Eyad El-Sarraj: The real heroes are the victims

The man who built Gaza’s mental health system was born in Bir al-Saba‘ in 1944 and made a refugee in Gaza in 1948, a small child when it happened. Al Jazeera’s obituary records it plainly: “Born in 1944 in Bir al-Saba’ (now known as Beersheba), El-Sarraj and his family fled to the Gaza Strip amid violence after the creation of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.”

He studied at Alexandria University and at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry, and “founded the GCMHP in the Gaza Strip in 1990” — the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, which is still, thirty-five years on, the Strip’s principal independent provider and the keeper of its longest clinical record. He was, in Al Jazeera’s summary, “a staunch critic of both Israel and Palestinian leadership, and was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority (PA) four times.” He won the Martin Ennals Award for human rights defenders in 1998, and in 2010 the Olof Palme Prize, awarded for his “self-sacrificing and indefatigable struggle for common sense, reconciliation and peace between Palestine and Israel”.

What he said on receiving that prize is the reason he has an entry here rather than only a footnote in the entry on his institution:

“I am proud and happy to receive this prize, but I consider that the real heroes are the victims of violence, torture and war… This prize gives me hope and encourages me to continue to fight to defend those whose rights have been abused, and to work for justice and peace.”

It is a small displacement and a total one. Handed an honour for treating the wounded, he moves the word hero off himself and onto the people he treats — and then, having declined the credit, does not decline the work. That ordering is the whole ethic of the Palestinian mental health tradition he founded: the attention belongs to the people living it, and the fact of your own exhaustion is not a reason to stop.

He died on 17 December 2013, aged seventy, after a long illness, in an Israeli hospital where he was being treated for cancer; his body was to be returned to Gaza the following morning, and his funeral, GCMHP told Al Jazeera, was expected to begin after midday prayer at the al-Omari mosque in Gaza City that same day. Husam El-Nounou, GCMHP’s head of administration, told Al Jazeera: “He is considered the father of mental health and the pioneer of mental health in Palestine. Our commitment to Dr. Sarraj is to continue his message and his struggle for respect of human rights.”

Sources

• Gaza mental health pioneer dies aged 70 — Al Jazeera, 18 December 2013
• Gaza Community Mental Health Programme — About Us