Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2003, page 27

Two Views

 

Wounds That Do Not Bleed Often Hurt the Most

 

By Samah Jabr

News reports continue to tally the number of those killed or wounded in the ongoing violence in occupied Palestine. Little, if any, attention, however, is given to the masses whose wounds do not bleed, but hurt the most.

A few days after I finished my year of medical internship I was selected by the Palestinian Ministry of Health as the recipient of a French government scholarship to study psychiatry in France. Before leaving for France and the four-year residency program, I will work for a minimum of six months at Bethlehem’s psychiatric hospital.

Naturally, I feel happy and excited about this special opportunity. Not only is psychiatry the medical specialty that appeals most to me, but it also is a most necessary field for improving health conditions in Palestine.

 

My mother seems to be far less enthusiastic about my future career than I am.

My mother seems to be far less enthusiastic about my future career than I am, however. She considers it neither fun nor prestigious to have her daughter spend her life treating pathological mental states and behavior. “I want you to be a ‘normal’ doctor,” she tells me—the implication being that psychiatrists are “abnormal” doctors. Unfortunately, Mom is only one of an entire community that fails to see psychological trauma as a wound and psychologically or mentally disturbed people as real patients. When I ask the taxi driver to take me to the psychiatric hospital, for example, he looks puzzled for a moment, then says “Ah! the crazy people’s hospital.”

In the West, psychiatry is an elite profession that attracts competent doctors. Not only sick people seek their services, but even privileged, healthy people go to their “shrinks” for therapy and additional comfort. In developing countries like occupied Palestine, however, psychiatry is 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, young, competent and talented doctors avoid this specialty.

Nevertheless, I find psychiatry the most humanizing and dignifying medical profession—not least because it helps me personally cope with all the violence and disappointments surrounding me.

Returning to Jerusalem from the scholarship interview in Ramallah, for example, I had to squeeze myself among the hundreds of people waiting to show their papers at the Qalandia checkpoint. It was raining heavily, and I had all my certificates and letters of recommendation in my bag. By the time I was allowed to pass through, I was dripping, and my papers were all wrinkled and wet, the soaking ink rendering my certificates illegible. I was horrified and enraged at what happened, but my pacifist father—a life-long educator—though silent, was deeply wounded at the sight of my papers.

On the few days when the Israelis lift the curfew on Bethlehem, I, along with Bethlehem University students, sneak into the town past the District “Coordination” Office in Beit Jala. Together we traverse a narrow pathway on the edge of a steep hill to cross the border to the bus that will take us to the university campus. A few mornings ago, the bus’s 50 passengers were ordered to stand still at the edge of the steep hill while a few insane Israeli soldiers drove their jeep crazily in the mud, deliberately splashing our clothes and luggage.

In Jerusalem, Israel’s policy of discrimination seeps down to the bones. Not only does the occupation’s oppressive law prohibit Jerusalemites from driving West Bank residents into the city, but Jerusalem taxi drivers are forced to assume a police role and investigate their passengers’ papers. Any driver caught with a West Bank passenger faces arrest, an expensive fine and confiscation of his van. Driving from Damascus Gate to Jaffa Gate—a distance of two kilometers—we are stopped several times to be searched, questioned and harassed by any Israeli soldier in the mood to subject Palestinian civilians to his or her arbitrary sadism.

These are just small examples of what Palestinians face every day. We live with unrelenting oppression, daily fear for our safety and deliberate humiliation that targets our dignity.

The pathological behaviors exhibited by the Israeli occupation troops illustrate the moral and psychological aberrations that can result from a history of oppression and victimization.In Hebron, Israeli soldiers entertain themselves by making Palestinians caught breaking the curfew select a paper from a “lottery basket.” On the papers from which they must choose are written arbitrary punishments like nose breaking, arm fracture, undressing, or “Bingo: Go Home.”

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 youths 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 callousness chronic exposure to violence brings to a human conscience. I fear the revenge mentality as well as a people’s instinctive desire to perpetuate on their oppressors the wrongs committed against them.

The process of psychological rehabilitation should go hand in hand with our steadfastness and resistance to occupation. Not only is psychological health a mandatory element for freedom and independence, it is a priority for a nation living in torment and hostility. Our trauma has been chronic and severe, but by recognizing our suffering and treating it with faith and compassion, we shall overcome.

Samah Jabr is a medical resident in her native city of Jerusalem.

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