After decades of bloodshed in the struggle between Palestinian terrorists and Israel, constructing effective cooperation between the two peoples to promote public health would seem to be a pipe dream.
Such cooperation did exist for years under the guidance of Prof. Theodore (Ted) Tulchinsky, a public health physician who worked for the Canadian government as associate deputy minister of the Province of Manitoba and the New York State Department of Health before moving in 1976 to Israel, where he was named director of public health responsible for managing the preventive health system.
He worked on immunization policies, maternal and child health issues, such as anemia of infancy, and many other public health issues.
Then, from 1981 to 1994, he was appointed coordinator of public health services for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza for the Health Ministry in Jerusalem. He worked tirelessly promoting vaccinations, primary health care, maternal and child health, nutrition, community health workers, and training programs, and in a coordinative role following the transfer of responsibility for health to the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
He has also been active in promoting the fortification of foods to prevent micronutrient deficiency conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Authority for decades.
Thirty years ago, he was named an associate professor at the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). He has been involved in promoting public health from Mongolia to Macedonia to Georgia and has received many honors.
Now, at 89, Tulchinsky has joined with Israeli public health professionals and one American expert to write an important editorial in the American Journal of Public Health titled “Israel and Gaza: Keeping Room for Hope Based on Past Cooperation in Public Health,” which calls for restoring successful Israeli-Palestinian collaboration in public health and urges a revival of such partnerships amid the ongoing conflict.
It was co-authored by HUJI Prof. Aron M. Troen, Prof. Dorit Nitzan of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba, Dr. Ron Lobel of Barzilai University Medical Center in Ashkelon, and Prof. Gordon DeFriese of the University of North Carolina.
The editorial documents how public health professionals on both sides worked together from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s to dramatically improve immunization coverage, control infectious diseases, reduce infant mortality, and strengthen epidemic surveillance.
“Even in the face of conflict, public health has long served as a bridge between communities,” researchers wrote.
“This shared legacy is not only a testament to what was possible but a call to action for what must be renewed.”
In response to a polio outbreak in Gaza in the late 1970s, Palestinian and Israeli health workers collaborated on a groundbreaking immunization strategy combining the Sabin oral and Salk inactivated vaccines. This approach, supported by the World Health Organization, resulted in the near-total elimination of polio in the region for over two decades and later became an international model for eradication efforts, they wrote.
In the late 1970s, during an outbreak of potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease Rift Valley fever in Egypt, Israeli and Palestinian veterinarians and public health authorities coordinated immunizations of 1.5 million livestock and shared disease surveillance protocols, successfully preventing the virus’s spread into Gaza and Israel.
At that time, Gaza had only three mother-child health clinics. By 1994, through a combined effort that adopted Israel’s idea of tipat halav clinics and Israeli-Palestinian initiatives, that number grew to 29. This expansion, paired with health personnel training exchanges, halved infant mortality rates and introduced modern maternal care services across the territory.
The editorial authors noted that Gaza was among the first in the region to adopt a two-dose measles immunization schedule, combining early infant protection with later MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) boosters. This approach, which exceeded 90% vaccine coverage, sharply reduced child mortality and transmission there and was adopted by Israel only several years later.
Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance
THE ESTABLISHMENT of the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (in 2003 created a formal mechanism for epidemic preparedness and response. Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian laboratories collaborated through joint training, shared protocols, and coordinated response mechanisms for crises such as avian influenza and COVID-19.
The PA required salt iodization and flour fortification to prevent harmful micronutrient deficiencies after Israeli, Palestinian, and international researchers pushed for it.
“These shared successes – grounded in evidence, mutual respect, and practical necessity – serve as powerful precedents for what is still possible today,” the authors declared.
A 2024 polio vaccination campaign coordinated by Palestinian, Israeli, and international agencies during the Iron Swords war successfully reached 560,000 Gazan children, despite the bitter conflict and the collapsed infrastructure.
Troen – who directs the Nutrition and Brain Health Laboratory and teaches in the School of Nutrition Science and the School of Public Health – told The Jerusalem Post in a phone interview from New York where he was “stuck” by the closing of Israeli airports after a trip to a conference in New Zealand that the editorial serves as a strong rebuttal to current calls to isolate Israeli academia and science.
“Such boycotts ignore the tangible, life-saving benefits produced through decades of Israeli–Palestinian scientific cooperation. Efforts to cut academic ties directly contradict the editorial’s evidence that scientific engagement fosters mutual understanding, improves public health, and builds pathways to peace,” he said.
Sadly, the editorial elicited some venomous written attacks on Israel.
“There have been negative, knee-jerk reactions from extremists who pick sides,” Troen said. “Part of the problem is that this conflict has become a black-and-white morality play in which everything Hamas does is justified as ‘resistance.’ Anything Israelis do is regarded by them as an extension of control of the territories. This radical view is that they seek to dismantle the State of Israel, that the root cause of everything is that white nonindigenous people (the Jews) took over the indigenous population (Palestinians), who supposedly own the land from the river to the sea.”
During the editorial process, “the journal removed Hamas from what we wrote to avoid it becoming an extension of the battlefield. Maybe there is some merit to this; the authors had to accept this to get it published,” but Troen noted that “being critical of Hamas is not against the principles of public health, human dignity, and welfare. There has been tremendous suffering on both sides. We must look forward from here and not call for the boycott and disestablishment of Israel. Israelis will stay here, and so will the Palestinians. There are common interests for reconciliation.”
In New Zealand, Troen saw that” [white] residents were trying to deal with their colonial past. The Maori natives and the ‘newcomers’ of British origin have had to share their space. At the end of May, before I left for abroad, colleagues – only some of whom were Jewish – from Columbia University in New York, who saw savage attacks on Israel, visited us to try to understand what was going on in the war. That’s different from the arrogance of people who think they have all the truth and can label people as good or evil. Universities are meant to explore differences for the common good. It doesn’t have to come to blows, and we don’t have to agree.”
Looking towards the future, Troen said: “I don’t use the term ‘optimistic.’ I think of hope, that things that may or may not work for the best, but you have to work for the good. In that sense, I don’t despair. We’re working towards changing people’s minds and hearts and understanding each other. It’s possible.”
“The totalitarian view has no room for anybody else and regards issues as a zero-sum game, but it isn’t. There are alternatives.”