Yara M. Asi

Israel’s Restrictions on Medical Evacuations from Gaza and the West Bank Like thousands of others across occupied Palestine, five-year-old Mohammad Abu Asad has cancer. Mohammad was diagnosed in the early 2020s with an aggressive form of leukemia, a cancer of the blood and...

My latest for @arabcenterdc.org: Israel’s Restrictions on Medical Evacuations from Gaza and the West Bank

Israel’s control over Palestinian movement has hit a new peak. For patients needing medical care, it can be a matter of life and death.

Read: arabcenterdc.org/resource/isr...

MSF’s impossible choice shows Israel’s stranglehold on Gaza aid MSF’s short-lived compliance with Israel exposed how aid workers in Gaza are trapped under military control & no safety guarantees, writes Yara M. Asi.

My latest for @thenewarab.bsky.social:

MSF’s impossible choice shows Israel’s stranglehold on Gaza aid

Israel has built a system that allows it to both create massive humanitarian need and control how the response to that need is allowed to function.

www.newarab.com/opinion/msfs...

Call for Pitches—Visual Art & Cultural Production in the Middle East and North Africa MERIP is seeking pitches for our Summer 2026 issue exploring visual art and cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa. We invite submissions that center artistic practices and cultural…

PITCH US: MERIP's editors are inviting open pitches for our Summer 2026 issue on Visual Art and Cultural Production in the Middle East and North Africa!

Read more and pitch at the link below.

Interrogating the role of sociopolitical determinants of health in Palestine: A qualitative study with key informants For decades, Palestinians have faced significant barriers to developing and accessing basic health services, leading to poor health outcomes. These issues are often characterized as mere ‘humanitar...

"...and what medication and what medical service...turning what is critically the issue of settler colonialism into an issue of poverty and child mortality and injury and wounding.”

Prescient key informant insights from our piece in Global Public Health: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“It was critical to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, because that meant that you could no longer talk about Gaza being a political crisis, i.e. the problem with Gaza is how many doctors, how many hours of electricity, how many trucks of food..."

West Bank: Israel Emptying Refugee Camps a Crime Against Humanity The Israeli government’s forced displacement of the populations of three West Bank refugee camps in January and February 2025 amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said ...

One year ago, Israeli authorities began “Operation Iron Wall,” forcibly removing 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in West Bank refugee camps.

HRW documented the forced displacement, which amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Read more:

Opinion | No Child Deserves to Die Like My Daughter

“That day, Hind was trapped in a small car surrounded by Israeli tanks. Her cousins lay dead beside her. Her clothes were soaked in their blood. She was 5 years old.”

A piece written by the mother of Hind Rajab, a child murdered by Israeli forces two years ago: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...

There are many illuminating and prescient insights in this piece that we hope offer valuable contributions to the study of Palestinian health. We are very grateful to the participants of our Radcliffe Workshop that agreed to these pre-interviews.

"The funders [don't understand] that people [are] living in community, they don't live in sectors…"

"The active and damaging role of [the] donor community was the humanitarianization of Palestinians into a charity case. It wasn’t long before [the] donor community realised it wasn’t about building a society but trying to mitigate the damage being done to it."

"We don't have a [health] system, we never had the system, we have fragments of services, and they are affected by the vagaries of funding, and so we can never have long term programmes that would be independent of funders."

...and the fact that they bear witness to what happens as being critical to the changes that have happened in public opinion in Europe and the United States."

(This was predicted by our key informant in 2022, and is actively happening as we speak)

"I think we are going to see an attack, not just on Palestinian organisations, but the presence of international organisations in Palestine, so you know people like [...] even people like MSF, are going to be in the next wave because Israel identifies these organisations...

Abstract for the article: "Interrogating the role of sociopolitical determinants of health in Palestine: A qualitative study with key informants"

Our new article in Global Public Health, published open access today:

Interrogating the role of sociopolitical determinants of health in Palestine: A qualitative study with key informants

Some highlight quotes from our interviews in a thread below 👇

Read: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Another Step in the Weaponization of Aid: Israel Bans Humanitarian Agencies in Gaza In late December 2025, two months after the much-lauded ceasefire agreement that was meant to end the physical destruction of Gaza and bring a significant increase in desperately needed aid, Israel an...

Yara M. Asi argues that #Israel’s mass suspension of humanitarian organizations in #Gaza represents the deliberate weaponization of aid, aimed at restricting relief and at silencing credible witnesses to mass suffering. @yara-asi.bsky.social

Another Step in the Weaponization of Aid: Israel Bans Humanitarian Agencies in Gaza In late December 2025, two months after the much-lauded ceasefire agreement that was meant to end the physical destruction of Gaza and bring a significant increase in desperately needed aid, Israel an...

My latest for @arabcenterdc.org: Another Step in the Weaponization of Aid: Israel Bans Humanitarian Agencies in Gaza

Read here: arabcenterdc.org/resource/ano...

The Ceasefire Still Enabling a Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza In reality, while the bombing has slowed, much of what the ceasefire accomplished merely relegated Gaza to old news, much as how escalating violence and land seizure in the West Bank over the past few...

My latest for @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social: The Ceasefire Still Enabling A Humanitarian Catastrophe In Gaza

Today, Gaza has largely left the headlines. But "hell on earth" is not repaired by a ceasefire, let alone one where hundreds have been killed.

Read here: dawnmena.org/the-ceasefir...

Excited to head to @fxbharvard.bsky.social next week to talk about Peace and the Public's Health to commemorate World Human Rights Day.

To register, visit: <https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aWq4qcQ94il8hJs>

Sudan’s War on Civilians: A Continuation of Decades of Atrocities For more than a year, the al-Saudi Maternity Hospital was the only functioning hospital in al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan. The largest medical facility in the city, it had alr...

My latest for @arabcenterdc.org:

Sudan’s War on Civilians: A Continuation of Decades of Atrocities

Read here: arabcenterdc.org/resource/sud...

My latest in the Dec issue of @currenthistory1.bsky.social:

When Health Is the Target: Violence, Restriction, and Neglect in Palestine

Read here: online.ucpress.edu/currenthisto...

No Protection, No Justice: US Citizens Killed with Impunity by Israel On a cold night in January 2022, Omar Assad, an elderly Palestinian American man, was driving back to his town in the West Bank after a night of playing cards at his cousin’s house. According to a lea...

Yara M. Asi argues that the killing and imprisonment of US citizens by Israeli forces illustrate Washington’s unwillingness to protect its own nationals. @yara-asi.bsky.social

arabcenterdc.org/resource/no-...

Join the @palestinephhr.bsky.social at our next webinar:

Understanding genocide through a public health lens: Perspectives from Gaza

Date: Weds, Oct 22, 2025
Time: 11A – 12P EDT | 6P-7:30P EEST

For more info or to register, visit:
fxb.harvard.edu/blog/calenda...

Amid one of the worst periods of mass displacement for Palestinians in our history, I wrote about structural oppression of Palestinian refugees for Health Education & Behavior.

Refugee Health Under Protracted Structural Oppression: The Palestinian Story journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

MSF forced to suspend activities amid Israeli offensive in Gaza City | MSF The intense Israeli forces' offensive in Gaza City, Palestine, is putting our staff and patients at an unacceptable level of risk to continue our lifesaving activities.

“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces... This is the last thing we wanted.”

We have been forced to suspend our activities and leave Gaza City.

Abstract for article "The Formation and Transformation of Medical Apartheid in Palestine: A Historical Examination"

We've been working on this piece for a long time, and it's finally out!

The Formation and Transformation of Medical Apartheid in Palestine: A Historical Examination

Should be open access but currently behind a paywall, DM if you'd like a PDF!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

My latest for @arabcenterdc.org is on the US suspension of the visa process used to bring Palestinian children that need complex surgeries and treatments, in large part due to their injuries from the US-funded weapons used by Israel to devastate Gaza. Read here: arabcenterdc.org/resource/gaz...

The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) announces its 27th annual Palestinian research fellowship competition for research in the humanities and social sciences that will contribute to Palestinian Studies. Apps due Dec 4.

Details: www.parc-us-pal.org/fellowships-...

Speaking at the 2nd annual Doctors Against Genocide conference this weekend. Info or register here: doctorsagainstgenocide.org/events

The Growing Consensus over Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Just one week after October 7, 2023, more than 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies signed a public statement “to sound the alarm about the possi...

Yara M. Asi outlines the shift to widespread expert consensus that #Israel’s actions in #Gaza constitute #genocide. @yara-asi.bsky.social

What Comes Next in Gaza? Experts discuss the current situation on the ground in Gaza and around the world as a growing number of states continue to break with Israel over its conduct in the besieged strip.

Join us on 8/26 to discuss the current situation in #Gaza and what might come next after 22 months of #Genocide.

Speakers: @yara-asi.bsky.social, @dianabuttu.bsky.social, Mouin Rabbani, @jeremyscahill.com, and Yousef Munayyer.

For more info and to register👇
arabcenterdc.org/event/what-c...