During the conference organized by “La Maison de la Famille – WILLY PEERS” under the auspices of the city of Brussels-Belgium, Naji El Khatib presented a detailed paper on “MENTAL HEALTH IN PALESTINE AND THE COLONIAL SITUATION”.
The first characteristic of this situation is confinement (a concept developed by Frantz Fanon) which generates physical, moral and psychological violence.
The second characteristic is the increase in cases of mental illness with the acceleration of the policy of apartheid and settlement settlement.
Regarding the confinement situation:
• Gaza: the largest open-air prison in the world;
• Palestinian towns in Zones A and B in the West Bank: ghettos locked behind the separation and apartheid wall;
• Palestinian villages in Area C locked behind Israeli occupation army military checkpoints and highly militarized settlements;
• Political prisoners behind bars: a million Palestinians have gone through the prison experience in Israeli prisons since 1967;
• Lock-in and deprivation of the freedom and collective, individual, social and national rights of an entire people;
• Lock-up, torture, assault and visible and invisible injuries.
This confinement is also political on the side of the colonizer:
• The confinement of Israeli society in its certainties of power and contempt for the other (the Palestinian);
• The ideological, religious and chauvinist nationalist confinement of most of Israeli society;
• The confinement of the Israeli political class of all stripes in their feelings of impunity despite their daily crimes against the Palestinians;
This confinement imposed by external military force leads to political and cultural confinement and withdrawal into oneself on the side of the colonized:
• Lock-in of the Palestinian political class resulting from the Oslo Accords in security cooperation with the colonizer: no more wounds in the souls of the colonized;
• Locking up of the Palestinian individual deprived of freedom, dreams and desires, walled up by the force of a colonial situation and by the corrupt political class of the Palestinian Authority (the assassination of “Nizar Banat” is an example. ).
Regarding the increase in cases of mental illness, The military occupation, apartheid, rampant colonization and confiscation of land and homes have created an environment of daily terror, coercion and anxiety that has robbed the Palestinian people of their rights to a normal life.
Cases of mental illness are on the increase, especially chronic psychotic illnesses including schizophrenia. There is a high frequency of obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, in addition to psychosomatic illnesses due to traumatic shock.
• Increased cases of mental illness in the 20-29 age group among men;
• Increased cases of mental illness in the age group (30-39 years) among women.
• The regions of Jericho and Selfit are the most affected by the increase in cases of mental illness.
• In Gaza: Increase in PTSD cases in children at the rate of successive wars.
• Increase in suicide cases among young people in the 25-28 age group.
• 25.6% of Palestinian schoolchildren between the ages of 13 and 15 exhibited suicidal urges.
This conference on health in Palestine, Friday, November 5, 2021, Brussels
Sponsored by Ahmed EL KTIBI, member of the Local Council for International Solidarity of the city of Brussels – Belgium
- Anne Vanesse (President of the Willy Geers Family House – , Brussels) :
” Presentation of various missions for the benefit of early childhood in Beit Jala-Palestine “.
- Rawand Massoud: (Researcher at the University of Aix- Marseille. President of the Medical Association of Palestine).
” Breast cancer in Palestine “.
- Naji al-Khatib: (Doctor of Social Sciences, Researcher at the Medfil Humanities Institute, France – Palestine, Former Lecturer at the Consortium of Euro-Mediterranean Universities, Former Lecturer at An-Najah University – Nablus.
« La santé mentale dans la situation coloniale ».
Avec la participation de
- Pierre Verhas, auteur du livre sur l’Hôpital de Beit Jala ;
- Rebecca Lejeune, coordinatrice des associations d’échange socialiste du Brabant.