Palestine: Palestinians left reeling by the violence of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank
Israeli restrictions and violence leave Palestinians in the West Bank struggling to access essential healthcare
In the West Bank, Palestine, decades of Israeli restrictions and deadly violence have shaped Palestinians’ daily lives and access to essential services. The situation has worsened since the all-out war in Gaza began in 2023. A total of 1,109 Palestinians — at least 243 of them children — have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to date. Seventy-four people have been killed this year alone.
In Nablus, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides mental healthcare, women describe the hardships of their daily lives and particularly the obstacles to accessing care. The situation has worsened since the Israeli authorities decided to deny registration to 37 international humanitarian organizations, including MSF, in early 2026.
“When Palestinians in the West Bank leave home in the morning, they do not know whether they will be able to get back that evening, because of the checkpoints. Anyone can be arrested and held in administrative detention by the Israeli army for months or years.”
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF country director
A tragic journey to seek care
In 2011, Rana’s two-year-old daughter, who had disabilities, fell ill. The family lived in Azzoun Atma and had no car. No taxis were running. Their village is an enclave in the Qalqilya governorate. It is hemmed in by settlements and separation walls and has only one entrance: a gate the Israeli army opens for only a few hours a day. That night, it was closed.
“My daughter died because we could not leave,” Rana says. “We had to wait for morning, for the gate to open and for a taxi to take her to hospital. What I went through, many Palestinian mothers have been through. I do not want to believe there is a place anywhere in the world where people suffer more than here.”
Rana has five living children, including a baby who is a few months old. Two of her daughters, twins, have severe disabilities. On her wedding day, in 2004, the family home was partly demolished by the Israeli army. More than 20 years on, she and her family are still rebuilding it, room by room, as their means allow.
From her windows, “The first thing you see is the wall, then the settlements,” she says from her windows. Two Israeli settlements border Azzoun Atma: Sha’arei Tikva and Oranit. Both are illegal under international law. The route of the separation wall between these settlements and Azzoun Atma has turned the village into a dead end.
A few months ago, and about to give birth, Rana had to get herself to the road at night. “I first went to Qalqilya,” she says. “They wrote me a referral letter saying I had to go to Nablus. But it was night-time. My husband and I thought about it for a long time, and in the end, we took the risk.”
She was afraid for herself and for her unborn child. This time, all went well. “The greatest achievement, these days, is getting home safe and sound,” she says.
MSF has worked in the West Bank for decades. “When Palestinians in the West Bank leave home in the morning, they do not know whether they will be able to get back that evening, because of the checkpoints,” says Felipe Ribero, MSF country director. “Anyone can be arrested and held in administrative detention by the Israeli army for months or years. Add to that the fear of an attack by settlers or of a military operation by the Israeli army.”
Deregistration poses operational challenges
As of December 2025, UN OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) had documented 925 movement obstacles that permanently or intermittently restrict the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Settler violence has changed scale: at least 3,088 attacks were recorded from 2023 to 2025, compared with around 1,860 from 2021 to 2023, according to OHCHR (the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).
“We are facing a system of obstruction to care: checkpoints multiplying, ambulances delayed or blocked, medical transport targeted, hospitals encircled, treatments interrupted,” Ribeiro says. “The denial of care is not collateral damage, it is a way of operating.”
“In concrete terms, it means we are no longer allowed to call the Israeli military authorities that control the West Bank to coordinate the movements of our teams,” says Ribeiro. “This poses real security problems. We are never certain the protection our teams are entitled to, as humanitarian workers, is respected when they leave Nablus.”
It is now impossible for MSF to send international staff to Palestine. The Palestinian teams in the West Bank are nonetheless supported remotely from Amman, in Jordan.
Unable to guarantee the safety of our teams outside the city, we have concentrated all our activities on the single clinic in Nablus. We have had to suspend all our mobile activities, notably in Qalqilya and Tubas. If people like Rana need a mental health consultation, they have to make the journey from Azzoun Atma to Nablus, a difficult undertaking.
“Mental health work is done face to face, not over the phone,” says Shourouq Al-Madmooj, an MSF social worker. “We want patients to come to Nablus to receive care, because they need it. But at the same time, we do not want to put them in danger.”
What Shourouq has observed over the years, is an erosion. “The problems people used to face were much simpler,” she says. “Today, the difficulties are far more complex. For children as much as for adults.”
Psychological conditions are appearing at an ever-earlier age. In the youngest, they take the form of bedwetting or hyperactivity, driven by anxiety from military incursions.
“Even with our vests, there was no protection for paramedics, journalists or anyone else… People were being killed in their own homes, simply for looking out of a window.”
Mariam, a patient and first responder from Nur Shams refugee camp
Camps emptied amid Israeli incursions
Mariam comes from Nur Shams camp, in Tulkarem, in northern West Bank. The road from there to Nablus, she says, is “difficult, full of detours, very long, exhausting.” She recently emerged from a long period of depression. “After the war began [the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2023], I felt the urge to change something, to do something I was capable of,” she says.
Mariam took medical training courses and accompanied ambulances during incursions into the camp, to help wounded people.
“Even with our vests, there was no protection for paramedics, journalists or anyone else,” she says. “People were being killed in their own homes, simply for looking out of a window.”
On Jan. 21, 2025, two days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza, the Israeli army launched “Iron Wall” a military operation in the West Bank. The first incursion was on Jenin camp, then Tulkarem and finally Nur Shams, on Feb. 9. Within weeks, almost all the people in the camps were displaced, including Mariam. Sheltering for a time in nearby Bal’a, she learned that soldiers had taken over the family home and declared it a military zone.
“All at once, I realized I had nowhere to go,” she says.
“It is a deliberate policy of confining people and of territorial fragmentation… The aim is to make a two-state solution impossible, that is, to prevent any territorial, social, economic or cultural continuity of the West Bank and of Palestine in general.”
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF country director
A year after the operation began, the camps were still occupied with Israeli forces stationed inside and demolition orders continued. According to satellite imagery analyzed by the UN, about 35 per cent of Nur Shams had been destroyed as early as May 2025. When Mariam was able to return, she found her house badly damaged but still standing.
“There is no camp anymore,” Mariam says. “It has become a cemetery, because so many people lost their loved ones there.”
Mariam’s story is a fragment of a policy that can be read at the scale of the whole territory. Since January 2025, more than 33,000 people have been displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps and their surroundings, according to UNRWA. And 2025 was a record year for settlement construction: 86 new outposts, 54 officially approved settlements and nearly 28,000 housing units authorized, according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now.
“It is a deliberate policy of confining the population and of territorial fragmentation,” says Ribeiro. “The aim is to make a two-state solution impossible, that is, to prevent any territorial, social, economic or cultural continuity of the West Bank and of Palestine in general.”
This policy has daily consequences for Rana, who has to give up many medical appointments, but also more ordinary outings. “Before, we used to come to Nablus every week. Now, maybe once a year,” she says. “We could run into settlers and they could throw stones at us.”
Related news
Palestine: MSF resumes core lifesaving activities at Nasser hospital
Middle East and North Africa: Behind the armour, men’s mental health
Palestine: Ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid must flow immediately
