West Bank ‘intimidation’ blocks urgent health care - The Australian 27 March 2026 

The Rozana mobile team working in the West Bank. Picture: Supplied

In the southern Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank, a small Bedouin village sits behind a fence. For the few hundred people living in Umm al-Khair, access to healthcare has long been limited.

One of the only ways to receive medical care has been through Women4Women – a mobile clinic operated by Rozana.

But today that clinic no longer comes. Umm al-Khair has been home to Palestinian families for decades. In recent years, it has become increasingly encircled by the Israeli settlement of Carmel, established in the early 1980s and expanded over time. The proximity is not incidental. It defines daily life.

On one side: permanent homes, electricity, water and paved roads. On the other: a village where many residents still lack reliable infrastructure and face ongoing uncertainty about their ability to remain on the land. This is not a conventional neighbourly relationship. It is a setting shaped by asymmetry, pressure and vulnerability.

For organisations such as ours, it is where the need is greatest.

Rozana is an international health diplomacy organisation. For more than a decade, we have worked to improve access to healthcare for Palestinians while building professional links between Israeli and Palestinian medical communities.

Our work is practical. Since 2018, our Wheels of Hope program has helped transport seriously ill Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals. In 2021, we launched Women4Women, a mobile clinic delivering essential healthcare to women in remote communities – places where services are limited and often out of reach.Our team – 10 female health professionals – travels across the southern Hebron Hills to provide care that would otherwise not exist.

Until recently, Umm al-Khair was one of those communities. Today it is not. We did not stop going because the need disappeared. We stopped because it became too dangerous. That decision reflects a broader shift.

Ron Finkel with the Sheikh of Umm al-Khair in 2022. Picture: Supplied

Across the West Bank, harassment, intimidation and violence affecting Palestinian communities has increased. In areas such as the southern Hebron Hills, these are not isolated incidents but part of a pattern shaping daily life – and the ability of organisations like ours to operate.

For Palestinian communities, this often means constant uncertainty: about safety, movement and the future of their homes. For healthcare providers, it creates a simple but difficult question:

How do you reach your patients when access itself is no longer assured? The consequences are immediate.

Women miss medical consultations. Chronic conditions go untreated. Pregnancies proceed without adequate care. Healthcare becomes intermittent – or disappears altogether. For our team, Umm al-Khair is not a case study. It is a community we know. To withdraw is not just a logistical adjustment. It is the loss of care – and of a trusted relationship. Humanitarian work depends on access – the ability to move, to enter communities, and to operate safely.

What we are now seeing in parts of the West Bank is a gradual erosion of that access – not only through formal restrictions, but through conditions in which safety can no longer be assumed.

Umm al Khair separated by fence from Carmel settlement in background Picture: Supplied

The consequences extend beyond any one organisation. Healthcare becomes harder to deliver. Communities become more isolated. Vulnerability deepens.

Umm al-Khair is not unique. Across parts of the West Bank, similar dynamics are unfolding – where proximity between settlements and Palestinian communities is accompanied by rising tension, insecurity and, at times, direct violence.

The impact is practical. It determines whether a teacher can reach a school, whether a farmer can access land – and whether a doctor can reach a patient.

It is possible to view this through the lens of a long and contested conflict. But there is a more immediate reality. When healthcare providers cannot safely reach vulnerable populations, the consequences are immediate and cumulative. Illness does not pause. Need does not diminish.

Access to healthcare is a basic condition of human dignity.

When that access is constrained – by infrastructure, policy or insecurity – the effects are felt most sharply by those least able to absorb them. Our teams continue to work. They travel to communities where it is still possible to do so safely, providing treatment and care to families who depend on them. But there are now places we can no longer go. Umm al-Khair is one of them. And when even a mobile clinic cannot reach a community in need, it tells us something important – not only about healthcare, but about the conditions under which it is delivered.

When access to care becomes uncertain, the consequences are not only medical – they are a measure of how much space remains for basic human dignity.

Ron Finkel AM is the founder of Rozana and chair of Rozana International