After the war in Gaza began last October, Chantelle Ní Chróinín asked Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières if there was a role she could undertake in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The UCC medicine graduate had previously volunteered with the medical NGO in Yemen and had always had “a grá” for Palestine.
Instead of Gaza, Ní Chróinín was offered a six-month role in the occupied West Bank, and in January, the 33-year-old doctor from Kildare arrived in the Palestinian city of Hebron. There, she began co-ordinating mobile health clinics and delivering emergency medical training for local staff who, since October 7th, are facing rising numbers of mass casualty events due to Israeli military raids and settler attacks in the West Bank which have killed over 650 Palestinians.
The centre of Hebron is a militarised zone known as H2, where 1,000 hardline Israeli settlers live among local Palestinians, who face heavy restrictions on daily life as a result. “It’s quite a stark example of the apartheid, with a checkpoint throughout the city and certain streets that Palestinian can’t walk down, yet settlers and foreigners can,” says Ní Chróinín, referring to Shuhada Street, a once-thriving market street, which Palestinians are no longer permitted to walk on and lined by Arab-owned stores long since shuttered.
Ní Chróinín worked at one hospital located close to the militarised H2 zone, Al Mohtaseb. “It’s quite a risky journey,” says Ní Chróinín, whose colleagues faced being stopped at Israeli military checkpoints or harassed by settlers. To reduce the risk of harassment and detention, some Palestinian staff at the hospital are undertaking double or triple shifts, working up to 36 hours straight, says Ní Chróinín.
As well as putting in long hours, Ní Chróinín’s Palestinian colleagues are receiving only 50-60 per cent of their salaries, due to Israel withholding taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Lack of money to pay for fuel and travel costs, combined with a sharp increase in Israeli military checkpoints, means that both staff and patients in the West Bank face significant challenges travelling to clinics and hospitals.
On multiple occasions, colleagues have called Ní Chróinín to say that they could not come to work as there was an Israeli military incursion in their town, or en route, while one female colleague described being interrogated at gunpoint on the way to work.
“People are scared – and rightfully so – of travelling, and of leaving their homes, because they might be taken over by settlers,” says Ní Chróinín. Doctors without Borders has documented patients presenting at hospitals in more serious condition due to delays in seeking treatment, pregnant Palestinian women increasingly giving birth without prenatal scans, and healthcare workers delivering vaccinations for children being denied permission to travel.
[ Israeli military incursion into the West Bank the largest since 2002Opens in new window ]
Several humanitarian agencies said Palestinian health workers’ ability to travel through military checkpoints was significantly curtailed unless they were accompanied by a foreign member of staff or volunteer – who say they are increasingly facing issues obtaining or extending their Israeli visas. The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs declined to comment on the number of visas issued to aid workers this year.
On the way to deliver training at Yatta Hospital, Ní Chróinín says she saw a Palestinian man beside a car “on his knees, blindfolded, with his arms tight, his hands tied behind his head with cable ties and being held there by the Israeli forces”. When she came back two hours later, he was still in the same stress position. The Israeli military declined to comment on its policy regarding the use of blindfolding and stress positions, while a spokesman said he required more details to comment on the case in Yatta.
Garvin met a volunteer female paramedic, Dalia, who described arriving at a location to find the injured person needing assistance was her own brother, who had been shot. He died shortly after
Dr Samah Jabr, the head of the mental health unit at the Palestinian health ministry, says she is treating multiple Palestinians affected by long periods of being blindfolded in Israeli prisons. One patient, a labourer from Gaza who was stuck in the West Bank after October 7th who was detained by Israeli forces for interrogation, claims to have been blindfolded for 28 days, says Jabr. “He wanted sleeping pills because he’s so afraid of closing his eyes, he doesn’t sleep.”
In August, Carrie Garvin, a psychotherapist from Kinsale, Cork, who established Psychotherapists for Palestine, spent time with Palestinian men released from Israeli detention and provided some training in somatic therapy techniques which she learned of from the ISE Centre in Northern Ireland, which supported victims of the Troubles recovering from trauma.
[ Israeli forces kill at least 10 Palestinians in West Bank raidsOpens in new window ]
Garvin (50), initially travelled to the West Bank as part of an international camp organised by the Lajee Centre. The Bethlehem-based centre brought a group of Irish, Americans, Germans and French visitors on a tour of the West Bank, including to Tulkarem camp, where civilians and armed Palestinian groups are facing a wave of Israeli military raids.
While there, Garvin met a volunteer female paramedic, Dalia, who described arriving at a location once to find the injured person needing assistance was her own brother, who had been shot. He died shortly after. During a call-out on September 2nd, Dalia received a shrapnel wound to her face after an Israeli drone fired a missile. The Israeli military did not respond to a specific request for comment on the incident, but in an official announcement at the time it said forces had targeted an “armed terrorist cell”.
Garvin says Dalia described feeling “shut down” and not wanting to get married because she feels like she no longer has capacity to relate to children – “her feelings are gone”.
[ Life - and death - in Hebron: ‘Blood will increase the gap between both of us’Opens in new window ]
Both Garvin and Jabr say the most important thing for Palestinians’ mental health is safety and an end to the occupation. “You have to have safety first before you can begin the process of healing, and there is no safety there,” says Garvin.
While the psychotherapist was in the West Bank, her two sons were travelling in Thailand, where some 70,000 Israelis have arrived this year. Garvin is concerned that some of the Israelis who recently served in the Israeli military could be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders that could lead to a violent outburst.
“It’s a trauma-manufacturing machine what’s happening – not just Gaza, but in the West Bank too.”
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