Eyad Al-Sarraj
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Eyad El-Sarraj (; 27 April 1944 − 17 December 2013) was a
Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...
. He was a consultant to the Palestinian delegation at the
Camp David 2000 Summit The 2000 Camp David Summit was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 an ...
, a recipient of the Physicians for Human Rights Awards and featured in ''Army of Roses'', a book about Palestinian female suicide bombers by journalist Barbara Victor. In the Palestinian elections of 2006, he headed the Wa'ad list. He died at an
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
hospital,
Hadassah Medical Center Hadassah Medical Center () is an Israeli medical organization established in 1934 that operates two university hospitals in Jerusalem (one in Ein Karem and one in Mount Scopus) as well as schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacology ...
in
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...


Biography

Eyad El-Sarraj was born in
Beersheba Beersheba ( / ; ), officially Be'er-Sheva, is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most p ...
,
Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...
to a Palestinian Arab Muslim family. His family arrived in the
Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
as refugees in 1948. Sarraj wrote a personal reflection in 1997 about "Why We Have Become Suicide Bombers: Understanding Palestinian Terror" in which he delineated several factors including living "under Israeli occupation." Among other things, he wrote, it means travel restrictions, having an undefined nationality, being asked to spy on your family, dealing with checkpoints, being belittled and seeing the prophet being humiliated. Sarraj was concerned about the "mental health damage caused by political oppression and challenged both Israeli and Palestinian abuses", having been imprisoned at various times by both Israel and by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. On 29 June 2009, El-Sarraj appeared before the
United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was a United Nations fact-finding mission established in April 2009 pursuant to Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-9/1 of the United Nations Human Rights Cou ...
. He appeared as a witness on behalf of the " Gaza Community Mental Health Programme" stating that 20% of the children in Gaza suffered from
posttraumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a Psychological trauma, traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster ...
(PTSD). The "Gaza Community Mental Health Programme" (GCMHP) was founded by al-Sarraj, and has 40 members on staff. El-Sarraj was President of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace International, and a member of many other health organizations. El-Sarraj was diagnosed with
Multiple Myeloma Multiple myeloma (MM), also known as plasma cell myeloma and simply myeloma, is a cancer of plasma cells, a type of white blood cell that normally produces antibody, antibodies. Often, no symptoms are noticed initially. As it progresses, bone ...
in 2006. He went through Stem Cell Transplantation. Upon a relapse he had in 2013, he sought medical treatment at Hadassah Hospital Medical Center in Israel. He died on 18 December 2013. El-Sarraj was married to Nirmeen Kharma, with whom he had his youngest son Ali. He has two sons from his first marriage, Sayf and Wasseem. In November 1998 El Sarraj was awarded the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. El-Sarraj also received the Olof Palme Prize in 2010 for his "self-sacrificing and indefatigable struggle for common sense, reconciliation and peace between Palestine and Israel". "I am proud and happy to receive this prize, but I consider that the real heroes are the victims of violence, torture and war… This prize gives me hope and encourages me to continue to fight to defend those whose rights have been abused, and to work for justice and peace," El-Sarraj said after receiving the award.


Quotes

"I love my people, I love my home, and I feel a kind of responsibility to help people here. What am I if I live in England and practice psychiatry? There are five thousand, ten thousand, psychiatrists there. Here I can help not just my own people, it is humanity that needs help, this is what brought me back, and this is what will keep me here." "The Palestinian inner layers of psychology, go around one single issue: the 1948 uprooting and the destruction of their homes. And what the Israelis are doing, by destroying all these homes every day, they are making the Palestinians relive the trauma, which is very deeply buried into our conscious and our unconscious. The home for anybody in the world is a very important base of security, and for the Palestinians who lost their homes, once and sometimes even more than once, it is the most single important issue on the making up of the structure of psychology."


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarraj, Eyad 1944 births 2013 deaths Deaths from multiple myeloma Politicians from Beersheba Scientists from Beersheba 20th-century Palestinian politicians Palestinian psychiatrists Arab people in Mandatory Palestine