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'It's Not Whatever, Because This is Where the Problem Starts': Racialised Strategies of Elimination as Determinants of Health in Palestine

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Benjamin Bouquet, Professor Rhona Smith

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).


Abstract

In this paper, we examine the social construction of race as a determinant of health inequities in Palestine. Race myths about Palestinians conform to the “logic of elimination” integral to settler colonialism, predicated on the dispossession and removal of the Indigenous people from the land. Racialized legal categorizations of Palestinians are deployed in strategies of elimination that include policies and practices of extrajudicial killing, maiming, and excessive use of force; displacement, dispossession, isolation, and containment; and arbitrary detention and movement restrictions. Differential freedoms and entitlements derive from the deployment of racialized legal categorizations, regulating the material conditions of life and exposure to deliberate bodily harm that make up intermediary determinants of health. Our iterative model outlining the symbolic and systemic constitution of racialized health inequities in Palestine aims to support analysis of the root causes of human rights violations, essential to a human rights-based approach to health. Root-cause analysis confers appropriate recommendations for action. The radical dismantling of systematic racial oppression and domination in Palestine, tantamount to apartheid, is a precondition for realizing the right to health for all.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Bouquet B, Muhareb R, Smith R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Health and Human Rights Journal

Year: 2022

Volume: 44

Issue: 2

Pages: 237-254

Online publication date: 12/12/2022

Acceptance date: 12/10/2022

Date deposited: 02/03/2023

ISSN (print): 1079-0969

ISSN (electronic): 2150-4113

Publisher: François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School for Public Health

URL: https://www.hhrjournal.org/2022/12/its-not-whatever-because-this-is-where-the-problem-starts-racialized-strategies-of-elimination-as-determinants-of-health-in-palestine/


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