12 October 2025
For many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, a heart attack, childbirth, or injury must first pass through Israeli military checkpoints, locked gates and blocked roads. What should be a short drive to a hospital is a journey of life-or-death uncertainty. In this reality, access to urgent medical care is not just delayed, it is often denied.
In the town of Ni’lin, west of Ramallah in the central West Bank, these barriers are part of everyday life. Surrounded by Israeli checkpoints, settlements, and other movement restrictions, residents in Ni’lin face systematic challenges in accessing emergency healthcare.
To respond to this, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) equipped a 24/7 urgent care centre in the town so it could operate and serve patients, ensuring it is able to respond to emergencies that residents simply cannot afford to delay. The centre now serves around 300 patients every day. Before the centre opened, residents were served only by a basic, daytime outpatient clinic. Critical cases such as heart attacks and trauma had no immediate care. The nearest hospital is in Ramallah, over an hour’s drive away, assuming there are no Israeli-imposed closures.
Amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israeli military violence across the West Bank has escalated significantly since October 2023. Invasions and closures of towns and cities have become more frequent, and hundreds of new checkpoints, iron gates and mud barriers have been installed. Entire communities, including in Ni’lin and its neighbouring villages, have been deliberately left isolated, unable to reach hospitals in emergencies. This is where the urgent care centre steps in. And it has already proven itself a lifesaving necessity.
Last year, 28-year-old Sari*, an interior designer from Ni’lin, was caught in the middle of a fight in his community, when a burst of pepper spray in the area triggered an unexpected reaction. Within minutes, Sari collapsed with severe chest pain. He did not know it at the time, but his heart was shutting down.
A passerby rushed him to the urgent care centre. Sari does not remember arriving. He does not remember collapsing inside the centre. But what happened next would determine whether he lived or died. “I woke up five days later in the hospital,” he told us. “The doctors said I died twice.”
Dr Bashar, the Emergency Physician on duty that night, remembers every detail. “He came in saying he couldn’t breathe. He was having severe chest pain. We gave him IV fluids and oxygen, and ran an ECG [an electrocardiogram]. It showed patterns consistent with a heart attack, at just 28 years old.”
Before they could act further, Sari lost consciousness. No pulse. No breathing. The team immediately began CPR, administered an electric shock, and revived him. Moments later, his heart stopped again. Another shock. More compressions. A second chance.
“We managed to bring him back, twice,” said Dr Bashar. “If he had to go all the way to Ramallah, he wouldn’t have made it.”
Sari was stabilised and transferred by ambulance. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a pulmonary haemorrhage and complications requiring urgent cardiac intervention. Today, he is recovering, but his survival is directly tied to the existence of the urgent care centre in Ni’lin.
Every week, the centre treats urgent cases from Ni’lin and nearby villages like Budrus, Deir Qaddis, and Qibya. Patients arrive with gunshot wounds, respiratory attacks, cardiac emergencies, and injuries from attacks by Israeli forces or settlers. For tens of thousands of Palestinians living west of Ramallah, MAP’s urgent care centre is the only source of emergency medical care.
With ongoing closures, settler roadblocks, and expanding restrictions, people can no longer count on reaching hospitals in cities in time. The only viable solution, especially in rural, hard-to-reach areas, is decentralised, community-based medical infrastructure.
That is what the Ni’lin urgent care centre represents. Not just a centre, but a defiance of a system that treats Palestinian health as expendable.
Sari captures it clearly: “If the centre wasn’t here, I’d be dead. Full stop. I didn’t even have time to think. From the moment I collapsed to the moment I woke up in the hospital, it was all in their hands.”
Now recovering and back at work, Sari is turning his personal experience into a plea for action. “They saved me. But what about the next person? What about women giving birth? What about someone needing surgery or tests? We need more than just survival. We need real healthcare.”
As Israeli authorities continue to fragment and isolate Palestinian communities and restrict their access to healthcare, MAP remains committed to bringing lifesaving care closer to the people who need it most.
Because in places like Ni’lin, where minutes can mean the difference between life and death, urgent medical care is not a privilege. It is a right. And it can only be meaningfully protected and upheld when Israel’s systematic barriers and violations against healthcare come to an end.
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*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.