On Saturday, The Washington Post highlighted that an American doctor who refused to evacuate from southern Gaza, “Rafah,” said on Friday that he remained in solidarity with his colleagues who were unable to leave, calling on US President Joe Biden to help ensure the safety of medical workers who treat patients affected by the war. .

Adam Hamwi, a former military surgeon in the US Army, said in a statement to the Washington Post on Saturday: “Never in my career have I witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my colleagues in the medical field as happened in Gaza.”

He said, "I want our president to know that we are not safe" and that "as a doctor, I cannot abandon the rest of my team, and as a former soldier, I cannot abandon my fellow Americans."

Al-Hamawi (53 years old), a reconstructive plastic surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip with the Virginia-based Palestinian American Medical Society, a mission coordinated by the World Health Organization. His team of 19 people, including US citizens and citizens of other countries, arrived in the Strip through the Rafah border crossing on May 1 to support the European Hospital in nearby Khan Yunis.

Over the course of seven months of war, Israel has surrounded and almost completely destroyed medical facilities in Gaza, detained doctors and other health care workers, and forced staff at at least two hospitals to bury dead patients in mass graves.

The World Health Organization says the remaining hospitals and clinics are barely functioning, facing shortages of medicines, equipment and staff.

According to the newspaper, “Hamwi and his colleagues, who arrived with bags full of supplies, including anesthetic drugs, were scheduled to leave Gaza on May 13. But shortly after their arrival, Israeli forces launched an operation in Rafah to seize and target the border crossing with Egypt.” Hamas fighters have holed up in the area.”

As the fighting intensified, they treated an influx of trauma patients, many of them children, and almost immediately began running out of alcohol bandages, gauze and burn cream.

“We don’t even have absorbent pads to keep [patients’] wounds dry, which is essential to prevent hypothermia,” one American doctor, Mahmoud Sobha, wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The newspaper states that “Israel launched the war on Gaza after Hamas militants launched an attack on Israeli communities (in the Gaza envelope area) on October 7, killing about 1,200 people (including 311 soldiers, according to official Israeli statements) and kidnapping more than 250.” It accuses Hamas and other Palestinian fighters of using hospitals as bases for armed activities.

Hamwi said: “We are concerned that the European Hospital in which we are currently located will suffer the same fate as Al-Shifa and Nasser Hospitals,” referring to the two largest hospitals in Gaza, which were severely damaged by Israeli military raids.

He is one of three American medical volunteers who remained, while other colleagues were evacuated through the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, with the assistance of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, and permission to leave was granted to US citizens only.”

Eleven team members from other countries, as well as two permanent U.S. residents, were not offered an exit, Hamwi said in a text message early Saturday.

"When the call came to evacuate, I was asked to choose whether to evacuate and leave my team behind or stay with them. I could not in good conscience leave my team behind," he said in the statement.

"That's not what I was taught," he continued. "This is not the soldiers' creed. We are not leaving Americans behind. This goes against our values as Americans," he said.

Hamwi, who lives in New Jersey, was among the doctors whom Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) publicly credited with saving her life in Iraq in 2004.

The Palestinian American Medical Society has another group of volunteers waiting in Egypt to relieve Hamwi's team, but the entry of foreign aid workers into Gaza has been severely restricted since Israel closed the Rafah border.

Hamwi and his colleagues do not know when they might have the opportunity to leave, and Hamwi apologized in his statement to his family for not returning to his home.

"I know it hurts that I won't be home this weekend, and I'm sorry," he said. "But I know you're proud that I'm keeping my oath to never leave anyone behind."

In a letter to The Washington Post, he said: “If all American citizens left, what would that say about us as a country? This is not who we are."