GAZA: ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES (IDF) RAID KILLS EIGHT, INCLUDING A MOTHER AND HER FOUR CHILDREN: Yet this time the Italian Ambassador did not request a suspension of the UN Security Council meeting in protest.
Rome, April 29th, 2008
Yesterday Israeli tank shells killed eight civilians, including a mother, her four children ages seven, six and four, and a fifteen month old baby. They were having breakfast when they died under the rubble of their home in Beit Hanoun, in the northernmost part of the Gaza Strip.
Last Wednesday, April 23rd, a meeting of the UN Security Council dedicated to the Middle-East was suspended at the request of Italian Ambassador Marcello Spatafora in protest of a statement by Libyan Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi, who compared “the actual conditions in Gaza to the situation of Nazi’s concentration camps” during the Second World War. I have never said, and never will say, that Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people are the same as those adopted by Nazis against Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies. The uniqueness of the Holocaust belongs to our European history, the same is true for the persecutions against Jews, and we have said “never again.” Therefore, I don’t blame our Ambassador for raising objections to comparisons of Nazi and Israeli policies, as made by the Libyan Representative when talking about Gaza.
Yet, I strongly disagree with our Ambassador for not taking any initiative to stop the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or to bring the collective punishment of the exhausted civilian population in Gaza to an end. Day after day, we hear of civilians dying, of bombardment, of house demolitions, of land confiscations: why doesn’t our Ambassador feel indignation on behalf of those women, children and elderly who in Gaza have no bread left to eat? And also for those in the Strip who are sick and are dying since they can’t access medical treatment? Or, finally, for those students in Gaza who, having obtained scholarships from renowned Universities abroad, can’t leave the Strip because Gaza is closed and its population imprisoned as in an open-air jail? On April 24th, The United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugee aid (UNRWA) was forced to stop food deliveries due to the cut-off of fuel by the Israeli Authorities.
Is this not enough of an outrage for our Ambassador? Isn’t it sufficiently outrageous that Israel has refused to grant exit permits to the 1,562 Palestinian patients who need to leave Gaza for urgent treatments? Or that 133 Palestinians have already died in the Strip because of these refusals? I call on our Ambassador to go to Gaza and to see the little bodies of premature babies who may die for the lack of electricity or fuel due to the Israeli siege, remembering though, that even if he wanted to go he might not be able to: the Israeli Authorities, as the occupier, decide who can enter or exit. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US President Jimmy Carter was recently denied entry.
It’s really time for Italian diplomats, EU governments and the entire International Community stop using indignation as a hypocritical tool for a ‘double standard’ policy. They must start listening and supporting the frequent denunciations of Israel’s human rights violations: denunciations coming from Palestinian, Israeli and International organizations, as well as the UN. Even the World Bank, just yesterday, highlighted the dramatic deterioration of Palestinian economy in the Occupied Territories, where, due to the “restrictions imposed by Israel to the freedom of movement and of access in the West Bank,” 35% of the population lives in conditions of absolute poverty. In 2007 the economic growth fell to zero, with continued stagnation expected in 2008. The unemployment rate is currently 23% in West Bank and 33% in Gaza Strip in spite of the 7.7 billion dollars in aid promised by donor countries.
After 40 years of occupation and 60 years of Nakbah, Palestinians have the right not only to aid but above all a future, a future of justice and peace and the creation of their own State: autonomous, sovereign, independent, based on ‘67 borders, with Jerusalem as shared capital and in peaceful co-existence and in security with the Israeli State. They request not just indignation but freedom, independence, legality and real steps from the Israeli Government and the International Community. These could begin simply by ending the military occupation, implementing UN resolutions (that have languished for years), and by ensuring the respect of universal rights. All this will bring freedom and security to Palestinians and also to Israelis: the children of Sderot will no longer have to live in fear of the illegal barrages of rockets raining on their town.
Further information: Luisa Morgantini +39 348 39 21 465 Rome office: +39 06 69 95 02 17 www.luisamorgantini.net
Often when “Israeli Apartheid” is talked about the argument that you always hear is: “There are no Jews-only park benches in Israel” which is a strange argument. There are many Jews-only things in Israel and furthermore apartheid is, according to international law, not defined according to unequal access to park benches.
In its most specific meaning, the word Apartheid (Afrikaans for separation) refers to the system of laws, policies and practices implemented by the white minority in South Africa to repress and exploit the indigenous African majority. In Israel, the word Hafrada (Hebrew for separation) is used to refer to the general policy of separation the Israeli government has adopted and implemented over the Palestinians in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS).
In 1976, the world witnessed the signing of the International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. According to this convention, Apartheid is a Crime against Humanity, and applies to all cases where policies are implemented “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”. The convention gave examples of policies that are often used to establish and maintain this domination, all of which are used by the Israeli authorities against non-Jews and particularly against Arabs.
In 1967, Israel occupied the WB and GS, ethnically cleansing a further 250,000 Palestinians from their homes after 720,000 were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Both the WB and GS are populated by large number of Palestinians and this has placed Israel in a dilemma. This is because it wants to control the land but escape responsibility for the Palestinians, so in response it created fenced-in Bantustans in GS and the WB.
Israel has built 24 foot high and 720km long (double the length of the Green Line) concrete Wall. It is clear that the wall does not run along the Green Line, which separates Israel from the WB, but rather runs through the WB. This means the annexing Palestinian land and divides the WB into small Bantustans. Furthermore it hugely restricts the movement of Palestinians within the WB.
As well as the Wall over 300 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks divide the WB into 420 different enclaves with no freedom of movement for Palestinians between them. Settler -only highways are off limits for Palestinians who are forced to drive with different colour number plates to distinguish them from Israeli settlers.
Palestinians in the WB are subject to a different set of laws to Israeli settlers living in the same area. The military laws that apply to Palestinians in the WB regulate every aspect of life.
Curfews are regularly placed on Palestinian areas that place all residents under de-facto house arrest. The city of Nablus, for example, was under 24-hour curfew for 5 consecutive months in 2002.
In the WB/GS, Israeli soldiers and police have killed over 4,850 Palestinians since September 2000.
Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained. Currently over 10,000 Palestinians from the WB/GS are being held as political prisoners, more than 2,000 without ever being charged or facing trial. The Israeli military will regularly drive through Palestinian areas and call for all Palestinian males between 15 and 50 to leave their houses and gather in a central area where they will be detained.
Torture is used against virtually every Palestinian arrested by the Israeli military or police. Regular beatings, being tied in contorted positions, denial of food and prevention of the use of the bathroom are common experiences in Israeli prisons.
Around 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. These demolitions often occur without warning where residents are forced to flee their homes with whatever belongings they can carry.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid of which the occupation is nothing more than a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in their stake in the political community. It was an apartheid mentality that nourished the desire of establishing and maintaining a state with a Jewish demographic majority and character. It is apartheid law that creates a wall of discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens of the Israeli state. It is an Apartheid mentality that prompts some Israeli Jews to view their Arabs living under Israel as a “demographic threat”.
Section 7A of the Israeli Basic Law prevents anyone running for the Israeli Knesset (parliament) if they do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state and thus bars anyone who wants to change the apartheid character of the state by parliamentary participation.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) owns around 14% of the land in Israel, and is prohibited by its constitution from selling or leasing this land to Palestinians, around 2/3 of this land was taken from Palestinian refugees. Through its 50% representation on the council of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the JNF has a substantial influence over more than 93% of the land in Israel.
Some Israeli towns set criteria that prevent Arab citizens from purchasing homes or living in the town. The Israeli state regularly passes legislations that prevent Arab from reaching their lands or redefines areas as nature reserves or forests that can then be confiscated.
There are over 100,000 (9% of Palestinian citizens of Israel) Palestinian citizens of Israel living in villages that the Israeli government does not officially recognise. These villages existed prior to the establishment of Israel but were simply declared as non-existent with the adoption of the Israeli Planning and Construction Law in 1965 and do not appear on any map. Although the residents of these villages are officially Israeli citizens, they are denied basic services such as housing, water, electricity, education and health care. Furthermore the Israeli authorities regularly demolish some of these villages.
Up to 420,000 of Arabs living under Israel are internal refugees “internally displaced persons” in Israel, between 46,000 and 48,000 Arabs became displaced in 1949 within what became Israel. Over fifty years later, this group (including the children of the displaced) represents about 150,000 to 200,000 persons. If you also include the Bedouins who were ordered in 1949 to move into a close area under military rule in the Negev and now for the most part live in “unrecognized villages”, the estimate the number of displaced is 250,000-420,000.
The well-planned ethnic cleansing, in 1948, of 720,000 indigenous people was apartheid practice par excellence. It is apartheid which prevents the expelled and their descendants from returning: this apartheid denies residence to expellees from the Galilee, but grants it, not just to Israeli-born Jews, but to Jews all over the world.
Since 1948, the Israeli military and police have continually carried out massacres of Palestinians who are living under Israel, in the WB and the GS and those in neighbouring countries. For example, in 1956, Israeli police in Kufr Qassem killed 49 Palestinian citizens of Israel after a curfew was placed on the village without warning.
Another argument I often hear is “if Israel was an apartheid, Arabs in Israel would not be able to vote” which completely ignores the fact that Arabs living under Israel today are the remains of the Arab population who still live there despite all the efforts by Israel to expel them. They are merely allowed the to vote in Israeli elections because they are a minority in the Israeli political system that has their voices sidelined. The fact that Palestinians within Israel have the right to vote is nothing more than a way to hide the reality of apartheid and does not undermine the apartheid nature of the state of Israel.
The past few years have seen a significant increase of literature and analysis which has argued that Israel is apartheid state. Also figures in the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa, including figures such as Nelson Mandela, and archbishop Desmond Tutu who has repeatedly made the statement that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is analogous if not worse than South African apartheid. Even the current Israeli PM tactfully acknowledged apartheid when he said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper: “If the two-state solution collapsed we (Israel) would face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights”.
Naji Mohamed
najimohamed@actionpalestine.org
Right to education campaign of An-Najah National University
our RESPONSE to uMSu motion ‘peace through education’
Our concerns
We at the Right to Education Campaign of An-Najah National University (ANU) are concerned that students of the University of Manchester are being asked to vote on a motion that is defamatory and unrepresentative of the actual situation. We urge the University of Manchester Student Union to remove it from the agenda of the General Meeting on 14th November 2007.
Introduction to An-Najah National University
The motion ‘Peace Through Education’ is defamatory because it repeatedly implies that ANU and its Student Council promotes, facilitates or has links with terrorism. ANU is a non-governmental public university governed by a board of Trustees located in the West Bank city of Nablus. With over 16,500 students enrolled in its 19 faculties and two colleges, it is the largest university in the West Bank. ANU has been active in the service of the Palestinian community at the local and national levels and it is an integral part of local community development in almost all fields. ANU has become a cradle and an incubator for a plethora of social and civic activities. Each year the university hosts tens of activities for local and national NGOs: lectures, workshops, conferences, exhibitions, and artistic performances.
Moreover, ANU is the only university in the West Bank that has a full-fledged FM Radio Station that offers a multitude of educational, cultural, and news programs. The FM station is being utilized to enhance the interaction between the university and the local community and has a wide listenership in the Governorate of Nablus and throughout the Northern West Bank.
Likewise, ANU main library has a video conference facility that is open for the use of students and community organizations to conduct seminars and workshops with other students and organizations in other parts of Palestine and around the world thus sharing valuable experiences gained in different localities and districts in several fields and build bridges between communities in Palestine and around the globe (see www.najah.edu). Each year, a student council is voted in by the student population. Neither the University nor its Student Council is a terrorist organisation, and the implication that they are is insulting.
Occupation
The motion ‘Peace Through Education’ fails to be representative of the actual situation because it omits any reference to the occupation. The West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem (named the Occupied Palestinian Territories) are under military occupation by Israel. Regardless of UN resolutions deeming the occupation illegal and demanding Israel’s withdrawal, and the International Court of Justice’s July 2004 finding that the Separation Wall is illegal, 8th June this year marked the occupation’s 40th anniversary. Israel, as an occupying power, has the responsibility under international humanitarian law to protect its occupied population and to not allow its citizens to settle on occupied land.
Yet, the following statistics accumulated since September 2000 indicate Israel’s flagrant disregard for the law, human life and dignity, and clearly show the high human cost of the Israeli military occupation:
4,345 Palestinians killed by Israelis (1,027 Israelis killed by Palestinians)
971 Palestinian children killed by Israelis (119 Israeli children killed by Palestinians)
31,531 Palestinians injured by Israelis (7,633 Israelis injured by Palestinians)
4,170 Palestinian homes demolished (0 Israeli homes demolished)
40% Palestinian unemployment (9% Israeli unemployment)
223 ‘Jewish-only’ settlements and outposts built on Palestinian land
65 UN resolutions issued to Israel, none to OPT.
(Sources: If Americans Knew – www.ifamericansknew.org, B’Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Information Center – www.btselem.org, Peace Now – www.peacenow.org.il)
The above figures place side by side Palestinian and Israeli deaths and injuries to show the disproportionate use of force against the Palestinian population. All deaths and injuries are to be regretted, indeed no single death or injury is any less devastating than another, but Palestinian casualties often go under-reported or not reported at all.
Education under occupation
The motion ‘Peace Through Education’ is additionally unrepresentative of the situation because it speaks merely of ‘students being regularly disrupted on their way to university by Israeli checkpoints’, education ‘being infringed upon’ and ‘hindered’. The impact of the Israeli military occupation on higher education can be measured in many ways, all of which defy this mild description. Here is a brief summary of the ways in which the educational process is obstructed at An-Najah as a direct consequence of the occupation:
56 students killed as a result of the occupation; 1 lecturer, Professor Khaled Salah, and his son (16) shot dead in their home by Israeli military;
According to today’s estimates, over 100 students and six members of staff are in prison, some held without charge;
Approximately 10,000 students daily or weekly subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment at checkpoints;
Thousands of hours lost waiting at checkpoints; Approximately 30 students of Palestinian origin living in Israeli with Israeli identity cards having to enter Nablus illegally to study (Israeli ID holders are not permitted to enter Nablus); Prevention of students from Gaza from studying at An-Najah, which is the only West Bank or Gazan university to offer some subjects such as Optometry; Denial of visas to foreign students and lecturers and Palestinian lecturers with foreign nationalities to take up teaching posts or places on courses; Barring of the importation of educational equipment and material.
The accusations of radicalism against ANU and its students show total ignorance of the real situation and belittle the unbearable suffering endured by Palestinian society under the yoke of the Israeli military occupation. ANU students and staff regularly express their condemnation of the atrocities committed by the Israeli military occupation authorities and they have the right to do so. Many students and employees lost family members, or have family members in Israeli jails. Many of our students and staff members have been injured themselves, tortured, and are humiliated on a daily basis on checkpoints. The expressions of condemnation are not the source of violence but are a direct result of the violence practiced on Palestinian society. The Israeli military occupation is the ultimate manifestation of violence and terrorism against an unarmed, defenceless, civilian population.
We urge the proposers of the motion ‘Peace Through Education’ to inform themselves more about the impact of the occupation upon the Occupied Palestinian Territories by reading, for example: the UN’s ‘The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank’ -
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/TheHumanitarianImpactOfIsraeliInfrastructureTheWestBank_full.pdf), or Amnesty International’s 2007 report ‘Enduring occupation: Palestinians under Siege in the West Bank‘ – (http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_17772.pdf) or
B’Tselem’s 2007 report ‘Ground to a Halt: Denial of Palestinian’s Freedom of Movement in the West Bank’ -
http://www.btselem.org/english/publications/summaries/20070807_ground_to_a_halt.asp
Additionally, we urge the University of Manchester Student Union to withdraw the motion ‘Peace Through Education’ because it is unrepresentative and defamatory.
Right to Education Campaign
An-Najah National University
Nablus
11th November 2007
by Dr Samah Jabr
The New Internationalist
May 2007
D
r. Samah Jabr exposes the damage done to the emotional health of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation.
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Ahmad, a 46-year-old man from Ramallah was doing well, until his last detention. But this time he just could not tolerate the long incarceration in a tiny cell, with complete visual and auditory deprivation. First, he lost his orientation to time. Then he became over-attentive to the movement of his gut and started thinking that he was Œartificial¹ inside his body. Later, he developed paranoid thinking, started hearing voices and seeing people in his isolated cell. Today, Ahmad is out of his detention, but still imprisoned by the idea that everyone is spying on him.
Fatima spent several years doctor-shopping for a combination of severe headaches, stomach-aches, joint pain and various dermatological complaints. There was no evidence of any organic cause. Finally, Fatima showed up at our psychiatric clinic and spoke of how all her symptoms started after she saw the skull of her murdered son, open on the stairs of her house, during the Israeli invasion of her village of Beit Rima on 24 October 2001.
Such are the cases I see in my clinic. The traumatic events of war have always been a major source of psychological damage. In Palestine the kind of war being waged needs to be understood in order to appreciate the psychological impact on this long-occupied population. The war is chronic and continuous, over the lifetime of at least two generations. It pits an ethnically, religiously and culturally foreign state against a stateless civilian population. In addition to daily oppression and exploitation, it involves periodic military operations of usually moderate intensity. These provoke occasional Palestinian fractional and individual responses. The vast majority of people are never consulted about such actions. While their opinion does not matter, it is they who must endure pre-emptive Israeli strikes or collective punishment in retaliation.
Displacement
Demographic factors complicate the picture. Those living in the occupied territories make up just a third of Palestinians; the rest are scattered around the region in a Diaspora, many in refugee camps. Almost every Palestinian family has experiences of displacement or major painful separation. Even inside Palestine, people are refugees, expelled in 1948 to live in refugee camps. The massive displacement of 70 per cent of the people, and the destruction of over 400 of their villages, are referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba or Catastrophe. This remains a trans-generational psychological trauma, scarring Palestinian collective memory. Very often, you will encounter young Palestinians who introduce themselves as residents of towns and villages from which their grandparents were evacuated. These places are frequently no longer on the map, either razed entirely, or now inhabited by Israelis.
Palestinians perceive Israel¹s war against them as a national genocide, and to resist it they give birth to many children. The fertility rate among Palestinians is 5.8 – the highest in the region. This leads to a very young population (53 per cent under the age of 17) – a vulnerable majority, at a crucial stage of physical and mental development. The geographical enclosure of Palestinians in very small neighbourhoods, with the separation wall and a system of checkpoints, encourages consanguineous marriages, increasing a genetic predisposition to mental illness. Walling off friends and neighbours from each other also has a debilitating effect on the cohesion of Palestinian society.
But, it is the violent environment in which they live which most undermines the mental health of Palestinians. Population density, especially in Gaza – with 3,823 persons per square kilometre – is very high. Elevated levels of poverty and unemployment – 67 per cent and 40 per cent respectively – undermine hope and deform personality. The war has left us with a huge community of prisoners and ex-prisoners, estimated at 650,000, or some 20 per cent of the population. The handicapped and mutilated make up six per cent. Recent screenings found a disturbing level of anaemia and malnutrition, especially among youngsters and women. The intense emotional hostility provoked by our daily friction with the Israeli soldiers at our doorsteps is a constant stress factor. Many Palestinian kids have been living with daily violence since birth. For them, the noise of bombardment is more familiar than the singing of birds.
Sudden blindness
During my medical school training in several Palestinian hospitals and clinics, I saw men complaining of non-specific chronic pains after they lost their jobs as labourers in Israeli areas; school children brought in for secondary bed-wetting after a horrifying night of bombardment. My memory of a woman, brought to the emergency room suffering from sudden blindness that started when she saw her child murdered as a bullet entered his eye and went out from the back of his head, remains all too vivid.
In Palestine, such cases are not registered as war injuries and are not treated properly. This realization provoked me to specialize in psychiatry. It is one of the most underdeveloped medical fields in Palestine. For a population of 3.8 million, we have 15 psychiatrists and are understaffed with nurses, psychologists and social assistants. We have an estimated three per cent of the staff we need. We have two psychiatric hospitals, in Bethlehem and Gaza, but it is difficult to get to them, due to checkpoints. There are seven outpatient community mental-health clinics. In developing countries like occupied Palestine, psychiatry is the most stigmatized and the least financially rewarding medical profession. Psychiatrists work with desperately sick patients and, in the eyes of their communities, are far removed from the glory of other medical specialties. As a result, competent and talented doctors rarely specialize in psychiatry.
I find psychiatry a humanizing and dignifying profession – not least because it helps me personally to cope with all the violence and disappointments surrounding me. I move from Ramallah to Jericho to see psychiatric patients.
In one working day I see between 40 and 60 patients; 10 times the number I used to see during my training in Parisian clinics. I observe my patients¹ disorganized behaviour, listen to their overwhelming stories and answer them with the few means I have: a bit of talking, to pull together their fragmented ideas; some pills that might help them to organize their thinking, stop their delusions and hallucinations, or allow them to sleep or calm down. But talks and pills can never return a killed child to his parents, an imprisoned father to his kids, or reconstruct a demolished home.
The ultimate solution for mental health in Palestine is in the hands of politicians, not psychiatrists. So, until they do their job, we in the health professions continue to offer symptomatic treatment and palliative therapy – and sensitize the world to what is taking place in Palestine.
Resistance
Nowadays, Palestinians are pressured to surrender once and for all, when they are asked to Å’recognize¹ Israel. We are asked to accept, reconcile ourselves with and bless the Israeli violation of our life. The fact that our homeland is occupied does not, by itself, mean that we are not free. We reject the occupation in our minds, as far as we can cope with it; and learn how to live in spite of it, rather being adjusted to it. But, if we recognize Israel, we are mentally occupied – and that, I claim, is incompatible with our wellbeing as individuals and a nation. Resistance to the occupation and national solidarity are very important for our psychological health. Their practice can be a protective exercise against depression and despair.
Israel has created awful facts on the ground. What remains for us of Palestine is a thought, an idea that becomes a conviction of our right to a free life and a homeland. When Palestinians are asked to Œrecognize¹ Israel, we are asked to give up that thought, and to renounce everything we have and are. This will only sink us deeper into an eternal collective depression.
After several years in Paris, I returned to a tired, starved Palestinian people, torn apart by fractional conflicts as well as by the separation wall. Palestinians are especially demoralized by the infighting taking place on the streets of Gaza, but orchestrated elsewhere in order to abort the results of last year¹s democratic elections. Those who have stopped all money from going to Palestine are, in effect, sending us guns instead of bread. They encourage the psychologically and spiritually impoverished to kill their neighbours, cousins and ex-classmates. Even if the factions settle up, Palestinian society will be left with a serious problem of intra-family revenge.
We shall overcome
It is hard not to wonder whether Israel¹s targeting of Palestinians is deliberately designed to create a traumatized generation, passive, confused and incapable of resistance. I know enough about oppression to diagnose the non-bleeding wounds and recognize the warning signs of psychological deformity. I worry about a community forced to extract life from death and peace through war. I worry about youth who live all their lives in inhumane conditions; and about babies who open their eyes to a world of blood and guns. I am concerned about the inevitable numbness chronic exposure to violence brings. I fear also the revenge mentality – the instinctive desire to perpetuate on your oppressors the wrongs committed against yourself.
There has yet to be a comprehensive epidemiological study of the psychological disorders in Palestine. And, despite all that is published on Palestinian war-related psychopathology, my impression is that mental illness is still the exception in Palestine. Resilience and coping are still the norm among our people. In spite of all the home demolitions and extreme poverty, it is not in Palestine that you find people sleeping in the streets or eating from trash cans. This resilience is based on family foundations, social steadfastness and spiritual and ideological conviction.
Still, we do have a mental-health emergency. Services are urgently needed for people who have suffered and endured crises so that they can restore their recuperative powers and coping capacities. This is crucial if they are not to crack when peace finally comes, as so often occurs in a post-war period. It is not just at a small number of sick individuals but an entire wounded society that needs care. Our trauma has been chronic and severe, but by recognizing our suffering and treating it with faith and compassion, we shall overcome.
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Dr. Samah Jabr works as a psychiatrist in occupied Palestine