For the last several days, Israeli forces have blocked the main entrances and exits to the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, further restricting Palestinian movement.
The punitive measure was taken after a Palestinian man carried out a shooting attack near the illegal settlement of Halamish, located to the northwest of Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, on Sunday, September 20.
The attack resulted in the killing of an Israeli settler. The assailant was also injured and later identified as Qadri Samara (37). Samara was shot at by Israeli soldiers stationed at an army post near the site of the attack.
Although Samara managed to withdraw from the scene, later in the day Israeli forces carried out a raid at the HClinic Hospital in Ramallah and arrested him.
Following his arrest, the Israeli army also stormed Samara’s town of Biddu, northwest of Jerusalem, on Sunday evening, raiding his home and surrounding worshippers inside a mosque.
In a security meeting held on Monday, September 21, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the controversial death penalty law, mandated in March, to be used against Qadri Samara.
The law has faced widespread condemnation from international human rights groups for multiple reasons, mainly because it applies exclusively to Palestinians, while exempting Israelis convicted of the same offenses from the same penalty.
Both Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers have enjoyed total impunity despite murdering thousands of Palestinians over the past two decades in the occupied West Bank, a territory regarded under Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law.
In Gaza, everyone is struggling to survive. For disabled people in Gaza, that struggle is multiplied. Rabab Nawfal and Suha Maqat, both wheelchair users, were champion athletes on Palestine’s national teams before Israel’s US-backed genocidal war. Two days before it began, they were playing qualifiers to represent Palestine abroad.
In this TRNN documentary report, they describe living through famine, fleeing bombardment in wheelchairs that no longer work, and asking for help that never comes. With 81% of Gaza’s roads damaged or destroyed and the UN documenting thousands of amputations, Israel is not only making life impossible for disabled Palestinians; it is creating a new generation of them.
Editor’s Note: This documentary report was filmed in Gaza City three weeks before the ceasefire in Gaza was shakily implemented beginning on October 10, 2025. Since the “ceasefire” began, Israeli forces have killed over 1,300 Palestinians, including 301 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Credits:
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
I’m in a wheelchair—how am I going to escape?
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
There were days when we ate animal food, bird food.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
I lost my eye. What more do you want?
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
My dreams have been shattered.
Narrator:
In Gaza, everyone is struggling to survive. But for people with disabilities, that struggle is multiplied. Rabab Nawfal and Suha Maqat – both wheelchair users – were champion athletes before this war.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
I’m one of those people who didn’t go to the south. I lived through famine twice. I lived it twice. No one asked after me. There were days when we didn’t eat anything. There were days when we ate animal food, bird food. We ate everything—animals, birds. Even those things were expensive, and then they were cut off. The day they were cut off, we stopped eating anything.
Ramadan came during the famine. We didn’t eat anything. A long day passed, and we didn’t eat anything. We used to crave drinking water. We used to crave a piece of bread. We were hoping that the famine would never come back. But unfortunately, it did—and it’s still coming back.
We’ve suffered a lot in life. I was abandoned. No one took responsibility for me. My mother and father used to take care of me, but they left. These days, my brother takes care of me—and he is injured. My life is ruined. No one is with me. No one cares. And the one person standing by me is injured. He can barely carry his own family.
When we were displaced, he couldn’t help us. He wasn’t able. For people with disabilities like me, it’s been difficult to live through this war. Those who are not disabled can maybe manage their lives. They can move, walk long distances—but I can’t.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
The closest people to me abandoned me—they didn’t stand by me. They left me to fend for myself. I feel like I live in a forest with wolves and monsters. I can’t. I try to make things work,
but I can’t. I’m mentally exhausted. The circumstances of this war are incredibly difficult. Even the word displacement is difficult for the injured and disabled.
When we left, my brother was injured and my sister was in a bad state. Even though he was injured, he was pushing my sister, as I pushed myself along. I got stuck in the sand, and they wanted to bomb the building next to us. It was the most difficult moment. I said to myself, now I’m going to be killed. It was the hardest moment of my life.
I thought—how will I escape? How will I, in my wheelchair, escape? How am I going to get out? My brother was injured and couldn’t carry me. I thought, I’m done; there’s no life for me anymore. That’s it. I’m going to be killed.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
The hardest thing I’ve experienced in this war has been displacement. I woke up one day and saw the Israelis in front of us. I was all by myself. I rushed out, but I couldn’t continue. There was a lot of shelling, shooting, bombs. It was a miracle I got out alive. It happened again and again—the same scenario repeated a thousand times.
Narrator:
Both Suha and Rabab rely entirely on their wheelchairs to move. Without them, the most basic tasks become impossible. Israel’s blockade has meant that access to this crucial item has been cut off.
Even with functioning wheelchairs, with 81% of roads in Gaza now damaged or destroyed, access and movement is extremely limited.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
There are no wheelchairs in Gaza. And without a wheelchair, I can’t move. The wheelchair takes me to my medicine, my food, my drink—I need it for everything. Right now, my chair is broken. I’ve lost all means of life.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
As you can see, my chair is broken. I push myself in it, I fall off all the time, I cut and bruise my legs. If someone kind is around, then I can move. Otherwise, I can’t.
We requested wheelchairs, but it was no use. We asked and asked, and they said no. Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
My life before the war was very beautiful. I was a champion of Palestine’s disabled national team for strength games—basketball, tennis. I used to do all kinds of sports that suited my disability. I was a success story. I was a hero. These days, I feel worthless. Nothing in life. I can’t even get from here to there. I can’t move from here to there in a wheelchair. My life is
gone. There is no life.
These days, we only dream of having the most basic things: flour, water. The simplest things—we can’t get. Drinking water—we can’t get it.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
Suha before is different from Suha today. I used to be a champion of Palestine. Today, I’m nothing. Today, just a daughter who needs her mother—who needs her mother to help her.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
Two days before the war, we were playing qualifiers to represent Palestine internationally. But we didn’t manage it. On the day of the championship, the war erupted. So our dreams are gone. All our dreams are gone. My dreams have been shattered.
I wanted to raise my son. I wanted to raise him well and teach him. Before the war, I wanted to enroll him in karate. I wanted him to become something. I couldn’t. I wanted him to be into sports like me—to become a doctor. I wanted him to grow up and help me in the future. But my dreams were shattered. I couldn’t do any of it. I can’t do anything.
Narrator:
According to the UN 4,800 amputations of limbs had been documented since the beginning of the war. Ten children were losing one or both legs every day. Gaza had become home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history. Not only is Israel making the lives of existing disabled people impossible, it is also creating an entirely new generation of people with disabilities.
Suha Maqat, Palestinian Athlete:
Gaza has become a city of ghosts. There is no life in Gaza. As you can see—look at how people are living. On sand! How can people live on sand? How can they occupy Gaza? How?
We want peace of mind. We don’t want to lose any more loved ones. We’ve lost enough. Is it not enough that I lost my eye? What’s left? What more do you want? I lost my eye—what more do you want? What else should I lose? Nothing’s left. There’s nothing left in this world that I can lose. My family has left. I wish I could see my mother. See my father.
Rabab Nawfal, Palestinian Athlete:
Life has become unbearable. No matter how much I talk, I can’t describe what I am feeling or the life we are living. I used to be someone. Now I am nothing.
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Health is always a prominent topic at Belgium’s ManiFiesta, a two-day festival organized by the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) in the beginning of September. Discussions range from the organization of health services or workshops led by progressive health organizations like Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV) and Viva Salud. This September, the program covered local priorities such as health coverage and hospital reform – along with Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza’s healthcare system and the threat of militarization across Europe.
Addressing the question of why health workers should be concerned by Europe’s armament drive, Juliette Mattijsen of the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Nadja Rakowitz of the Association of Democratic Doctors (vdää*) in Germany, and Tim Joye of Medics for the People emphasized the different ways hospitals, health centers, and medical studies are being reshaped.
Not only are governments imposing cuts on health budgets to enable increased defense spending, as Mattijsen illustrated – some are structurally changing what the health system is supposed to be about.
As the Merz administration in Germany rushes to build Europe’s mightiest army, Rakowitz explained, it is tabling plans for underground hospitals and an overhaul of triage systems. The goal of these reforms is supposedly to ensure wounded soldiers – from a battlefield that still only exists in the imagination of regional politicians – are cared for swiftly and returned to combat as soon as possible. In Belgium, Joye added, plans are being circulated to introduce war medicine into medical school curricula, and professional congresses have made this their topic of choice.
If European governments have their way, the speakers warned, health systems in the region will increasingly lose their focus on patients and add further strain on service provision. To prevent this, the panel suggested, health workers themselves – nurses, doctors, dentists, and others – must mobilize and actively oppose this dangerous trend.
At another panel hosted by Viva Salud, the focus shifted to Palestine. Gaza’s health services have been militarized by the Israeli occupation, which has turned health infrastructure and workers into direct targets.
Sama Jaber of the Awda Association and Hanne Bosselaers, a Medics for the People general practitioner who participated in the 2025 solidarity flotillas to Gaza, focused their interventions on the relevance of organizing and providing healthcare under occupation.
In Palestine, Jaber pointed out, the formation of medical practitioners is a collective feat. By persevering in their work during a genocide, health workers in Gaza are now giving back to the communities who accompanied them along the way. “Being a health worker in Palestine today means sharing genocide conditions, but also upholding the right to health,” she said.
For Bosselaers, the steadfastness of Palestinian comrades has been an inspiration since her first visits to Gaza approximately 15 years ago and the twinning process she supported with a health center in Beit Hanoun. Today, she emphasized, Israeli attacks have leveled Beit Hanoun to the ground – yet health workers have not given up their work.
Doctors and other health workers in Europe need to recognize this unbreakable spirit, Bosselaers said, and support their peers by joining movements at home. This should mean standing by Palestinians’ demands for liberation, she added, but also joining networks struggling against other forms of attack on healthcare: opposing commercialization, austerity, and militarization.
Health workers around the world should direct their efforts into directly supporting the health system in Palestine, the panelists pointed out. This does not mean replacing hospitals with large international NGO operations or flying in and taking over, Bosselaers insisted, as is often seen in humanitarian medicine. Instead, she and Jaber suggested, the priority should be mobilizing against the occupation and campaigning for an end to Israel’s impunity.
In this, they echoed Palestinian physician and political leader Mustafa Barghouti, who addressed the panel through a video message. Barghouti invited health workers in Europe to stand firm in their support of Gaza, particularly by supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. By doing so, he said, they will also recognize the efforts of their peers in Palestine, who are doing more than healthcare today, “helping people persevere in their steadfastness.”
As the genocide continues, Barghouti insisted, health workers in occupied Palestine know their efforts are directed at supporting people in remaining on their land – starting from the most common health procedures. “If you help a woman safely deliver a baby,” he said, “you’re helping her stay in Palestine.”
People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.
The lethal repercussions of Israel’s three-year genocidal aggression on Gaza continue to unfold. Aside from Israel’s ongoing military assaults after the nominal ceasefire deal, the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the genocide – affecting food, sanitation, medication, and shelter – has become another driver of persistent fatalities.
At least 21 Palestinians, including 12 children, died in the collapse of the Al-Saadah building in Gaza City on Wednesday, September 16, while 45 people were rescued from under the rubble.
According to media reports, the building, already damaged by Israeli airstrikes, was housing 100 displaced people, amid a deepening shelter crisis caused by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on reconstruction materials and humanitarian aid.
Hamas issued a statement, holding Israel “responsible for this disaster,” and affirming that “the building collapse represents a new chapter in the catastrophic humanitarian repercussions of the war.”
The Palestinian movement pointed out that the massive home and neighborhood destruction has forced thousands of displaced people to take refuge in ruined structures.
It further cautioned that the severe shortage in heavy machinery for clearing debris and conducting rescue operations endangers more lives.
Hamas also urged mediators, the US administration, and relevant international bodies to take immediate action to lift restrictions blocking the entry of necessary rescue equipment and vehicles, and to secure safe shelter for the displaced population.
Meanwhile, the Gaza-based Ministry of Public Works and Housing warned that roughly 3,000 buildings across the war-ravaged enclave are currently deemed dangerous or at risk of collapse, which in turn poses a significant threat to thousands of inhabitants.
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