Israel is waging a reproductive genocide against Palestinian mothers in Gaza
The first time the man who is now my husband told me he loved me, I was on my way to al-Arroub Refugee Camp in the occupied West Bank to tend to people Israeli forces had just attacked.
He had sent me a voice note, and amid the chaos inside the ambulance, I kept replaying it, trying to hear whether he had really said “I love you” at the end.
The siren was blaring as my colleagues urgently debated which roads were still open and whether we could reach the camp. I was so focused on that small, tender moment that I did not register the danger until it hit my nostrils. The burning was instant, searing my throat and eyes. We had been tear-gassed.
We opened the ambulance doors expecting panic, but instead found women standing calmly, eyes streaming from the fumes. No screams. No chaos. Just quiet resignation. This was not new to them. This was routine.
That moment taught me something I have not since forgotten: in Palestine, even the smallest, most intimate moments can never simply exist on their own.
They take place within the occupier’s violence, a constant presence.
I realised how easily the abnormal becomes normalised; how even I, inside an ambulance heading towards an attack, had briefly zoned out into the softness of ordinary life.
It was not until the gas hit my lungs that I understood again what Palestinian women know too well: the everyday is never only everyday under occupation.
Obstructed care
I have been visiting the West Bank regularly since 2003.
One early incident during the Second Intifada has stayed with me: an ambulance was denied entry.
At the time, all major roads were closed. A group of us – women, children and elderly people – were stranded outside Bethlehem, waiting for any transport that might take us towards Hebron.
From where we stood, we watched an ambulance attempt to pass a checkpoint with a woman in urgent need of care. Soldiers refused. The ambulance pulled over to ask us whether any roads were still open, then drove on, hoping to reach a hospital elsewhere. Moments later, a military jeep swerved towards us, and soldiers ordered everyone present to disperse on foot into unmarked terrain.
That was the moment I understood how deeply healthcare in Palestine is subject to military power, and how quickly ordinary life can become perilous.
Since 2018, through my work with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s mobile clinics, I have travelled to villages where reproductive care depends not on medical need but on checkpoints and unpredictable military closures.
I have been harassed at checkpoints simply for trying to deliver healthcare. I have seen female colleagues subjected to aggressive, degrading body searches.
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