“Depression, anxiety and somatoform disorders are among the common mental
disorders, and they are augmenting in Palestine, increasing in reaction to the
situation. As I said before, people talk a lot of PTSD [post-traumatic stress
disorder], but what I see in my clinical practice is other traumatic reactions and
a lot of depression and common mental disorders. Recently I read something
about experiences of humiliation and depression and anxiety, particularly
because people internalize the aggression, they cannot express it externally, so
it becomes depression as a way of aggression towards the self. I might make
criticism about PTSD because it is based on the experience of soldiers, not the
resisting population. Especially in a situation like in Palestine where the fight
is characterized by exacerbation. The threat to be rearrested, for example, is
a very real threat. I can give two examples: a family with many young girls,
they told me their mother was arrested. So after the arrest of the mother, each
night they sleep with their headscarves on because they are afraid that they
will come again and arrest them. It's been four years now, they sleep together
in the living room with their headscarves, scared the soldiers will come back.
Another young man who was arrested by Israelis twice so far sleeps every
night with his bag prepared with his towels and his clothes in case they come
back again. There’s no time for healing, and it's a continuous and repetitive
trauma.”
Palestinian psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Ramallah
Interview: 8 November 2016
Widespread arrests are also used against the Palestinian population inside
Israel, despite the protections that they are supposed to receive as Israeli
citizens subject to civil laws. Information provided by Israel’s police shows
that out of the 295,654 people arrested in Israel between 2011 and 2015,
over 60 percent were classified as non-Jews, despite the fact that 74.8
of Israel’s population is Jewish.176 Adalah, a human rights organization
focusing on Israel’s Palestinian minority, stated that these numbers reflect
the anti-Arab racism within the Israeli police. They also noted that there are
certain arrest policies they use exclusively against Palestinians, including
arresting minors in the middle of the night and ‘preventative arrests.’177
Israeli ‘preventative arrests’ are carried out merely on the suspicion that
Palestinian citizens might “attempt to organize an unlawful gathering”
rather than the existence of evidence that a crime is being committed,
rendering them illegal. Israeli forces have also taken to arresting the
parents of Palestinian activists in Israel and telling them that their children
are suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, despite the fact that
these activists reported that they were either released from questioning
or told they were not under suspicion by the police. The only purpose of
176 Noam Rotem, 60% of people arrested by Israeli police are ‘non-Jews’, +972 Magazine, 1 January 2016.
Available at: http://972mag.com/60-of-people-arrested-by-israeli-police-are-non-jews/119696/
177 Ibid.
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