Campaigns to censor medical journals’ reports on the consequences of Israeli persecution of Palestinians have been sadly successful over the years, but there are signs, even at the Lancet, which has caved to censors before, that the truth is breaking through. A recent Lancet conference included a broad range of topics from environmental degradation to mental health in Palestine. The existence of these presentations is both normative in the medical world and somewhat revolutionary, given the frequent suppression of health information from occupied Palestine.

The Israeli occupation is the chief structural barrier to quality healthcare for Palestinians—it has exacerbated existing inequities in the population and has given rise to a host of issues unique to this devastating political reality. The structural aspects of the occupation —political, economic, and social— collectively mitigate access to quality health care for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. Healthcare is not just measured in mortality statistics or disease prevalence. National health systems are highly influenced by the political climate surrounding them, and as Norwegian physician and activist Mads Gilbert puts it, “Medicine and politics are Siamese twins.”

Two years ago, Dr. Mads Gilbert (right) told me that his experience in Gaza during…