ABSTRACT
The authors suggest actions that the global health community could take to protect state accountability for the good health of Palestinians. They stress the need for a mass of health professionals and institutions to campaign for the right to health in Palestine. They call for Israel to take responsibility for repairing and restoring health care infrastructure, commit cessation of military and civilian violence and permit sustainable access to health services and goods in Palestine.
ABSTRACT
This essay explores representations of Palestinian physicians in the Israeli health-care system during the Covid-19 pandemic and the dynamics that have played out in that system during the public health emergency from the perspective of a Palestinian physician. It argues that the health-care system, an essential pillar and infrastructural foundation of the settler-colonial project, is naively imagined as an apolitical, neutral sphere. As the site of a metaphorical battlefield against Covid-19, it has been window-dressed as an arena for brotherhood between Israeli Palestinians and Jews, and fantasized about as a gateway to political gain or equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs). Throughout the process, settler militarism, settler symbols, and settler domination have continued to be normalized.