2025 Workshop

Weeam Hammoudeh

Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University

Sumud and Resistance Through Healthcare Provision: A History of Popular Mobilizations  in Healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory (co-authored with Layth Hanbali)

Among the most awe-inspiring sites of struggle during the genocide has been the insistence of Gazan  health workers to steadfastly serve their community in the face of Israeli occupation forces’ destruction  and dismantling of the health sector. The life-affirming practices by the Gazan population in general,  and health workers in particular, represent community-based Palestinian resistance to the deathworld  Zionism attempts to create. This resistance has roots in a rich history tracing back to the early days of  the Palestinian national movement. Palestinian doctors wrote in favour of the Palestinian nationalist  cause at least since the 1930s and formed networks to treat injured fighters during the 1936 Great  Revolt. Medical resistance continued to form a core part of the Palestinian struggle over successive  decades, from George Habash and Wadee’ Haddad establishing a clinic in Amman in 1951 which  provided free services to Palestinian refugees and the poor, to the rush to establish al-Maqassed  Hospital in 1967 to consolidate Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. In this paper, we focus on a period  of mass community mobilisation that grew rapidly after the 1967 Naksa and occupation of the West  Bank and Gaza Strip, and particularly from the late 1970s. 

Drawing on primary interviews with people who were involved in the mobilization for healthcare in  the West Bank and Gaza Strip, key informants, and archival materials, we examine the formation and  evolution of the movements for health that eventually formed a parallel primary health care system in  the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) during the period of direct Israeli military administration and  until the early Oslo years. 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. 

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, student  movements, volunteer committees, and workers’ unions. 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. Noticing the relatively 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.  Starting in 1979, doctors and fellow health workers began to organise free medical days in marginalised  and besieged areas of the oPt, such as remote villages and bedouin communities. Their interactions  with marginalised communities increased their appreciation for the social and political dimensions of  their health work. Over time they formed more formal organisational structures and expanded their  scope of work. They established regular presence through permanent clinics, trained young women  from marginalised communities as community health workers, and formed women’s health  programmes. By the first intifada, they had formed part of the “infrastructure of resistance” that 

permeated Palestinian society. However, over time and especially in the post-Oslo period, these  movements faced challenges that came with institutionalisation, a shrinking political landscape, and  neoliberalising trends in the funding and solidarity environments, all of which had important impacts  on their evolution. The experiences of these mobilizations provide key insights into the evolution of  movements, how they are sustained, and how Palestinians have attempted to provide care despite  ongoing settler-colonialism, occupation, and now genocide.

Weeam Hammoudeh is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, a Visiting Scientist at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and co-Director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Brown University, and an MPH in Community and Public Health from Birzeit University. Her research seeks to understand how political, social and structural factors shape health, as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural transformations.  She is active in various research and policy networks, including the Reproductive Health Working Group (RHWG) and the Palestine-Global Mental Health network.