctors. But practicing medicine in Türkiye would require long and difficult licensing procedures. He is willing to undergo that if he must, but his heart remains tethered to Gaza.
“I want to go back. My family is buried there. That’s where my memories live. If conditions allow, I will return. Until then, I will do what I can here.”
Beyond the Numbers: The Uncounted Dead
Al-Nuwairi, like many in Gaza, is not only a witness to grief but a chronicler of its magnitude.
“The number of martyrs is far greater than what’s published,” he insists. “There are people still under the rubble, bodies that were never recovered. And those who died because there was no medicine, they’re not even counted. Many who died weeks or months after injury were never added to the tally.”
He’s right. Since October 7, 2023, Gaza has endured a relentless Israeli assault supported by the United States, an onslaught that the International Court of Justice has warned may constitute genocide. Nearly 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded. Famine, caused by siege and blockade, has begun claiming the lives of children. Hospitals have been turned into ruins, refugee camps into mass graves.
And yet, amid this man-made catastrophe, Dr. Ali Al-Nuwairi still speaks the language of healing.
In Türkiye, he continues daily therapy, bending knees, flexing muscles, and reclaiming small movements inch by inch. He speaks to fellow survivors. He dreams, he says, of one day standing again, not just physically, but symbolically: as a doctor, a father, and a Palestinian.
“They took my family. They took my legs. But they didn’t take my purpose. I will stand again. And when I do, I will return to Gaza, not to mourn, but to heal.”
In a war where destruction seems boundless, Dr. Al-Nuwairi’s story offers a different kind of resistance: the quiet power of a man who refuses to let death define him.
