Covid-19 Fault Lines: Palestinian Physicians in Israel

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.

“It's like we're at war”: Nurses’ resilience and coping strategies during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Complex dynamics and ever‐changing assemblages of the machineries of power at play during COVID‐19, whether between the social, personal, medical, economic, and professional, or between the formal regulative or informal sociocultural, created a major state of affective confusion. Combining the militarized framings with nurses’ experiences that ranged between heroism and horrorism, attest to what Tanous ( 2020 ) revealed in his study on the healthcare system as a foundational pillar of governance, and what critical scholars suggested—that medical language is deeply militarized (Fuks, 2010 ). The intensified use of militarized language during the COVID‐19 pandemic (Kanji, 2020 ), calls for further engagement with questions of affects, economic and cultural contexts, nature of pandemic, sociopolitical reforms and policies, and more.…”

“…In Israel, both society and government perceived the spread of COVID-19 as a national security event (Marciano, 2021), and the adoption of military metaphorical language seemed to provide a method for understanding threatening and unexpected situations, in addition to guiding behavior related to the pandemic (Sabucedo et al, 2020). The use of military language intensified during the pandemic and stood out in the discourse of the HCWs (Tanous, 2020). Given all the above, the current study aimed to explore in-depth, subjective professional and personal experiences of Israeli nurses who directly treat COVID-19 patients.…”