The existence of land and geography, independent of human life, is debatable and filled with uncertainty. It is humans who give meaning to the land. It is people who fill an empty, barren space with meaning, transform it into a dense, deeply rooted existence—who turn it into a home, a homeland, and even an ideal worth dying for. When we speak of land, in reality, we are speaking of people. Of the essential values that make human existence possible are as for example, the motherhood, childood, love, home, morality, justice, being good, and living freely under the sky and upon the earth.
The land knows nothing of all these abstractions. It is the human beings ,who stubbornly rooting themselves in the soil, who cultivate the land with tireless dedication and toil, who enrich it with meaning and ideals. Based on this act, the land itself gains new forms and details different from the nature: hills are etched with memories rooted in millennia, mountains and valleys become living recollections within human imagination, and borders are stained with martyr's blood, marked by sorrow and sanctity.

Imagine a man who has lost everything he held, his dear family, his home, his friends, everything he valued. A man who, despite facing unimaginable oppression from a very young age, never lost his humanity even after losing his children, relatives, and loved ones to barbarism. A man who stood strong against all odds, managed to preserved his humanity, striving to do his utmost for his people and his homeland.

Dr. Abdullatif Al Haj, affectionately called Abu Al-Majd after his first son who was martyred recently during the genocide war on Gaza. Dr. Abdullatif was born in December 1964 in Nuseirat Refugee Camp to which the Israeli forces forcibly displaced his family from their ancestral small village that is called Kawkaba during Al Nakba in 1948. However, this harsh reality has painfully taught Abu Al-Majd, even as a child, that survival would demand resistance and struggle. What else could one do when faced with a ruthless and homeless mob that had come to seize one's home!?

Abu Al-Majd completed his primary and secondary education at UNRWA schools within the Nuseirat camp and graduated from Khalid bin Al-Walid High School in 1982. Filled with a deep desire to help others from an early age, he decided to study medicine in the medical school. To achieve this, he traveled to Yemen and enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at Aden University. After years of rigorous and dedicated study, he graduated as a doctor in 1989.

Aware of his duty as both a doctor and a Palestinian citizen amid his people's suffering, he returned to Gaza during the First Intifada to serve his community. He immediately took on the role of coordinator at the Union of Health Care Committees to support public access to healthcare. Simultaneously, he served as a surgical assistant at the Arab Hospital in Gaza until 1995. Despite the heavy workload, Dr. Al-Majd never stopped advancing his expertise. He began a residency training program in general surgery at Al-Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem in 1995 and became a board-certified general surgeon in 2000. Shortly after that , he was appointed as the General Director of the European Gaza Hospital, where he had been practicing as a specialist at the same tme. Throughout his career, he remained deeply committed to academic advancement. In 2003, after undergoing specialized surgical training in Japan, he began lecturing at the Faculty of Medicines of Al-Quds and Islamic Universities in Gaza. In the meantime, he completed a master’s degree in Health Policy and Management at Al-Quds University aiming at further strengthening his professional skills.

In one of his statements, Dr. Al-Majd said: "The exiles, wars, and hardships I faced throughout my life have never defeated me. As a doctor, I continue to serve my people, improve healthcare services, and help train future doctors. Because I know that every surgery, every healed patient, every educated doctor is a step forward for Palestine’s future."

Dr. Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj

As a surgery specialist, Dr. Abu Al-Majd served for many years as Chief Medical Director at the........

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