My capstone research project focused on the impacts of crowd control weapons (CCWs) on the Palestinian population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including civilians and healthcare providers (HCPs).

To understand the impact, I worked with a group of Palestinian medical students to interview a variety of HCPs in Palestine, including emergency medicine physicians, surgeons, and first responders. Our questions revolved around their patient population, the types of injuries they treat, their experiences with crowd control weapons, and what they perceive are the mental health effects on civilians and healthcare providers of frequent confrontations with Israeli forces and exposure to CCWs.

This topic is extremely relevant to events happening in Palestine today. It is important to note that healthcare infrastructure and healthcare providers have long been targets of the Israeli forces, and bombings of hospitals and ambulances in Gaza are war crimes and acts of genocide.

Maha Zubaidi
Thabet Zidan
Mohammed Abu Aisheh
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jess Ghannam, PhD
Thanks to many others that are not mentioned here.