Sumud and Resistance Through Healthcare Provision: Popular Mobilizations in Healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory

• In Event: Development Beyond Aid: Civil Society Actors in the Global South

Abstract

This study focuses on a period of mass community mobilization that grew rapidly after the 1967 Naksa and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and particularly from the late 1970s.  We examine the conditions that created a conducive environment for the rise of these movements and their evolution across key historical social and political junctures from the late 1970s, to the Oslo period, second intifada, and beyond. We draw on primary interviews with people who were involved in establishing these movements, key informants, and archival materials. The infrastructure of Sumud/Steadfastness and resistance that defined the period in which these movements were forming was critical to their rise, which included women's committees, labor unions, among others. Simultaneously, the class makeup of the medical workforce was transformed to include many more doctors from non-elite backgrounds, thanks to university scholarships to the Soviet Union. Moved by poor health conditions of rural and Bedouin communities due to neglect by colonial authorities and the traditional medical establishment, some doctors saw a need and outlet for their involvement in the national project. We trace their history starting with sporadic volunteer days in 1979, to a parallel primary healthcare system that spanned diverse physical and social geographies, through to their NGOization and depoliticization. These movements shed light on how we can read Palestinian resistance through health and provide key insights into Palestinians’ persistent attempts to organize care despite ongoing settler colonialism. They offer a rich landscape to think through anti-colonial and independence focused imaginaries of care and rights in the face of settler-colonialism, military occupation, and fragmentation as well as shifting internal politics, and transformations in global solidarities and expanding neoliberalism and securitization in the humanitarian sector.

Authors

• Weeam Hammoudeh, CUNY-Hunter College

• Layth Hanbali