The disease of settler colonialism and apartheid

No humanitarian assistance can relieve Palestinian suffering, only the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid can.

When a rubber bullet pierces the eye of a child in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and when a woman is doused in “skunk water”, a cocktail of chemicals that smell like rotten eggs and sewerage, these are clear acts of violence and dehumanisation targeting Palestinians. But the oppression Palestinians suffer at the hands of Israel is not limited to such attacks. There are multiple structures of exclusion and discrimination that govern Palestinian lives and that – like the violence unleashed upon them daily – affect their health and wellbeing. They all necessitate a humanitarian response from organisations like Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontieres, or MSF). However, when MSF patches up a wound, treats a COVID-19 patient, provides mental healthcare, or receives trauma patients in an emergency room, we are not treating patients in a political vacuum. We are treating the consequences of settler colonialism and apartheid, for which we have no medical cure.