This year, in preparation for the elections in Israel, I returned to my hometown of Nablus in the occupied West Bank to work on a research project and spend time with my family there. I received a grant to study the health effects of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement. For example, checkpoints, travel permits (including medical requirements), separation walls across the West Bank, and road closures.
My previous work and existing research on Palestinian health and well-being have given me a good sense of what I find: multiple burdens in accessing health care and, predictably, depression. High rates of illness, stress, anxiety, and anxiety.
I expected to hear stories of struggle, loss and trauma. And I’ve heard dozens of people, especially among young people, who feel a deep sense of despair.
What I didn’t expect was that my trip would coincide with the deadliest month for Palestinians since 2006. It is the result of Israeli military violence. Or how directly I experience the daily violence that characterizes Palestinian life.
As talk swirls of an even tougher crackdown on Palestinians from the far-right coalition created by Benjamin Netanyahu, who became Israeli prime minister again, and perhaps even the often-predicted third intifada, or uprising, It is important to stop and accept. For Palestinians in the West Bank, especially he knows how bad things are already in 2022.
A few weeks after my trip, Nablus, a city of about 160,000, was cordoned off by Israeli forces to crush the Lions Den, a newly formed Palestinian armed resistance group based there. .
The city was effectively cut off from the rest of the West Bank — the occupied territory was already in many ways cut off from the rest of the world — by Israeli forces until three weeks later. This means that every vehicle entering or leaving a city is either subject to hours of waiting and searching (which may involve searching Palestinian phones and social media accounts), or access to enter or leave the city is blocked. It meant a complete denial.
This has had a devastating impact on the city’s economy, hindering access to health care, education and social opportunities, not to mention immense stress and uncertainty among city residents.
Closing the city at a time when military and settler violence was already escalating was an act of violence in itself, part of a collective punishment consistently justified on security grounds. , all Palestinians are a potential threat, a potential threat and must be treated as such.
Palestinian youth have never experienced freedom of movement and life without constant and violent rule by the Israeli army. This is the situation in which Lion’s Den, which claims responsibility for several shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers, occurred. Israel’s recent crackdown on the West Bank, including the siege of Nablus, is largely intended to discourage mass mobilization against these groups.
The crackdown meant that all Palestinians had to adjust even the most trivial aspects of their lives to avoid encounters with settler violence and Israeli forces stationed across the West Bank.
During the shutdown, the lives of many people living in and around Nablus are waiting for the Israeli government, an entity that does not have the right to vote and is not accountable to the Palestinian people, to make a decision to lift the shutdown. So it was essentially on hold. And make life back to what it looks like normal.
The closure comes at the beginning of the famous Palestinian olive harvest season and prevents many families, including myself, from gathering to harvest olives, leaving those who dare to do so at an even greater risk of attack from settlers. was exposed to
Everyone I spoke to in Nablus said these were the worst conditions they could remember in decades.
When conducting a series of focus groups with doctors, nurses, patients, medical school members and students, it became clear that it was impossible to measure the extent of the damage caused by the Israeli blockade. For example, the relentless buzzing of Israeli military surveillance drones that patrolled Nablus 24/7 for weeks was what many called a form of psychological torture. . How can I measure it?
In one focus group, a public health teacher arrived 90 minutes late to explain that the road they were trying to take into the city was blocked by a checkpoint and that they would have to take another route. I casually talked about my experience like someone else. By mistake he explains that he wore two different socks. What does it say about the psyche of the population when such events are normalized?
I have long felt a responsibility, not only as a researcher committed to justice and equity, but also as one whose family is from the West Bank, to inform the Palestinian people of the reality of the situation. I was born in Nablus to a woman from a nearby village and a man from a Palestinian town besieged by Israel when it was founded in 1948.
My father taught journalism and political science in Nablus before moving us to the United States where I grew up. I became a professor myself because I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I’m not a political scientist like my father. I am a public health scholar. Of course, these two themes are intertwined in any situation. Health is inherently political. But in Nablus, I was reminded of the depth of that connection.
That context has largely remained largely the same over the last 50 years, with periods of slightly greater Palestinian freedom and periods characterized by severe restrictions and violence.
I spent most of my childhood and adulthood visiting families in the West Bank every summer. I remember the long, winding line of checkpoints, hostile Israeli soldiers examining our papers. I remember Israel imposed an electric curfew. The night had to be spent with only candles and lanterns. We were able to get to the airport in Tel Aviv, but I remember having to change taxis on the way to the West Bank because no Palestinian taxi would pick us up.
Currently, I and other Palestinian people, regardless of citizenship or country of residence, are not even allowed to use that airport without special permission from Israel. We go in and out of the West Bank via Jordan because we will not allow new airports to be built. (Fortunately, few people have been able to fly out of airports in southern Israel these days.)
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