By John MacDonald
Updated April 16, 2024
HEALTH OF PRISONERS WORLDWIDE:
The following text draws on published documents and research. It also includes personal comments by myself, Professor John Macdonald, based on my experiences, having taught in Palestine (and sometimes visited Gaza) almost every year since 1994, as well as my experience at Western Sydney University where we started a drop in centre for Aboriginal men, many of whom had had spent time in prison. (See the small study of the experience of Aboriginal men in prison1)
Research (if it was needed) tells us of the generally negative impact on the health (especially the mental health) of prisoners. See, for example: “The Impact of Imprisonment on Individuals’ Mental Health & Society Reintegration: Study Protocol”2.
COMMENT:
For the vast majority of prisoners in any society, the loss of liberty, being cut off from regular contact with people, especially loved ones, their children and friends, can have a long-lasting effect on their sense of self and their mental health. This is especially true in the case of solitary confinement or long prison sentences.
The health of Palestinian prisoners is, if anything, often worse than that of people in other societies, given the context of occupation. One researcher on the subject of health under occupation, had this to say in 2012:
“Limited access to health-care services for Palestinian patients affect negatively the patient’s quality of life and mental health mainly led to mental illness due to the Israeli Separation Wall.
Many studies and reports supported that there are negative mental health consequences of difficulties in accessing health care services as a result of the Separation Wall, barriers, and closures by the Israeli Authority.3”
In other words, as a result of living in what seems to be a permanent occupation, many Palestinian prisoners are at risk of mental health problems even before imprisonment and, of course, the situation has worsened since 2012.
Many people describe the Gaza Strip as an “open-air prison” with (before October 2023) over 2.2. million people, many of them displaced persons. It is a narrow strip of land with exit and entry cut off by land and sea by the Israeli occupying power.
“The community-wide social suffering of Palestinians related to the political violence of the occupation and the settler-colonial regime needs to be recognised as one of the most significant underlying reasons for mental ill-health in the oPt (Occupied Palestinian territories)”4.
MENTAL HEALTH OF PRISONERS:
Researchers, in 2022 indicate that their research demonstrates:
“that imprisonment has a pernicious effect on inmates’ mental health and well-being that lasts even after prison release, which, in turn, might significantly impact individuals’ reintegration into society and reoffending”5.
COMMENT:
I met up with one of the doctors who had followed the courses I teach into. He was released after four years in prison. His family had almost immediately, according to custom, arranged a marriage for him, which I attended. One has enormous sympathy for the ex-prisoner and the trauma he had endured but one also was conscious of the mental health issues his new bride must have experienced. Imprisonment affects not just he detainee but also his family, generally for years to come.
Among the prisoners, children suffer in a special way.
Al Jazeera reports on 29th November 2023:
“Hundreds of children, some as young as nine years old, have been detained by Israeli forces in what many have said represents a violation of the UN Convention the RIGHTS of the CHILD. Children fare no better than adults in Israeli prisons, and an array of abuses against them has been documented.
The rights group Save the Children said in a report in July that 86 percent of children are beaten in Israeli detention, 69 percent are strip-searched, and 42 percent are injured during their arrests. They have suffered gunshot wounds and broken bones among other injuries.
Some children have reported violence of a sexual nature, and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the London-based child rights organisation said”6.
COMMENT:
I was told, in the West Bank on several occasions, that a particularly pernicious practice, on the part of the Israeli authorities involved promising early release, especially to young detainees, conditional on the ex-prisoners reporting back in secret to the Israeli authorities on any subversive activities of their peers in the community. Whether or not this report back ever takes place, the result is almost inevitably suspicion by the peers of the ex-prisoners. The additional mental health stress can be imagined, especially in a community like in Palestine, where social and community support is vital to any individual’s well-being.
A WORD ABOUT LANGUAGE, OR RATHER THE WORDS USED:
“Terrorists”. For some pro-Israeli commentators, “Hamas” is synonymous with “terrorists”. Others (like the Electrotonic Intifada7) would call the same people “resistance fighters”. French people fighting, even using violent means, against the Nazi occupiers of their country during the Second World War, are never described as terrorists, but rather as “resistance fighters”. A similar language would apply to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Nelson Mandela (who also agreed to the need for violent struggle when absolutely necessary and peaceful efforts produced no results) could be described either as a terrorist or a resistance/freedom fighter.
“Judea and Samaria”: These are the Biblical names used by present-day Israelis to describe what Palestinians call “Palestine”, though sometimes “oPts” Occupied Palestinian Territories is used.
The Separation Wall:
This structure is over 70 kms long and separates Israel from the Occupied Territories of Palestine. For the Israelis the Wall is a protection, for the Palestinians, it cuts them off from the outside world and is a major symbol of oppression. There are roads within “Palestine” which are forbidden to Palestinians, like the direct road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem (for an Israeli driver this represents a short trip on a good road; for a Palestinian the journey is by the “Wadi Nar”, a bad road which could take over an hour.
‘Hostages’ and ‘prisoners’. This vocabulary is a good example of how the use of words can shape both our thinking and serious policy decisions:
‘Hostages’: the western world was understandably shaken by the taking of Israeli hostages by fighters from Gaza on October 7th, 2023. It is estimated that 130 hostages remain inside Gaza. The world seems less shocked by the approximately 4,000 Palestinian ‘prisoners’ taken since that date. But the two groups are very similar. The 4,000 Palestinians prisoners are often held in “administrative detention” (see above), with no trial. They can be seen as hostages.
The Israeli state has the ‘right’ to detain Palestinians, but the Palestinian (or Gazan) people have no rights to detain Israelis. This is another example of the unequal struggle that is going on, the most obvious and shocking example of which is that this ‘war’ is clearly between unequal parties. Israel has one of the most sophisticated armies and air forces in the world (including tanks and fighter jets); its opponents, in this case the people of Gaza, has foot soldiers, guns and rockets but not planes or tanks.
‘Retaliation’. The attacks on Gaza, for example, in 2014, the results of which on the physical structures and peoples’ mental health I saw for myself in Gaza in 2016, were described as “retaliation” by Israel for the rocket attacks launched into Israel from Gaza. People in Gaza sometimes described these attacks as a response (retaliation) for the siege imposed on them by Israel. One survivor of the Nazi concentration camps says that the intended and understandable response of some of the prisoners freed from the camps was “revenge” (retaliation). (This has relevance in 2024 with the media’s coverage of the need for “retaliation” for the Iranian strikes on Israel. Other commentators see these strikes as “retaliation” for the Israeli destruction of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad)
- Macdonald, J, Scholes, T and Powell, K, Listening to Australian Indigenous men: stories of incarceration and hope Primary Health Care, Research and Development, 12 August 2016 ↩︎
- Cunha, O., Castro Rodrigues, A., Caridade, S. et al. The impact of imprisonment on individuals’ mental health and society reintegration: study protocol. BMC Psychol 11, 215 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01252-w ↩︎
- Randa May Wahbe, Physical and mental health of long-term Palestinian prisoners, Lancet October 2012 ↩︎
- Helbich M, Jabr S. A Call for Social Justice and for a Human Rights Approach with Regard to Mental Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Health Hum Rights. 2022 Dec;24(2):305-318. PMID: 36579325; PMCID: PMC9790960 ↩︎
- Marie M and Bataat M. Health Care Access Difficulties of Palestinian Patients in the Context of Mental Health: A Literature Review Study. J Psychiatry Mental Disord. 2022; 7(2): 1062 ↩︎
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/29/jailed-without-charge-how-israel-holds-thousands-of-palestinian-prisoners ↩︎
- https://electronicintifada.net/ ↩︎