Marwan al-Sultan (Marwān al-Sultān) (مروان عمر ربيع السلطان), 49, was one of only two cardiologists in northern Gaza, where he directed the Indonesian Hospital in Bayt Lahya. Despite repeated attacks by the Israeli military, Dr. al-Sultan refused to leave northern Gaza, and became a prominent chronicler of Israel’s deliberate destruction of the health sector.

Al-Sultan earned his bachelor of medicine in 2001 from Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences in Pakistan. In 2009, he secured a scholarship with the Qatari Red Cross and traveled to Jordan, where he worked at the Islamic Hospital in Amman for the next ten years. In 2012, he received certification from the Jordanian Board as an internist, and in 2019 earned the Arab Board certificate in cardiology. 

During this time, he served as one of the data collectors for a nationwide study of arrhythmia in Jordan, compared to the condition’s manifestation in neighboring Syria.

Dr. al-Sultan returned to Gaza in 2019, at a time when the health sector was experiencing a brain drain. According to the Ministry of Health, 55 doctors resigned in 2019 alone, citing low pay and other problematic working conditions. 

Dr. al-Sultan became a consultant in internal medicine and interventional cardiology at al-Shifa Hospital. He also joined the Medical School Faculty at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Dr. al-Sultan (second row, fourth from left) among IUG Medical School Faculty (7 October 2022)

In November 2023, Dr. al-Sultan became the Director of the Indonesian Hospital after the Israeli military attacked the facility and arrested its director, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout. Indonesian was a 110-bed hospital established in 2016 with funding from Indonesian medical students. It was attacked on the very first day of Israel’s assault, on 7 October 2023.

Even as he and his family were displaced from their home in Jabalya, Dr. al-Sultan was unwavering in his commitment to Indonesian. When it was attacked again multiple times and saw structural damage at least twice, Dr. al-Sultan oversaw its reconstruction, issuing numerous appeals through international media. In one such instance, he sat at his desk in a darkened office, describing Israeli attacks on the hospital’s wards. 

In May 2025, at the start of a five-day Israeli attack that culminated in striking the hospital’s backup generators, Dr. al-Sultan gave a haunting description of the scene: “The smell of blood fills the hallways, our teams are exhausted, there is a shortage of everything, a shortage of everything except death.” 

Amidst the genocide, Dr. al-Sultan continued training medical students. In late June, he supervised the Arab Board exam in cardiology, held via video conference across Arab countries. 

On the afternoon of 2 July 2025, Dr. al-Sultan was taking a break with his family in a rented apartment in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City. Between 2 pm and 2:30 pm, an Israeli airstrike targeted the apartment, killing Dr. al-Sultan, his wife, daughter, sister, son-in-law, and several other family members. He is survived by a daughter, Lubna, and a 20-year-old-son, Ahmed, a medical student.

Dr. al-Sultan was the 70th health care worker killed in a 50-day period, and among 1,581 killed from 7 October 2023 to 16 July 2025.

Weeks before his killing, he had told several colleagues of dreams he had been having of his own father. Dr. Munir al-Bursh, director of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, recalled “Dr. Marwan had mentioned a vision he had, where his martyred father appeared to him in a dream, embraced him, took him with him, and gave him a bouquet of flowers.” 

Photo credits: Facebook; Dropsite News