Palestinian Doctors Under the British Mandate: The Formation of a Profession

Kozma, Liat; Furas, Yoni

doi:10.1017/s0020743819000886

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…3 His cachet with the mandate government only increased across the 1930s. Especially following 1933, when large numbers of European Jewish doctors came to Palestine, medicine – as Liat Kozma and Yoni Furas ( 2020 : 101–102) note – became ‘another realm of the Arab–Jewish conflict’, as the Palestinian medical community increasingly organised itself to meet the perceived economic, professional, and nationalist challenge posed by their Jewish counterparts. ‘Abd el-‘Al, who had been born in Egypt, qualified as a medical practitioner in London, and taken up post in the mandate’s health department in 1924, seems to have remained aloof from the wider Palestinian medical community, both politically and socially.…”

Section: From Medical To Political Authority In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that the Palestinian medical community did not remain outside politics. From 1933 in particular, Palestinian doctors mobilised against what they perceived to be an existential threat in the form of the arrival into Palestine of large numbers of European Jewish doctors (Kozma and Furas 2020 : 104–105). And during the great revolt, as well as after, some Palestinian doctors took on highly visible political roles, like the physician and intellectual Dr Tawfiq Canaan, who penned manifestoes about the impact of Zionism on health conditions in Palestine (Nashef 2002 : 21–23).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

Sandal-Wilson

2022

Cult Med Psychiatry

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This article reconstructs how Arab doctors, medical missionaries, British counterinsurgents, and Palestinian rebels negotiated and contested the legitimate role of medical workers and healthcare in times of colonial conflict. Drawing insight from a medical anthropological literature which challenges the notion of medical neutrality as normative, and setting mandate Palestine alongside other case studies of medicine in times of conflict from the interwar Middle East and North Africa, this article argues that while healthcare and medical authority could be put to work to support the colonial status quo, they could serve other, more radical ends too. To highlight the complexity of the political positioning of medical workers and healthcare, this article focuses on the town of Hebron during the great revolt which rocked the foundations of British rule in Palestine between 1936 and 1939, and relies on a range of colonial and missionary archival sources. The first part of the article uses the case study of an Egyptian medical doctor who took up political office in the town in moments of crisis to show how medical authority could be consciously transmuted into a force to uphold a besieged political order. The second part draws on the diary of a British mission doctor to reconstruct his efforts to assert medical neutrality during the great revolt, and—more strikingly still—how Palestinian insurgents participated actively in this attempt to transplant international legal protections to Hebron. The final part traces the incorporation of healthcare into the strategies of both British counterinsurgents and Palestinian rebels, with the British policy of collective punishment indirectly but appreciably degrading access to healthcare for Palestinians, and Palestinian counterstate ambitions extending to the establishment of insurgent medical services in the hills.

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Section: From Medical To Political Authority In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

Sandal-Wilson

2022

Cult Med Psychiatry

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“…Middle East claimed authority over medical knowledge and struggled for professional mobility within colonial hierarchies and power relations (ʿAbabnah 2010;Blecher 2002;Bourmaud 2004Bourmaud , 2012Chiffoleau 1997;Clark 2016aClark , 2016bDewachi 2017;Erdemir 1995Erdemir , 1997Gallagher 1983;Kozma and Furas 2020;Mahfuz 1935;al-Manawi 1999;Rafeq 2015;Sonbol 1991;Verdeil 2008). Graduates of medical schools in Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, and several North American and European cities sought to replace earlier forms of healing with modern scientific methods.…”

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confidence: 99%

Gendered Struggles over the Medical Profession in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

Kozma¹,

Khayat²

2022

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

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Historians of the professionalization of medicine in colonized regions, including the Middle East, have mostly focused on male practitioners, whereas histories of women in the medical professions are mostly centered in Western societies. The present issue examines histories of female medical practitioners by looking at case studies spanning the twentieth century from Algeria, Palestine, Israel, Iran, and Iraq. The introduction to this issue offers an overview of existing scholarship and charts sources and directions for future research and historical actors yet to be studied. The articles examine microlevel contact zones, in which women’s agency shaped and was shaped by colonial and postcolonial encounters, decolonization, and the formation of national professions. They reveal tensions within the medical sphere, between men and women, foreign and local, colonizer and colonized.

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The Female Imperial Agent and the Intricacies of Power

Krik¹

2022

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

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British women have hitherto been almost absent from the history of British colonialism in the Middle East, and particularly in Mandate Palestine (1918–48). By using an individual tale of a British nurse as a vantage point, the article explores the personal and professional experiences of British nurses in Mandate Palestine and scrutinizes their contested status. As women, as British, as medical practitioners, and specifically as nurses, British nurses present a singular type of local-level imperial agent who confronted multiple challenges to their identities. Empowered as imperial agents of health, biomedicine, and hygiene, they had exercised professional, cultural, and racial authority over indigenous people. At the same time, their gender, vocation, and marital status have limited their scope of influence within a male-dominated medical hierarchy, as well as locate them at the lower strata of British colonial society. Nurses’ tales thus offer a unique perspective for investigating colonial power relations and the intersections of medicine, gender, race, and class.

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Palestinian Doctors Under the British Mandate: The Formation of a Profession

Cited by 4 publications

References 13 publications

The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939

Gendered Struggles over the Medical Profession in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

The Female Imperial Agent and the Intricacies of Power

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