Restoring Palestine to its rightful owners: A conversation with Mads Gilbert

We have long argued that the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza must catalyse a change in the overall political discourse on Israel and Palestine, particularly regarding the need to free Palestine from the confines of victimhood. This shift is necessary to create space where the Palestinian people are seen as central to their own struggle.

It is unfortunate that centering a nation in a conversation about its own freedom from colonialism and military occupation requires years of advocacy. But this is the reality Palestinians face, often due to circumstances far beyond their control.

As outrageous as US President Donald Trump’s comments about purchasing Gaza were, they were a crude interpretation of a pre-existing culture that viewed Palestinians as marginal actors in their own story. While previous US administrations and their Western allies did not use such blatant language as Trump’s “taking over the Gaza Strip” they did treat Palestinians as irrelevant to how the West perceived the “solution” to the “conflict,” a language that rarely adhered to international and humanitarian laws.

For many Palestinian intellectuals, the fight for justice has been waged on two fronts: one to challenge global misconceptions about Palestine and the Palestinian people, and the other to reclaim the narrative altogether.

Recently, I have argued that reclaiming the narrative by centering Palestinian voices is not enough. Many of these supposedly “authentic” Palestinians do not represent the collective aspirations of the Palestinian people.

This argument responds to the Western exposition of certain types of Palestinians whose narratives do not directly challenge Western complicity in the Israeli occupation and war. These voices often focus on highlighting the victimisation component of the 'conflict', often indicating that 'both sides' should be equally supported, or blamed.

This is why it was refreshing to talk with the iconic Norwegian emergency medicine doctor, Mads Gilbert, who is fighting to decolonise the concept of solidarity in medicine, and, by extension, western solidarity as a whole.

Dr. Gilbert has spent much of his career working in Gaza, as well as among Palestinian doctors and communities in the West Bank and Lebanon. Since the start of the war, he has remained one of the most tireless voices in exposing the Israeli genocide in the Strip.

Our conversation touched on many subjects, including a term he coined: “evidence-based solidarity.” This concept applies evidence-based practice in medicine to all aspects of solidarity, both within and beyond Palestine.

It means that solidarity becomes more meaningful when it is supported by the kind of information that guarantees the support does more good than harm.

A good example was his explanation of the field hospital as a strategy to cope with man-made crises, such as the genocide in Gaza. Our discussion elaborated on an article by Dr. Gilbert and other colleagues, published on February 5 in the medical journal BMC, entitled “Realising Health Justice in Palestine: Beyond Humanitarian Voices.”

The article was a critical response to another piece, published last May by Karl Blanchet and others, entitled “Rebuilding the Health Sector in Gaza: Alternative Humanitarian Voices.” Dr. Gilbert found the original article reductionist for failing to recognize that the crisis in Gaza was “entirely manufactured” and for overlooking the centrality of “Palestinian perspectives.”

This conversation may seem rhetorical until it is placed within its practical context. Field hospitals, which could be seen as the ultimate act of solidarity, in Dr. Gilbert’s view, often deplete local resources and exacerbate the challenges facing Palestinian healthcare.

He pointed out how the establishment of these temporary foreign-run facilities can contribute to a “brain drain,” while simultaneously exhausting the local healthcare system by creating parallel structures that, despite being well-funded, do not integrate with the native system.

According to Dr. Gilbert, these efforts divert critical resources away from the urgent task of rebuilding and restoring Palestinian hospitals and providing fair wages for the dedicated healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, paramedics and midwives, who are integral to the local medical infrastructure.

It must be frustrating for Palestinian medics, hundreds of whom have been killed in the Israeli genocide on Gaza, to watch others have a conversation about helping Gaza without acknowledging the vital role of the Palestinian Ministry of Health and local hospitals and clinics. They fail to recognise the unmatched experience, let alone the resilience, of the Gaza medical community, which has proven to be one of the most durable and resourceful anywhere in the world.

This is but a manifestation of a much larger issue: the West, whether “evil-doers” or “good-doers,” insists on seeing the Palestinian as an outsider, either to be removed from Gaza altogether or treated as a person with no relevant input, no worthy experience, and no agency.

Many often engage in this thinking, while assuming they are indeed helping the Palestinians.

But the genocide should serve as the watershed moment for these conversations to escape the academic realm and enter the public sphere, where the centrality of the truly representative Palestinian experience becomes the litmus test for any outside ‘proposals,’ ‘plans,’ ‘solutions,’ or even solidarity.

As for the latter, decolonizing solidarity is now an urgent task. There is no time to waste when the very existence of Palestinians in their historic land is at stake.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).