Two days after the deadly Iranian missile attack on Beit Shemesh that killed nine and wounded dozens, Dr. Jonathan Lifshitz, a family doctor in the city’s Mishlat General Clinic, traveled to Jerusalem to provide medical care to his patients who were among the 780 people evacuated to two Jerusalem hotels.

On a hotel table covered with a tablecloth, Lifshitz connected two computers, setting up a makeshift clinic, and got to work.

“When I learned that my patients were evacuated from their homes, it was clear to me that I would reach out to them,” Lifshitz said in a statement. “Beyond medical care, sometimes the mere encounter with a familiar doctor gives a sense of security during such a turbulent time.”

In improved pop-up clinics, underground parking lots converted to wards and fortified operating rooms, hospitals and health clinics around the country are once again providing services under fire since the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28.

Immediately after the start of the war, the Health Ministry directed medical centers around Israel to switch to emergency mode, moving intensive care patients and operations to underground complexes or performing surgeries in protected spaces.

During the two years of war sparked by the bloody Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, Israeli medical centers provided care even as some hospitals — such as Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon — sustained rocket damage themselves.

At Beersheba’s Soroka University Medical Center, an Iranian ballistic missile slammed into the hospital’s surgical ward during the 12-day war with Iran this past June, injuring more than 80 people and wrecking eight operating rooms along with six research laboratories.

“This is something that no hospital in Israel or the world has ever had to deal with,” said Soroka University Medical Center director Prof. Shlomi Codish. “Soroka now operates at the highest level of alert and continues to provide life-saving medicine.”

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© The Times of Israel