Transcript in English

Watch the full video panel here

Dr. Dina Kiwan

My name is Dina, and I’m a professor of comparative education at the University of Birmingham. I’m also leading the research program “Disability Under Siege” with many of my partners here today from Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. This program works to develop networks to address the issue that most children with disabilities don’t attend school in the region. Additionally, several people today will be speaking on our second project, “Deinstitutionalization Under Siege,” which looks at the experiences in Lebanon and Palestine of institutionalized disabled people.

This webinar is being recorded, and we have British Sign Language and Arabic Sign Language interpretation available, along with live captions. The British Sign Language and Arabic Sign Language interpreters are spotlighted, and live captioning is also provided by clicking on the closed captioning box at the bottom of the screen. Presenters and moderators will use their cameras when presenting, and the Q&A session will follow the speakers’ presentations.

Unfortunately, the team from Gaza is unable to join us, but other members from the West Bank and Lebanon will talk about the deinstitutionalization project. This event is an enabling space for us to present the culminating findings from our work.

Let me introduce my friends and colleagues here. We have Dr. Maha Shuayb, the director of the Center for Lebanese Studies, who will be our facilitator and moderator for the session. We will show a short video featuring testimony from Shireen, a journalist and disability activist from the Gaza Strip. Our first speaker is Suzan Matelli, an academic researcher at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University. Her main research expertise is in mental health and disability. She has worked for many years on disability intervention research and currently focuses on participatory action research. She will also introduce Shaa Abus Surur, a researcher affiliated with Birzeit University and a disability activist.

Our second speaker is Professor Jasbir Puar, a professor and graduate director of Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of the well-known book “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability.” Our third speaker is Dr. Itab Shuayb, an academic and senior researcher in inclusive design and disability specialist at the Center for Lebanese Studies. She is currently visiting the Inclusive Design Group at the University of Cambridge.

Welcome, everybody, and welcome to the audience. I’ll now hand over to Maha.

Dr. Maha Shuayb

Thank you, Dina. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s sad to have this conversation, but it’s great to have all of you here together. This event is organized by the University of Birmingham, the Center for Lebanese Studies, the REAL Centre, and CanNER at the University of Cambridge. I think what we’re trying to do now, which Jasbir, you started a few years ago, is to bring politics back into disability. Disability, in general, has been highly and largely depoliticized. We often talk about it either in medical or social terms, but we rarely talk about it as a political issue, as you argue in your book, Jasbir, regarding the maiming of Palestinians as a strategy to disable a community.

I want to also mention that many of our colleagues from Gaza University haven’t been able to be with us due to safety concerns. You are probably aware that over 100 academics have been assassinated and killed by the Israeli Army, and as a result, they didn’t feel safe to be with us today. However, we will try to share some of their ideas through these presentations.

I hope today we can raise the profile of disability issues. We know now that Palestine has the largest and highest percentage of amputations in the world in any society. This is a major challenge that Palestinian society will have to overcome. At the same time, there are prevailing negative attitudes associated with disability. So the challenge—socially, physically, medically, and politically—is huge. One of the themes that we will try to highlight is the role of the disability movement and the role of scholarship in this field. As scholars in the field of disability, how can we conduct our research differently to show all of these manifestations of the politics of maiming and disabling, but also how we can address some of the challenges that these individuals face?

I’m not going to take much more time. I hope we will be able to have a good discussion at the end. For those who need interpretation, you can press the interpretation button. We will now move to a video by Shireen, an activist with a disability in Gaza, sharing her experience.

[Technical issue with video]

Unfortunately, we have a technical problem with the sound system. I apologize for this. Shireen has really tried hard to share some of the experiences that persons with disabilities are facing at the moment. Imagine having to flee and survive war when you have a disability, when you don’t have medical care, and you’re living in a place where all the infrastructure has been damaged and destroyed. We will share and make this video available on the website of the Center for Lebanese Studies so you can see it. Unfortunately, Shireen couldn’t be with us today because of connectivity issues as well as threats to her life, as many activists don’t feel safe at the moment.

So we will move to the next speakers, Suzan and Shatha, who were involved in a study on deinstitutionalization. As we mentioned, we couldn’t continue business as usual as if there’s no war. So I think Suzan and Shatha will share what it means now to talk about deinstitutionalization when all institutions have been damaged and destroyed. Over to you, Suzan and Shatha.

Suzan Mitwalli

Thank you. Yes, we worked on the deinstitutionalization study, which consists of three parts. The first part was a literature review about deinstitutionalization globally and locally. We also conducted some visits to residential institutions to learn more about their services and what they think of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. Thirdly, the pilot project that Shatha worked on will be presented today.

The study focuses on the experiences of people with disabilities who lived or are currently living in residential institutions in the West Bank, on what institutionalization means to them, and how they perceive deinstitutionalization. Shatha is an academic researcher and she works with us on this project. She is a disability activist. She will briefly present about the deinstitutionalization pilot project and then focus on the current situation of people with disabilities in the West Bank under occupation. So the floor is yours now, Shatha.

Maha

Is Shatha with us? Has Shatha lost connection? I guess she has.

I suggest we move on until Shatha is back. Shall we move to Jasbir? Over to you, and then we can come back to Shatha once she manages to connect from Ramallah.

Jasbir, you’re muted.

Professor Jasbir Puar

My apologies. Thank you so much for inviting me to join today for this really important conversation. I want to thank Maha and Itab for the invitation and also for organizing the logistics. Just to mark what a difficult context this is—it is an incredible moment to have footage from Gaza right now talking about what it means to be disabled in Gaza at this moment. I just wanted to express my appreciation for that effort. As flawed as it might be technologically, these are the images that we have and the technological vehicles we have at the moment.

I wanted to open with a recap of a roundtable that I hosted at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2022 called “Disability Under Siege: Palestine.” It featured several of the speakers who are here today with us.

Professor Dina Kiwan and also Shatha Abu Srour but also reconstructive surgeon Gassan Abu Sitta, who you’ve likely seen on television and Twitter once he returned from Gaza, and Yasmeen Sununu, who is a professor and researcher specializing in disability in educational realms in Palestine. Additionally, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian joined the discussion. I wanted to review some of the general takeaways from that conversation, particularly as they are very relevant to what we are talking about today.

Dina started us off by talking about how it’s predicted that by 2050, up to 25% of the world’s population will be disabled. She talks about how this is exacerbated by conflict, crisis, poverty, and global climate change. Dina notes that this is significant not only in serving that sector of the population but in how it fundamentally changes our understanding of what it means to be a human being and a citizen in the world. One of the things that the global audience is witnessing today in the context of the genocide in Gaza is this kind of fundamental change in what it means to visually participate in and witness mass impairment, and what it means to understand disability and disablement on a mass scale.

Dina also notes that much of the research on disability has been conducted in the Global North, even though most people with disabilities are in the Global South. It is often reported that 80% of disabled people are in the Global South, which means that this expansion of disabled populations to 25% will disproportionately happen in the Global South. Again, this statistic of 80% of disabled people being in the Global South is radically realigned when we look at the mass impairment happening in Gaza right now. Dina queries what the boundaries of disability are and how one even operationalizes disability in the Palestinian context, where there’s so much violence and such a dearth of human rights for everybody. She brings up the example of mental health, which I think we’re going to hear more about, where much of the population is or will be traumatized. So, disability is something that’s not static; it’s ongoing, continuous, and changing.

Some of this work is related to the really important work of Rita Giacaman, who has been writing about disability and the history of disability rights organizing and activism in Palestine for over 20 years. Dina also flags the dangers of hierarchical disability, especially in a place where disabilities arising from war and occupation are not only not stigmatized but may also be considered heroic. Intellectual disabilities are more likely to be stigmatized. We can talk about how the political capital of heroism is always related to the utility of that heroic narrative to the politics at hand. Once the war is over, you may not necessarily be a hero. Nevertheless, these are well-known hierarchies that exist across disabilities.

Gassan Abu Sitta discussed with us the injuries from the Great March of Return, which happened from March 30, 2018, to December 27, 2019. Some 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza were injured, 8,000 of them were shot by sniper bullets, and 90% of these were in the lower limbs. Gassan argues that the Great March is a critical juncture not only in Palestinian history but in colonial history as the largest act of mass disabling. Gassan also draws our attention to the lifespan of the wound, from the moment of sniper injury to multiple surgeries—anywhere from 10 to 20—necessary to repair injured limbs, address bone loss, and address the shortening of limbs that affect the ability to walk, and address the destruction of knee joints. He calls this whole lifespan a kind of locking of bodies into a cycle of disfigurement and pain.

Yasmeen Snounou lays out what she calls the triple matrix of maiming. This triple matrix is a combination of three things that compose the structural system attempting to oppress or suppress Palestinian resistance: the first being intentional maiming, the second being the continuous targeting and de-development of infrastructure, especially in Gaza over the years of the siege, and the third being apartheid practices—the restriction of movement and mobility, the inaccessible environment, and the inaccessibility of medical care.

Shatha raised the point that it’s difficult to distinguish between activism bound by persons with disabilities from other social and political activists. The occupation is the main reason for so many crises experienced by Palestinians as a whole, whether they have disabilities or not. The point here is that everybody is targeted. Shatha also made the important observation that habilitation and rehabilitation services were much better before 2006 to 2008 when international agencies started promoting the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. What I understood Shada to be saying is that there was a shift in understanding the experiences of people with disabilities in Palestine, and the translation of rights frameworks into policies actually led to what she called a deterioration in service delivery. Shatha also raised the issue of political prisoners in Israeli jails experiencing medical neglect, which is a huge topic that I think is underacknowledged in some ways.

Nadera wanted us to connect temporality to disability. She brought up what she called the contours of violating the time of childhood as part of our analysis of disability. This is what she describes as un childing, which is now a kind of familiar framework for all of us.

She defines un childing as exposing the political work of violence that is designed to create, direct, govern, and transform colonized children as dangerous.

Of course, we’re seeing this happen right now in terms of the way children have been targeted in the genocide in Gaza and the emergence of what has been called the largest cohort of pediatric amputees in history. Nadera also wanted us to focus on the agency of the disabled, and she highlighted a group of amputees playing football. She also wanted to think about finding ways to challenge what she called the gun-to-body politics of the state. So, where do we locate the ability to disrupt such disabling power?

In the last part of this, I’ll just turn a little bit to the work I’ve done on the history of maiming in Palestine. What I mean by maiming is the targeting to injure as a strategy that claims to preserve life but ultimately acts in the service of genocide. That is to say, it acts as a particular mechanism through humanitarian rhetoric, as some kind of gift or favor. But ultimately, injuring instead of killing actually contributes to genocide in a very specific way. I wanted to flag again that the 2018 Great March of Return, which I am increasingly understanding as a kind of grim rehearsal for this current iteration of genocide, can have many beginnings. We can talk about the Nakba, the 1967 occupation, or what happened during the First Intifada when then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin instituted the infamous “break their bones” policy. Rabin was responding to international concerns about the high death toll and instituted this policy to punish Palestinian protesters. He hoped to avoid international criticism for mass killing, but all the while he was able to claim a humanitarian stance towards Palestinians. The reports of the numbers of Palestinians killed during the six years of the First Intifada range from 1,100 to 2,000, but the number of injuries was anywhere up to 120,000, with up to 60,000 of these being in Gaza, and at least 25,000 of these being children. Four military offensives on the Gaza Strip since 2006—2006, 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014—have left at least 177,000 Gazan Palestinians injured. We see during the 2014 Gaza War that there was a spectacle of more than 2,000 civilian deaths, the numbers that people were paying attention to, while over 10,000 injuries were seemingly unremarkable. These are cases where maiming has a tactical value as a way of keeping the death toll low, creating more destruction without attracting attention, or both, while constituting injury as something incidental or accidental and not deliberate. You can see how maiming in these cases winds up being cloaked for the global audience as a humanitarian practice, right? I think with the Great March of Return, we see a shift. Gaza becomes this kind of theater of explicit maiming. It’s no longer accidental or incidental but intentional in its scale and intensity. Sniping is an act of precision without any pretense of the accidental or of this liberal conviction that maiming is an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of war.

This theater was witnessed and sanctioned by global audiences, and I think sanctioning is really important because here’s where the international community, such as it is, was tutored visually in the differential value between Israeli and Palestinian life and were then able to internalize Palestinian bodies as inherently damaged. During the Great March of Return, mass media routinely had images of rows of Palestinian men with amputated legs in wheelchairs, bandaged, and on crutches. These images had an undeniable ideological impact and, I think, are a kind of precursor or testing ground for the acceptance and absorption of the kind of images we are seeing today. Maha mentioned that Palestine has the highest number of amputations in the world, such that amputation has now been called a health crisis in Gaza. But there’s also a way in which Israel is trying to produce amputation as a kind of signature injury of Palestinians. There’s much to say about that, but I just wanted to wrap up by saying how important it is that we understand that hundreds of thousands, if not two million, Palestinians are going to survive this genocide—injured, maimed, debilitated people who carry the literal inscriptions of genocide on and in their bodies now and through future generations, and are going to be teaching us what it means to survive through such impairment, to live, and ultimately to thrive through such impairment.

We have these images of amputees and of Palestinians collecting dispersed body parts of loved ones, putting together what has been dismembered—what Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian has called necrology—but what she also notes is the determination to insist on bringing the parts back together, to insist on being differently whole. Nadera has been speaking so powerfully to the gathering of dismemberment or the process of literal remembering. Even though amputation functions as an attempt by the colonizing state to mark its power, there are so many refusals on the part of Palestinians to concede that power.

Thank you.

Maha

Thank you very much, Jasbir. This was wonderful. There are so many things I hope you will pick up on. We will move to our next speaker, Shatha. While this is being done, I just want to apologize for some of the issues. At the moment, we are also doing a study as part of the “Disability Under Siege” on social movements among the disability community. I think the way we look at disability is influenced by the scholarship that has been produced, which is highly apolitical but also sheds light on a certain angle that is quite narrow and biased, focusing on disability rather than on the wholeness, as you were saying. For instance, in Lebanon, the disability movement during the civil war was unique in the sense that, before we even spoke about intersectionality, they were addressing different rights—not only disability or the rights of persons with disabilities but the rights of many other groups, having a very politicized agenda. Unfortunately, over time, this has become more and more depoliticized. There’s a lot to say about the scholarship that exists now, which hides the experiences of disability and persons with disabilities, and how they engage with that experience but also how they thrive in society. We will hopefully pick up this issue of scholarship and the kind of disability research that exists, but also why we don’t see more research being conducted from a politicized and political angle and a social angle.

Shatha, I hope Shatha is with us now so we can move to—

No? Maybe still having connection issues. Shall we move to Itab? Over to you.

Itab

Hi, I think Shatha is with us. Shatha is with us. She just needs to be unmuted.

Shatha

Can you hear me?

Maha Shuayb

Yes, over to you, Shatha. We’re ready.

Shatha Abusrour

Yes, thank you so much for having me at this webinar. I’d like to start by telling you a little bit about our research on institutionalization. It was a pilot project, giving us a chance to take some notes on how persons with disabilities document their experiences, whether they are currently in institutions or were in institutions before. We explored why they are there, if and how they were included or involved in the decision-making to be in those institutions, and what factors in their environment led them to be in residential institutions.

We looked into the treatment they receive in those institutions by the staff members, educators, or housekeepers, how they communicate with the staff, and the services provided in those institutions. We examined non-academic activities that the institutions engage in, whether they perpetuate exclusion or enforce inclusion for persons with disabilities. We also tried to understand their perspectives on non-residential institutions or deinstitutionalization, whether they think it may work or not, and the factors influencing their opinions.

Some of the findings indicate that persons with disabilities are not always involved in the decision-making process to be in those institutions; it’s usually their parents who make those decisions without involving them, taking into account disability- and age-specific measures. We also found that the treatment they receive in those institutions is often inhumane, with reports of violence by staff members, whether they are teachers or housekeepers.

Despite these conditions, some individuals don’t dislike the institutions. There is confusion because they find friends in the institutions with whom they can communicate, especially those with hearing difficulties. This communication is very important to them, and they don’t find it at their homes. Other individuals highlighted the community formed in those institutions, which sometimes makes it hard to decide to leave, even though they face various forms of violence.

There is confusion about the difference between non-residential institutions and inclusive institutions. Some respondents preferred non-residential institutions but were unsure if they meant disability organizations that are not residential or inclusive educational institutions open and available to everyone.

I will stop here about this research. As you know, Palestine is going through a dramatic situation. This war has been ongoing for eight months. Gaza has been experiencing what many people refer to as a genocidal war. The West Bank is also experiencing numerous policies and practices by the Israeli occupation, affecting all Palestinians, and more so for those with disabilities.

I spoke with representatives of disability organizations who mentioned that many areas have been closed, preventing persons with disabilities from reaching their rehabilitative and educational institutions. Many Palestinians, including those with disabilities, have lost their jobs, leading to challenging socioeconomic conditions. Access to basic needs like food has become difficult.

Displacement of communities, especially Bedouin communities, is also a significant issue. Disability organizations don’t have disaggregated data on how displacement affects persons with disabilities. Military operations and attacks further complicate the situation, making it difficult for persons with disabilities to evacuate or move. The fear and helplessness experienced are profound

As persons with disabilities in the West Bank, we feel this helplessness acutely when we hear about the situation in Gaza. Activism feels limited in the face of such overwhelming circumstances. Since our friends from Gaza couldn’t join, I will share some issues they wanted to highlight.

They emphasize that life in Gaza has been completely destroyed. Many persons with disabilities don’t have enough time to evacuate or access information, especially those with hearing or intellectual difficulties. Displacement and evacuation are huge problems, especially with rubble and inadequate living conditions. They lack access to rehabilitative and medical services, and many essential goods, including assistive devices and medicine, are not allowed entry into Gaza.

There are also issues concerning political prisoners with disabilities. One individual with a physical disability was arrested and subsequently died under torture. Many persons with disabilities are in prison, facing severe conditions, including deprivation of food, electricity, water, and medical treatment. The situation is dire.

Thank you so much for having me. I apologize if I took too long, but these issues are critical.

Maha

Thank you very much, Shatha. Hopefully, we will be able to discuss all these very important issues further.

ITAB, over to you.

Itab Shuayb

Hi everyone, can you see my screen?

Maha

Yes.

Dr. Itab Shuayb

Okay, so will be talking about how we can think inclusively in addressing disability in Palestine. We know that according to the UN CRPD, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in its Article 11 and Article 25, it ensures the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in conflict and war zones. However, like many other UN conventions, these laws have been violated by the Israeli Army, and none of the UN conventions have been taken into consideration or respected.

I will share a story from Naheel, a disability activist currently living in Gaza. She is a wheelchair user. She says, “Throughout this war, people with disabilities have been forced to flee to multiple locations. Why wasn’t there a dedicated organization to ensure their safe displacement? Their safety should have been a priority. This is the hardest war not just for us but for all of society, yet people with disabilities have suffered as much.”

We can see how dire the situation is, and I will be sharing some statistics from ReliefWeb. This data dates back to May 20 when people were more displaced. Most of the Gazan population has been displaced several times. Here, 85% of the population has been displaced multiple times, maybe six, seven, or eight times. Each time, they have to leave all their belongings and move to another place, and people with disabilities definitely face more difficulties in such displacement. Nearly 40% have been displaced over the last two weeks, many of whom have been displaced multiple times.

We don’t have accurate statistics yet, but there is an expected number of 71,000 persons who have been injured, and 5,000 of them have acquired disabilities. I will share some data from a colleague at Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children. They conducted a survey between January and February 2024 with 1,600 people with and without disabilities in Gaza.

74% say that the official emergency guidelines are not inclusive and difficult to apply. 82% stated that all instructions during crises do not have sign language interpretations. 65% of persons with disabilities and 75% of emergency service providers are not trained on safe evacuation and self-protection during emergencies. 100% of people with disabilities noted that the physical infrastructure of the displacement shelters is inaccessible. There is a lack of accessibility at refuge areas, toilet facilities, and for assistive devices. 85% lacked medical interventions and had difficulties receiving medical needs. Many have chronic diseases in addition to their disabilities and need treatments like kidney dialysis or cancer treatments, which they cannot access.

83% lost their assistive devices. 98% of women and girls reported encountering complex challenges in getting their dignity needs such as hygiene and sanitary products. 92% reported that toilets do not meet their privacy standards, particularly for people with visual impairments and wheelchair users who need assistance. 95% of children with and without disabilities reported facing shortages in medical support. 97% of those children are in continuous crying and have panic attacks. 80% of these children face difficulties expressing their feelings, and 80% face a shortage of diapers, particularly children with disabilities.

Regarding infrastructure, 313 schools are partially demolished. 107 schools and universities are completely demolished. 88 hospitals and health centers are out of service. 206 heritage buildings are destroyed. 189 government buildings are completely demolished. We were working on how we can advocate for Article 19 of the CRPD on deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities. To my understanding, there were six institutions in Gaza providing services for people with disabilities, and many of them have been demolished. People with disabilities are scattered everywhere and don’t have any services.

We moved towards deinstitutionalization, but in what sense? We don’t have any services for people with disabilities. People with disabilities are not in institutions, they’re not getting their services, and they don’t have inclusive services while they are displaced. Three churches were destroyed. 604 mosques were completely demolished. 160 health institutions are partially demolished.

Regarding amputations, as Jasper and Shatha mentioned, we have the highest number of people who acquired amputations. In Gaza, there were two centers: the Sheikh Hamad Hospital, established in 2016, which was severely damaged in the early stages of the war, and the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center, which is currently inaccessible for staff and patients. This means people with amputations cannot get the help they need. They must be carried and be dependent on others.

What should we do in the current situation? There should be an inclusive humanitarian response in place. Priority should be given to making shelters accessible, having portable accessible toilets, providing assistive devices, health support, medication, food security, clean water, hygiene kits, basic needs for children such as milk, diapers, clothes, blankets, and psychosocial interventions. These should be provided immediately until there is a ceasefire or the war stops.

Post-war, we should have a holistic, inclusive approach for recovery interventions across all services. This means considering people of different age groups, genders, body diversity, ethnic backgrounds, families, and different disability groups. We should change attitudes and perceptions about disability, moving from a medical approach to focusing on the infrastructure and services that limit access.

“Nothing about us without us” should be the rule. This means a participatory approach and consultation with diverse people, including people with disabilities and specialized disability organizations as stakeholders in developing, implementing, and monitoring emergency preparedness and reconstruction plans. Identify potential partners to establish inclusive guidelines and accessibility standards covering all provisions from transportation to evacuation.

We noted a lack of data, so there should be provision of data and making it accessible for everyone. Mandate inclusive design and accessibility guidelines in the reconstruction of Gaza. This includes all types of buildings: hospitals, schools, universities, residential areas, public spaces, and communication and information services.

Training and capacity building are essential. Facilitate cross-sector learning and capacity building for all sectors, particularly healthcare, education, mental health support, physical therapy, prosthetics, and so on. People with disabilities and experts in the field of inclusion should provide this training. Develop academic programs, research, and awareness campaigns centering the voices of experts in local organizations in Gaza and Palestine.

Launch media awareness campaigns for inclusive emergency plans, making them available to both public and private sectors.

I will end with a message from Shireen, whom we started the webinar with. Shireen is an activist who lost her vision during an attack in Gaza in 2002. She says, “When I lost my sight, it shattered my world and took me years to piece myself back together. But now the agony is even greater as I witness my city being ripped away from me, my people, the trees, cherished memories, and our dreams. What terrifies me most about this war is not death itself, but the horror of losing one or more of my limbs, leaving me with a double disability, or the unbearable fear of losing my beloved family, leaving me in unbearable solitude. As we endure this merciless war, my one desperate wish is to stay alive.”

We see here the power of the message of being alive. People with disabilities, like people without disabilities in Gaza, have the right to live and enjoy services like any other people in the world. I will end my presentation with a photo showing a young lady wearing a scarf and glasses, holding a big black bag, walking with rubble behind her. There are illustrations representing education, a globe, and a calculator, with words in Arabic that say “Madrasa ala Shara3” which means “School on the street,” and another slogan that says, “Be the light for all to see.” This represents the resilience of Palestinians, who want to be the light for all to see and will rebuild Gaza inclusively. Thank you.

Maha

Thank you, Itab. I think we can all now come together. If you can stop the screen share, please.

Okay, I think all the other participants, the speakers. Okay, thank you very much for shedding light on so many levels of this topic. One of the things we try to do in this session is address how disability scholars are not talking about Palestine, and at the same time, persons with disabilities are often absent from discussions on liberation and occupation. As a result, they are marginalized further by other scholars. What we were hoping today is to bring these two conversations together and think about what kind of scholarship we need, but also what the role of the disability community, activists, researchers, and organizations is, and what responsibility they have in a hopefully post-war period.

If you have any questions, please send them in the Q&A, and we will address them to the participants.

So far, we don’t have any questions. If I may, maybe Dena can also feel free to come in. Dena, and I think Rita is also with us, and many of us have been working in this field for some time. Maybe I can ask you, Jasbir, Dina, Itab, and Suzanne, What do you think are the priorities for researchers and scholars in this field? What issues do we need to address regarding persons with disabilities and what is happening in Palestine?

Dina

I can start off, not so much in terms of saying what those issues are, but more in terms of where those ideas should come from. As has already been mentioned, much of the scholarship comes from the Global North. Increasingly, both research funders and researchers themselves are understanding the importance of equitable and collaborative partnerships in inclusive knowledge production. I would say we need to be led by scholars in the region who know the issues and not be siloed, thinking this is just an issue for those who are experts in disability. As already has been said, disability can be quite an apolitical space. There are different approaches to studying disability. When we did our scoping work for Disability Under Siege, much of the academic research in the region is either done in medical faculties or in education, focusing on remedial interventions. We don’t see disability studies in the social sciences or humanities space at all in curricula or research in the region. The more dynamic work is happening outside academic institutions, in partnerships between academics and activists, and in more alternative forms of knowledge production. In the West, it is political in the sense that it is framed as a human right and follows a social model, but it’s not political in terms of understanding the geopolitics around disability.

Maha

Thank you, Dina. Anyone else?

Jasbir?

Dina

Sorry, could we bring Rita in? I can’t see you. Rita, you need to unmute yourself.

Rita

Can you hear me now?

Maha

Yes, thank you.

Rita

I would like to complement what Dina was saying about a lot of research work being done in the North about the South. We should do our own research. Having said that, for disability, I honestly think it is crucial now to try to bridge the gap between activism and research and work very hard to get people with disabilities to be able to do both. They are two very different skills, but people with disabilities also need very good research skills. They need to do their own research and be able to write reports that can appeal to governments and international aid, and also to document experiences. This doesn’t happen quite the same way as advocacy. I think this is the next five-year project as far as we’re concerned at the Institute, working with Shada and people like Shada who are both activists and researchers, in developing skills and exposing the stories of people with disabilities here.

Maha

Thank you, Rita. It was interesting to follow up on Dena. When we did the literature review on what has been produced in Lebanon on disability, we found that faculties, like sociology or education, often refrain from engaging with disability beyond special education. In sociology, it’s still absent; it’s not seen as a popular theme. Jasbir, and then we will take a series of questions.

Over to you, Jasbir

Jasbir

I wanted to appreciate what Dina said about how disability is political in the human rights sense in the Western context or the Global North context, but not political in the geopolitical sense. This goes back to what you, Maha, were saying about disability scholars not talking about Palestine, which remains the general case in North America. I can at least speak to that context. Even in the context of this genocide, there’s been a scramble in North American universities for critical disability studies scholars to address Palestine meaningfully, if it’s addressed at all. By meaningfully, I mean not as a counter-narrative of radical alterity as something happening elsewhere, but as something connected to transnational circuits of the production of disability across the globe, related through military infrastructures, deteriorating health infrastructures around the globe, etc.

We need to stop producing Palestine as this space of extraordinary exception and instead see it as a place of connectivity. In North American curricula, we still see a Global North-Global South division happening, with the Global South often being consolidated through places like Palestine. There’s still massive resistance in disability rights organizing, much of which has been entirely silent in North America about the genocide in Gaza. The decision often is to say that Palestine has nothing to do with disability rights. There’s a way in which understanding the lives of Palestinians with disabilities and the production of disability must be constantly brought together as processes. The amputation crisis in Gaza is a manufactured crisis, and we can never lose sight of who the agent is in this manufacturing: settler colonialism and Israeli state violence.

Even when literature from Palestine is incorporated, it is often as a way of filling in curriculum, rather than a real understanding of what it means to address impairment and mass impairment. Critical disability studies in North America often lack the capacity to address these issues fully, though things are changing slowly.

Maha

Thank you, Jasper. There are a number of questions. This event is recorded, and the recording will be available on the website. We can send you an email about this. It will be available on both the Disability Under Siege and the Lebanese Studies websites.

Are there disabled researchers in Palestine, and at which universities can I contact them? It might be best to reach out to Suzan, Shatha, and Rita. They can direct you.

A question for Jasbir and others: Can you talk specifically about what you think is useful and applicable about prevailing theories and models offered by disability studies in Euro-American academia, and what is not useful or applicable to the situation in Palestine?

Jasbir

I think Keith Rosenfeld has put this in here. I’ll just lead this off. The problem is that the direction always starts from Euro-American academia. We need to reverse the trajectory of what is telling us what disability in Palestine is, how it is lived, and how it is understood. We should not always look to Euro-American academia for guidance, but rather learn from the work coming from the region and prioritize and center that work.

Maha

Thank you, Jasbir. I’ll see if there are any other questions. The contacts of the speakers are online, so if you visit the website, you’ll find all of them.

There is a question from Pamela: I see the use of the Internet when available for remote teaching. Can we use this modality for remote occupied territories to include Palestinian disability activists in scholarship abroad? I want to see many more events like this.

Itab, maybe you can give us an idea. You’ve also worked on Lebanon post-Beirut blast and assessed how usually responses often overlook persons with disabilities and how emergency responses are often not inclusive. Can you tell us about that?

Itab

It’s quite similar. We noticed that in Lebanon, there was no emergency plan at all. However, regardless of what plan you put in place, what happened in Gaza is beyond any imagination. The massive killing prevent the accommodation of all disabilities and support for people with disabilities. Even when people move to tents, they are attacked. We need to provide certain features of accessibility to ensure people can have their needs met, but we should also think about how to collaborate and achieve that post-war. We need guidelines for schools, hospitals, and buildings to be reconstructed inclusively, ensuring all infrastructure is accessible.

Maha

Thank you. We are coming to the end of our time. There are so many topics we just barely scratched the surface of. Today, we provided a spotlight on this topic. There are many issues, like gender and disabilities, that we did not explore. How will women’s lives be impacted versus men’s? The different facets of how disability will impact lives and how society will treat and respond to different groups require a lot of work. I hope today we just started the conversation. I hope our colleagues in the field of disability will continue to engage and respond to urgent needs, and I hope more scholars will focus on what’s happening in Palestine. I also hope our colleagues in other disciplines will adopt disability as one of the intersectionality’s in their work rather than continue to overlook it.

Thank you very much, everyone, for attending. The video will be posted later on our YouTube channel. Thank you, everyone. Have a great afternoon.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.