As the world watches, Palestinians in Gaza are living through a deliberately engineered humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions that worsens by the hour. In recent weeks, Israel has imposed a total siege of northern Gaza and intensified its bombardment here, with reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is implementing a policy of starvation to force the remaining Palestinians south. Israel has already laid waste to much of Gaza, but if the international community does not act immediately, there will be nothing and no one remaining in the north.

The past year has tested our endurance in ways we could never have imagined. But the last few weeks have pushed us to the limit of anything that can be described as “living.”

Until October 22, I worked in the emergency room of the now-shattered Indonesian Hospital. As a doctor who graduated and returned to Gaza last year after a decade abroad, I dedicated my life to healing. But that mission has been stripped from me.

I worked in the hospital for eight months before being forced to leave when Israeli soldiers besieged the complex, leaving the hospital without power. Medical supplies had all but run out, and there was no way to treat the wounded. Ambulances struggled to reach the injured, their drivers risking their lives to navigate streets reduced to craters and rubble.

Inside the hospital, the scenes were beyond tragic. We had to make impossible choices: whom to save and whom to let die, not because their injuries were too severe, but because Israel’s siege meant we simply didn’t have the supplies to help them. I watched children die because we ran out of something as basic as antibiotics.

Many of my colleagues were killed, simply for doing their jobs. Others have been stranded in dangerous areas, unable to reach the hospitals where they are so desperately needed. Every day, we risk our lives, knowing that even the places meant to heal have become targets.

The north of Gaza is an open graveyard. There is no sanctuary left for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still here. Seventy-two members of my own family have been killed. Hospitals, schools, and homes—places meant to shelter and protect—have been obliterated. Every space that once promised safety has been turned to dust. The scale of destruction is beyond measure, the human toll staggering.

The streets where children once played are now lined with bodies, and those of us who remain are trapped, surrounded by death. If the blast of the bombs doesn’t take us, the fires they cause do.