Community Capacity
Health and Health Care
Palestinian Jerusalemites helped build many major health care institutions in the city, yet today Israel requires them to “prove their center of life” is there to retain their legal status. Here we explore both the community’s historic contributions to public health, as well as the dystopian, fragmented systems they must navigate today to try and get their health needs met by a system that openly seeks their elimination. What is the public health impact of living as a Palestinian in East Jerusalem?
Featured in This Topic
Hospitals in Jerusalem are facing challenges. A conversation with Dr. Fadi al-Atrash.
Health impacts of living “on the frontier”
Jerusalem psychiatrist Samah Jabr, chair of the Palestinian Authority’s Mental Health Unit, sees tending to mental health as one path to liberation.
They have cancer; they struggled to get to Jerusalem for treatment; now they face deportation to a war zone without health care.
A community mourns a beloved pediatrician who treated generations of children.
The right to medical treatment and even to relieve oneself are compromised by Israeli checkpoints, especially when extended closures are enforced.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is hard to diagnose among Palestinians, because the trauma is chronic.
An epidemiologist, ethnographer, and institution builder who made foundational contributions to medicine and health care in Jerusalem and Palestine
A nurse from Lebanon who married a Jerusalemite and moved to the city right before the Nakba and embraced the responsibilities thrust upon her for caring for the sick, wounded, and disabled of the city over decades
A doctor who offered his services widely, helped establish hospitals and clinics, and taught himself to play the piano
The Story in Numbers
43,256
Number of referrals that were made to East Jerusalem hospitals by the Palestinian Ministry of Health from the rest of the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 2018, reflecting the centrality of care offered by specialized Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem before the war on Gaza [1]
7
Number of hospitals in East Jerusalem that serve the entire Palestinian community (including the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip); six are Palestinian NGO hospitals that were established before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. These six comprise the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network (EJHN) and are licensed and monitored by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The seventh, Juabeh Geriatric Hospital in Beit Hanina, was established by the head of Internal Medicine at Hadassah Hospital in the late 1990s. [2]
714
Number of beds in the seven East Jerusalem hospitals that serve the Palestinian community [3]
74
Percent of hospital workers in East Jerusalem hospitals who carry PA ID cards (2020 survey). In the Augusta Victoria Hospital, the percentage is 86. [4] Thus, hospitals have major staffing issues under conditions of closure, which have been more frequent and prolonged in recent years due to the coronavirus pandemic and the war on Gaza.
88
Number of Israeli clinics/centers that serve the population of East Jerusalem (2019 data) [5]
8
Number of Palestinian NGOs that offer clinics or provide health services to Jerusalemites (2021 data) [6]
3
Number of UNRWA-run health centers in East Jerusalem (two are located inside the city boundaries, in Shu‘fat and Al-Zaweeh; one is outside, in Qalandiya) [7]
4.5
Percent of income that every Israeli citizen and permanent resident over age 18 is required to contribute to the National Insurance Institute as a health tax, which is distributed among the various sick funds and used to cover the cost of public health care [8]
12.33
Percent of Palestinians surveyed across all East Jerusalem neighborhoods who reported having chronic health conditions. The most commonly reported conditions were diabetes (4.32 percent); cardiovascular conditions and hypertension (2.84 percent); and kidney problems (1.19 percent). The neighborhood with the highest reported percentage of such conditions was the Old City (19.7 percent), followed by Kufr ‘Aqab (13.5 percent) (2020 survey). [9]
29
Percent of Palestinians in East Jerusalem above the age of 18 who report smoking, with the highest rates in age group 33–40. Among children, the percentage is 1.4. (2020 survey) [10]
97.7
Percent of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem who have health insurance. Of those, 96.8 percent have Israeli government insurance while the rest have Palestinian government insurance, private insurance, or UNRWA insurance (2020 survey). [11]
93
Percent of ambulance transfers to East Jerusalem that are delayed due to the ban on Israeli ambulances entering Palestinian neighborhoods beyond the wall or areas outside the boundaries of the city, requiring instead a back-to-back transfer between ambulances [12]
7
Number of clinics for infant health care operated by the Jerusalem Municipality in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem (versus 27 in the Jewish neighborhoods of the city) [13]
0
Number of clinics for infant health care operated by the Jerusalem Municipality in Kufr ‘Aqab, a neighborhood of over 120,000 residents that lies beyond the Separation Wall. (The sole infant health care clinic in Kufr ‘Aqab is operated by a health ministry franchisee, not the Ministry of Health or the city.) [14]
Notes
[1] Asma Imam and Motasem Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector (Jerusalem: Publications of the Union of Charitable Societies, 2021), 30.
[2] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 1.
[3] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 3.
[4] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 32.
[5] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 4.
[6] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 6–7.
[7] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 6.
[8] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 4–5.
[9] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 15.
[10] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 19.
[11] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 3.
[12] United Nations, WHO, “West Bank Access 2022: Patient and Companion Permit Applications,” January 5, 2023.
[13] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 5–6.
[14] Imam and Hamdan, Study of East Jerusalem Health Care Sector, 6.
A Palestinian physician and public servant who was the “father of pediatrics in Jerusalem”