In this episode Nicole and Tom interview Dr. Ghassan Hamdan of Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS). PMRS is a grassroots NGO that's provided a much needed response to the medical crises caused by the occupation. PMRS' workers, like other Palestinian medical workers, are constantly targeted by the occupation forces. On top of providing medical care. PMRS has trained up thousands of people, building resilience to the occupation's attacks on the Palestinian people.

Organisations like PMRS are a vital part of remaining steadfast against Israel's colonisation policies. Building health autonomy is a key part of building resistance to the occupation.

View episode transcript here

Links:

• Palestinian Medical Relief Society website
• Attacks on Palestinian health workers so far in 2023 (Figures from World Health Organisation)
• Volunteer with PMRS
• International Solidarity Movement website
• If you would like an explanation of the terms used in this podcast, you can find a useful glossary on pages 140-154 of Shoal Collective's Ebook

Supported by

Shoal Collective

Hey, welcome to international solidarity

movement podcast. [Arabic]

Hey, and welcome to Episode Eight of the International

Solidarity Movement Podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode

we interview Dr. Ghassam Hamdan of Palestinian Medical Relief

Services. PMRS is a grassroots NGO that's provided a much

needed response to the medical crises caused by the occupation.

PMRS’s workers like other Palestinian medical workers, are

constantly targeted by the occupation forces. On top of

providing medical care, PMRS has trained up thousands of people,

building resilience to the occupations attacks on the

Palestinian people. Organisations like PMRS are a

vital part of remaining steadfast against Israel's

colonisation policies. Building health autonomy is a key part of

building resistance to the occupation. And now over to

Ghassam and Nicole for our interview.

Hello, thank you so much for making time for us today.

Please, can you introduce yourself?

Welcome, I'm happy to meet you to have you

here in Nablus first. My name is Ghassam Hamdan. I'm a doctor,

and I'm the Director of Medical Relief Society in Nablus region.

Medical Relief Society, it's one of the biggest non governmental

organisations in West Bank and Gaza Strip. And it was

established in 1979 by different medical personnel, doctors,

nurses, social workers, lab technicians. And the association

began as a doctor who was interested to provide medical

services for the people in the rural and difficult areas, the

area where we didn't have medical services for the people.

And you know, in that time, all the countries were fall[en]

under Israeli occupation. And the also the medical services

also was controlled by soldiers, where they are not interested to

provide medical services for the people, especially in rural and

remote areas. Thinking by that, that they can make pressure on

the people to migrate from their houses, their villages, their

places. And by that they can implement the policy of transfer

policy - where they are trying to push the people by themselves

to go out from their country to go out from other countries

where they can find better situations. Especially for their

children for their families, and medical things. The doctors

who think to establish medical archives and organisation

medical services, it's kind of building health infrastructure

for Palestinians where we can make services for the people and

relate it to their needs. And in health condition. After that, of

course, the medical relief was growing and work in different

areas, different regions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And

now, we run as a medical relief more than 43 Medical Primary

Health Care Centres. Big primary health care centres - and we

provide more than 14 programmes. Like woman health programme,

school health programme, first aid programme, emergency

programme, chronic diseases programme - different programmes

which [are] related to the needs of the people and the

Palestinian community. Of course, during our work. What I

want to explain that health is affected by occupation, health

is affected by politics and the condition which [is] caused by

Israeli occupation. So this is about medical relief, and we're

still working as health provider, but we based our work

on primary health care.

Amazing and you said about health being affected by

the occupation? How do you see this in your work?

So what I want to explain by this, that we can't here

implement our strategy in healthcare. Why? Because under

occupation, there is no sustainability. So if you want

to implement your strategy on healthcare, you need

sustainability. You need to have own conditions, conditions in

which you can implement your strategy. For example, if you

want to improve the health condition for the people in

chronic diseases, which is very difficult in Palestine - it's

the highest percentage in the Middle East - because of the

stress, the political situation, economic situation, social

situation. So we face many people who are suffering of

hyper tensions, heart diseases, heart attacks, and diabetes

mellitus. You know, all the these diseases [are] affected by

your style of life and your condition - especially

economically and politically, socially. We can’t take care

of these people while we have emergency situation. Explaining

that, for example, one month ago Nablus area - one and a half

months ago - Nablus area was completely under siege. So

during the siege, Israel had closed all exits to the city.

Totally. So the people, they can't go out, and they can't

come into the city. And the main medical and health services

here, especially hospitals - it's in the city only. We don't

have in the rural and remote areas, the hospitals, full good

and full primary health care centres where you can get good

and every, all medical services. So other things that the medical

personnel, doctors, nurses, lab technicians, different people

are going out from the city to the rural areas, or sometimes

coming from the rural areas to the city. It's not everyone

working in the city, and not everyone working in the village.

So this restricted the movement of the medical team and medical

people. And we faced that we couldn't, for example, many

doctors, they couldn't go to the primary healthcare centres where

they are working; because of the closure, because of the

checkpoints, because of the soldiers, where they prevent the

people to go out from the city to the villages and from the

villages to the city. Other things; the people who need to

be hospitalised - they can't come to the hospitals. And we

face some conditions like some pregnant ladies from Beit Furiq

town - it's near Nablus not far from here, just seven / eight

kilometres. Normally it takes the way from Bet F’riq to

Nablus. Normally, it takes 10 minutes. But when we had the

closure, the way, it takes six, seven hours because of the

checkpoints. And this lady she gave birth at the checkpoint,

where she [was] prevent[ed from] cross the checkpoints because of

the closure. And because of the soldiers. Like this case, we

have it all the time. So you can see that we can't improve our

health situation and our health system when we have emergency,

because everything is going to the emergency. During that we

have for example clashes with the soldiers at the checkpoints,

at the roads - not only with the soldiers, with the settlers also

who are attacking the people. Especially in Nablus area. Many

places were attacked by settlers. Stores, cars, people.

And if you heard about the two guys, [who were] killed just

three, four days ago, near Nablus by car, it was accident

by car, the settler went to where they stopped their cars in

the way of the road. And [the settler] attacked them with his

car and he killed [the] two people. So like this case, also

we have all the time. So our work is going on emergency as

doctors and as health workers. We don't take care of other

things where we have to care. For example, to children, women,

chronic diseased people. We have a big problem with the kidney

dialysis people. For example, in Nablus city area, we have more

than 470 people who need dialysis every day. And these

people are now [including] 190 people living outside of the

city. So they need to come to the hospital because we have

only one center to make dialysis. When we had the

checkpoint and closure they can't come. So this causes

different kinds of complications. And they face a

very hard health condition. So like, that, this is what I mean

that we can't have sustainability in healthcare and

we can't improve our healthcare system. For that what we are

trying to do is to create different activities related to

this condition. To [the] condition of closure, condition

of the political situation, which is very hard and very

difficult. and very difficult.

And in terms of resources going to the emergency

situation. I read on your website, and I know - you know -

websites can sometimes be a bit out of date and things. But that

you trained 180,000 people in first aid skills. Can you say a

bit about why this was necessary and how you made it happen?

Yes. So I remember in 1996 when we had

attacks on the mosque in al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Shimon

[Peres], if you remember… He was the Prime Minister of Israel, he

[has] died now. He go there to the mosque. And you know, this

is a sensitive issue and it's very sensitive issue for the

Muslims, for the people, the Palestinian people. So he go

there, he went there with settlers - hundreds of settlers

- and there was a kind of Intifada, yani, people they

refused these things. And we had a lot of - it's not happening

only in Jerusalem, but it happens also everywhere, in all

regions. Also in Nablus area. We had hundreds of injured people.

These injured people, they didn't find good help from the

local medical people, because we don't have enough resources for

that. We don't have enough medical people. We don't have

ambulances enough. So there was a lot of complications. And the

handicapped people increased from two percentage among the

community, to four, five percent. Because the people who

are related to these injured people was doing bad things for

them. When they evacuated them, they evacuated them from the

field in the wrong way. And this cause different complications.

So we think that we should have people who are trained on first

aid, especially young girls and boys. And we have, we created

this program in Nablus area, we began this in Nablus area -

where we began training different groups of young

people, boys and girls, from the schools, from the youth centers,

different with working with different associations. We

trained hundreds of people, in that time, on first aid. So we

prepared ourself, and we increased this our way where we

expand this work everywhere in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,

not only in Nablus area, but the work began in Nablus – here, in

this place. So, in 2000, when we have the Second Intifada we

had thousands of people who are trained in first aid. Young boys

and girls. While the Intifada began, they were working with us

as volunteers in the field. So with these volunteers, we could

do quality health work, dealing with the injured people in the

field. By that we were, this way, we help ourselves first, as

the medical relief and medical people. And we help the peoples

who are facing the soldiers, the attacks from the settlers. Who

are the people who are injured, who are evacuated from the field

in good way, and the right way, without complications. And by

that, we believe that we're only with volunteers, we can do a

good work. So for that we have 1000s of people who are trained

now and we continue this work until this moment, of course.

And we'll continue it in the future. Not only because we are

under occupation, but because we think that this is important for

how we can educate the community and we can have a good community

which is educated, on first aid and health things. In 2000 and

2008. Especially Nablus area, if you heard, it was full[y] under

siege, and the condition, political condition was very

difficult and hard. When in 2002 Israel decided to reoccupy the

cities, you know, Oslo agreement made [zones] ABC, and the A is

under control of Palestinians, B was mixed, C is fully under

Israeli control. But in 2002, everywhere is under Israeli

control. So that time for example, in Nablus area, Nablus

city was divided for eight parts by tanks. They use the Merkava

tanks, which is very huge and very powerful. And they

separated this part at the other part inside the city of Nablus.

And they made trenches, and road blockade by [blocks and] stones.

So how we could help the people? The people - they need food,

they need water, they need medicine, they need - the

children need milk. Sometimes electricity was cut because they

destroy[ed] the infrastructure everywhere. So we have shortage

of water, we have shortage of electricity, everything. So by

these volunteers who are working well with us, and we had in that

time Nablus area, I remember in Nablus city, more than 600

volunteers. Who are with uniform and vest. And they are young

people, and they have good energy, we divide them in, in

the city. And we receive calls, this family needs milk for their

children, this family, they need medicine for chronic[ally]

disease[d] people, that family, they need water - drinking

water. So we had centers, and where we can distribute all

these things, by using these volunteers. They go there, they

face very difficult conditions, some of them there was arrested,

many of them there was beaten by soldiers. Some of them, they

[were] prevent[ed to] cross the, from this part to another part,

by of course, the soldiers. So with this difficult time. But we

could, because we have the energy, we need this work, to do

it. By that so we could help many people, we could help the

families who are under occupation and war. And that

time, I want to tell you that the buildings was occupied by

soldiers also. So it's not only in the street, they are inside

the buildings. In big buildings, they put all these people's

family in one flat, and the soldiers they occupied the other

roofs and flats. So this is why when I talk about it, it's easy

to talk about it now. But in that time, when you do the work,

it was very hard and difficult under high, very, very high

risk. But we got it and we do a very good work. And this [has]

how to deal with the emergency

situation and the difficult situation. So by training the

medical people and the first aid people, we have big army from,

by, volunteers who are helping us in the difficult time[s]. And

we are prepared to do this by our own resources. We don't have

enough money, of course, but we have army of volunteers who

[are] first aid [trained] people who are helping us with doing

our services.

So, yes, medical relief is a created

model and design by - in this work. So we create the model of

primary, for example, first aid program, which I talked about

it. We create the mobile clinics. With mobile clinic, in

the time of closure is going to the people to provide medical

services. We are not waiting the people to come to the primary

health care centers. We go there. Because sometimes the

Israelis are imposing curfews, on the people. So the people,

they can't go out from their houses, they can't go out from

their towns or villages. So we go there with the mobile clinic.

[In the] mobile clinic, we have physician, we have lab

technician, we have women’s health doctor, and nurses and

pharmacy - portable pharmacy - medicines. We go there by our

cars. And we declare about it by the most - we declare about the

medical day and the people can come to small buildings or

municipalities or local communities, where we have

contacts with them. And we take these buildings, and we provide

medical services for the people. So we create some models, which

will be related to our situation and condition. There are some

other medical associations, they go there with other models, and

they do it - which is very important for us. Because we

can't cover everywhere. So we need to be, yani, cooperating

with other organizations and communities. Red Cross and Red

Crescent. We have a problem with them. Because they are following

some kind of international law. For example, when you have

clashes – risk place, risk area - it's not allowed [for] you to

go there. So you have to wait where, when the condition will

be good, and you can go there to take and to evacuate the people

from here. This is with… is not, yani, is not related to our

condition. Because we have clashes, we have emergency and

we have risky areas. The people there need your help. So we go

there in risky area and we got this risk. And we do our duty

and our work with the people who needs us. So we are not waiting

that the Israelis will allow us to go there. Because if we will

wait [for] them and this happens different times... We can't help

the people. And we have many hundreds of young people who

were killed and died because Israel didn't allow the medical

people and ambulances to evacuate them from the field

where they were injured. They wait with them until the

bleeding is finished and the person was fully dead. You can’t

help them you can’t do anything. And personally I got many times

injured, injury, because I go there in those areas. And this

is not only myself, also our volunteers, our medical people,

the ambulances which we run is doing this duty all the time. We

have many people who still working with us. And they've got

injured during their work, during

How was it during the pandemic? Like I know it's still

happening, but yeah, how was your experiences here with

Covid-19?

We have a good experience, and we have a

good experience with epidemics in general. Because in 2002, I

remember 2003. When we had the closure and the Israelis they

destroyed the infrastructure, especially the pipes, the water

network, or the pipes. The water, drinking water, clean

water mixed with the sewage water. And we had a big problem

in three or four villages around Nablus... [inaudible] it's not

far from here. Where the people, they have Hepatitis A - all of

them. So, we help them by stopping the using their dirty

water, which was mixed with sewage water, and we got the

clean water for them, and we do our medical services for them.

Treating these people from the epidemics. Now in Covid

epidemics. Of course, the resources what we have is very

limited. And the vaccine we got it too late. Israel, they got

[it as] the first country in the world, Israelis and when they

want well, they had pressure from the international

community. They decided to give the Palestinian Authority some

of this vaccine and they give them the vaccine which was

expired. This is - this was declared in the media, and

different. So we didn't use it. But when we got the vaccine -

before getting the vaccine. So all measures to make prevention,

and to isolate the people who were infected, and we create

some hospitals for Covid - which was not created because our

hospitals is not prepared for these epidemics. So, we have

some buildings especially for Covid epidemics. And personnel

we trained them on dealing with the people who are infected. And

by that, we [encountered] this epidemic, and, of course, many

people died. We have, I don't know that number, but we have we

have more than hundreds of the people who have died because of

Covid-19. But we dealt [with] it and we provide the health

lectures, educations for the schools, for the women in

different associations, in the rural areas, in the city -

everywhere. So we do our best to educate the people how to deal

with Covid-19.

Amazing. And just s last question, like, yeah, I saw on

your website, again, that you have the like a kind of

psychosocial and like counseling program. Obviously, like, I've

read, like some critiques of things like PTSD - Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder - because in a lot of contexts,

like, there isn't a “post”, like things haven't finished. People

are still living in very like kind of ongoing traumatic

situations from say, violence and from living under

occupation. I just wondered like, what your approach is to

this kind of, like, emotional health of the people.

You know, I remember from also to 2002 until

2008, what we do, according to these things. The people in the

old city of Nablus, this, the old city of Nablus totally was

under attacks and siege by Israeli soldiers. So all the

families who are living there, of course, everywhere, but

especially in this area. Families, woman's children, old

people, sick people, young people, all of them were under

siege and curfews. They can't go out from houses, they are

attack[ed] by bombs. And we had a full family which was killed,

the Shubi family. When they bombed the buildings by F-16

plane with rockets. And eight people from these - children and

father, mother were killed. And we got them from the, from the

houses which was destroyed on them. Other things this

situation is cause trauma for the children, especially for the

children. So what we do with volunteers, again. We go there,

and we try to take, to get them out from their houses,

especially the children in the squares near their buildings.

Trying to make some games, some painting on their faces for the

children. Trying to get them out from the trauma. So - and we

succeed to do that in different places in the old city of

Nablus. Other things we do is direct talks with, with the

children - face to face, one to one, and we got them out from

this kind of trauma. This experience, yani, we got it from

also our situation and our condition. But we try to do

everything which is related to the condition again, training

also the volunteers to do that. We have good volunteers who can

do good work with the children, now. They can play with them,

they can make games, they can get them out from the bad

situation and bad condition. And by that, we do this work, we try

to treat the trauma of the people. Yani, and do some

different activities.

In Calais, where I work, it's like the border with France

and England. There’s like 2000 refugees in camps and like loads

of police violence, but there's this organization called Project

Play, and like they're always next to our clinic and they're

always playing with the kids and it’s like – so nice.

Yeah, this is what we can do also. We also can

give them some gifts. We collect gifts from the people here, the

local people. They are - they are very helpful. Yeah. And if

you ask them for something, they will give you the things because

first they trust us. Second they know that this is one of their

responsibility to help the people. So give you gifts for

the children. And we collect[ed], I remember,

thousands of gifts for the children in the old city of

Nablus, from the local people.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about your

work or that we haven't covered?

I want to tell you, during the normal

time, also, we are trying to improve our health system. And

we do different activities. Like for example, screening for the

children, screening for the young and old people, especially

people who are suffering from chronic diseases. So we do some

analysis, we do activities for them, health education, trying

to improve also our health system, where we can, yani, help

the people who are suffering from diabetes or hypertension,

to deal with these diseases. And improving that, we have now our

primary health care design, is one of the most successful

designs in the Middle East. And we got the World Health

Organization award in 2000 for building models, primary health

care models. So in normal time, we can do many things, we

don't need yani. We have enough resources, we have good medical

people, but we need good condition for that.

And are there any ways that international people or

other people can support you? I know you have huge support from,

like, the communities here but is there anything we can do?

No! The help from the community is not

enough, because you know, the poverty is very high here. So

unfortunately, the help from international community is going

down and less than before. So it's less than 60% [of what it

was in] 2000, for example, [to] now. So this cause us difficult

work and some of our services - we lost it. Like for example, in

Nablus area, we don't have the mobile clinic now, because we

don't have enough resources for the mobile clinic. European

income communities, they stopped supporting some programs and we

stop some of our activities, one of them in Nablus area is the

mobile clinic. We have now a big problem with the ambulances.

In the law here, you can use the car as an ambulance for 10

years. After 10 years, you - it's not allowed for you to have

it as an ambulance. So we need to renew the car, the ambulance

. One of the ambulances now was supported by French people by

Toulouse city region. We asked them to renew the ambulance,

they said ‘we don't have now fund for that’. So we have a big

problem with changing the ambulance in Nablus area, which

is very highly needed for the people. Because our ambulances

is working all the time with the clashes areas. Where we have

clashes, our ambulances are there. We need to evacuate the

injured people, we need to help the people to go out from

buildings, which was for example, attacked by soldiers.

The families who was under tear gas needs our help. So

ambulances are very high[ly] needed and with volunteers who

are evacuating the people who were injured in the ambulance to

get them to the hospital. So this is one of our problems and

big bad things what we have now.

Just as a personal interest question for me, but

you know, being here, it's been really interesting, like seeing

the women selling herbs on the street, and obviously everyone

puts mint into tea. I just wondered like, what your

experiences with health are with people using plants that they

grow, or from their garden? Or does this play a role in

preventative medicine or self care?

Medical tradition or yani popular

medicine, it’s is very good here in Palestine. And the people,

the families, they plant these plants in their houses, like

mint, meramiya [sage], zaatar [thyme], different things, which

is very good for health. And they use it. They use it and not

only in tea, they use it their food, which is very important

and very good. And I think this kind of medicine is growing good

in Palestine.

Oh, that's great. Yes, it's good to know.

Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you. So