Jumana Odeh-Issawi (l) and Zeev Wiener

"I look forward to a day when there will be no checkpoints, and Israeli and Palestinian children can live together in peace," said Jumana Odeh-Issawi, director of the Palestinian Happy Child Centre in Ramallah.

"People are people," regardless of politics or nationality, observed Zeev Wiener of the Cohen-Harris Center for Trauma and Disaster in Tel Aviv. He said that he hopes individuals on both sides of the conflict can find a way to heal through employing medicine and human rights.

Their comments were made at the March 8 special symposium, "Healing Across the Divide: The Health Impact of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," co-sponsored by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR); HSPH; Harvard Medical School; Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Victims of Violence Program and the Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge Health Alliance.

Jennifer Leaning, professor of international health in the Department of Population and International Health and a board member of PHR, recalled visiting the West Bank and Gaza in 1988. There, she met Odeh-Issawi. The two women maintained contact through colleagues over the years. Recently, Leaning learned of Wiener’s work in Israel as a psychiatrist specializing in managing post-traumatic stress. The two physicians’ willingness to come together and publicly discuss the health impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was nothing short of awe-inspiring, said Leaning.

Odeh-Issawi and Wiener were in the U.S. on a five-city speaking tour sponsored by PHR USA that took them to major hospitals, medical schools, schools of public health, and policy forums. HSPH was one of their first stops.

Said Susannah Sirkin, PHR deputy director and moderator of the event: "Both of these physicians have tried to reach out over the divide, to support one another, to strive to uphold in their own work the highest level of ethics, which is hard to do under these circumstances."

At the Palestinian Happy Child Centre, hundreds of children receive treatment for trauma and neurological disorders, as well as learning and developmental disabilities, said Odeh-Issawi. She brought samples of artwork done by her young patients, who expressed themselves in crayon and pencil. One little girl sketched herself holding a key, the only remnant of her home after it was hit by a missile.

"We are trying to help those kids overcome their fears," she said. "We have to give them love, help them deal with despair." The center, she said, provides them with a place where they know they are safe.

"Mothers tell me they are fed up," said Odeh-Issawi. "They say they just want to live in peace and dignity with their kids. People are fed up with bloodshed."

Israelis, too, are tired of the violence, observed Wiener. He trains emergency medical personnel and social workers to deal with victims of suicide bombings. He is a member of a professional multidisciplinary group that has developed an immediate response model that addresses the psychological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral results of trauma.

"Most victims will recover in a couple of weeks and go back to their normal lives," he said, "but some will have post-traumatic stress disorder." The psychiatric condition provokes unwanted memories of the bombings–sometimes down to details like the smells that surrounded the scene–months or even years after an attack, he said.

Wiener said that stress disorders, anxiety, and depression are common among those who have experienced bombing attacks or who have lost loved ones in the conflict. He believes that almost half the population of Israel suffers from some post-traumatic symptoms and that 10 percent has full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.

The effects have reverberated throughout Israeli society beyond the initial violence. "When you send an 18-year-old boy or girl to war and put them in impossible situations, then bounce them back to Israeli society, you have problems," he said. "The impact [of violence] is not just because of suicide bombing but because of the whole conflict."

Israeli society has witnessed increasing civil violence, widening social gaps, declining patriotism, and increasing distrust of Israeli leadership, he said. "Society does not trust the establishment, including the law and police," Wiener said. "People feel helpless, and they get used to feeling that way."

Both Wiener and Odeh-Issawi cited areas of progress in bridge-building between the Israeli and Palestinian medical communities, which traditionally have been willing to treat all patients, regardless of nationality. For example, Odeh-Issawi said that she hopes her medical school will restart a program that sends Palestinian interns to Israeli hospitals.

Leaning summed up her appreciation for both speakers and for the effort they made to build a dialogue. "This [discussion was] something very special," she said, adding, "This is grace under pressure."

Information about the tour can be found http://www.phrusa.org

--PHC