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. 2025 Jun;66(2):182-196.
doi: 10.1177/00221465241283455. Epub 2024 Oct 22.

Spatial and Ethno-national Health Inequalities: Health and Mortality Gaps between Palestinians and Jews in Israel

Ameed Saabneh  1
Affiliations

Spatial and Ethno-national Health Inequalities: Health and Mortality Gaps between Palestinians and Jews in Israel

Ameed Saabneh. J Health Soc Behav. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

This research adopts an analytical spatial perspective to explain ethno-national health inequality between Palestinians and Jews in Israel. The work identifies the forces that instigated and maintained the spatial segregation of Palestinians and elaborates the role of segregation in generating health gaps between Palestinians and Jews. The analysis suggests a novel conceptualization of two types of segregation: (a) exclusion from the center and confinement to the periphery and (b) segregation within the geographic periphery. Using administrative data on COVID-19 incidence, hospitalization, and death and various health indicators for localities, I devise a decomposition method that evaluates the relative contribution of each type of segregation to the total health gap. The findings indicate that the segregation of Palestinians from the center and their confinement to peripheral regions are crucial determinants of their poor health outcomes and that the segregation of the Palestinian community within the geographic periphery also contributes to poorer health.

Keywords: COVID-19; Palestinians in Israel; ethnic and racial health gaps; spatial inequality; spatial segregation.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Incidence, Hospitalization, and Death Rates per 100,000 Persons from COVID-19 (Log Scale) between March 2020 and March 2021. Source: Data are from the Ministry of Health. Note: Each record (N = 475,475) is a daily count in each locality of verified cases of infection, hospitalization, and mortality from COVID-19 from March 11, 2020, through September 30, 2021.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
(a) Incidence Rates per 100,000 Persons, Log Scale, in Different Times since the Start of COVID-19 Epidemic by Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Racial Composition of Locality. Source: Data are from the Ministry of Health. Note: Each record (N = 475,475) is a daily count in each locality of verified cases of infection from COVID-19 from March 11, 2020, through September 30, 2021. (b) Hospitalization Rates per 100,000 Persons, Log Scale, in Different Times since the Start of COVID-19 Epidemic by Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Racial Composition of Locality. Source: Data are from the Ministry of Health. Note: Each record (N = 475,475) is a daily count in each locality of verified cases of hospitalization from COVID-19 from March 11, 2020, through September 30, 2021.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Standardized Mortality Rate (SMR) by Socioeconomic Level of Locality, 2017. Source: Data are from the Central Bureau of Statistics. Note: N = 127.
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