From Stability to Fragility: Missing Salaries as a Psychosocial Wound

The interruption or reduction of salaries does not only reveal a financial crisis, but also one of the most severe psychosocial crises in the Palestinian context, because it affects a segment that constitutes one of the pillars of stability within Palestinian society: the civil servant.Reduced and delayed salaries have become a chronic condition, not a temporary exception; employees have been receiving varying percentages of their salaries for years. In January 2026, the Ministry of Finance announced the disbursement of only 2000 shekels to each employee, indicating a escalating deterioration. The news of salary disbursement dates has turned into "breaking news" that society follows with daily anxiety, which in itself is a profound symbolic indication of the depth of the crisis.Bandura, in his theory of self-efficacy, believes that for a person to maintain balanced mental health, they need a deep sense that their efforts produce tangible results, and that the energy and time they expend have real value in the world around them. An employee who goes to work daily, then ultimately does not find enough to cover their family's needs, experiences a gradual breakdown of this efficacy.It is not merely a financial hardship; rather, it is a systematic dismantling of the "effort = result" equation that forms the backbone of human motivation. When this experience is repeated month after month and year after year, the employee moves from transient frustration to what is known as "learned professional helplessness," a state in which they stop emotional investment in their work and lose the essential motivation to perform their tasks, because the mind has built a firm conviction that effort will not be fruitful.On the family level, salary interruption constitutes an earthquake that threatens internal balance, as the impact of salary interruption extends beyond the individual to strike the family at its core. Salary is not just income; it is a daily guarantee of parents' sense of their ability to protect, provide for, and support. In Palestinian culture, it is also a symbol associated with social status and a regulating factor for the parental role in the family. Low income is not just an absence of income; it is a systematic dismantling of professional identity and the social role of a person. When a person stands unable to feed their children, a gradual erosion of their sense of competence, ability, and dignity occurs deep within them. What complicates matters further are the figures on informal employment, which is synonymous with fragility and fluctuation that deprives a person of a sense of stability and planning for the future. How can a person dream if they don't know if they will work tomorrow? How can they raise their children with optimism in a future besieged by occupation, fences, checkpoints, doubt, and uncertainty?When the father or mother returns from the ministry, school, or hospital with reduced or no salaries, a series of psychological transformations begin within the family space, where tensions escalate between spouses over the distribution of scarce resources, the margin of tolerance and understanding erodes, and the sense of threat magnifies. Research on economic pressures and their impact on family dynamics has shown that chronic financial stress doubles the rates of marital conflicts, lowers the quality of emotional communication, and weakens effective parental involvement in raising children.As for children, who are the most affected, they read the scene accurately, because they are not passive recipients; they observe anxiety, helplessness, and brokenness in their parents' faces. Studies indicate that children who witness severe financial stress in their families develop higher levels of anxiety, suffer from a decline in academic achievement, and develop a less confident and competent self-image. What increases the risks is that the child does not possess the cognitive tools to process what they see, and because what is formed in early childhood forms the basis for future personality, one of the deepest effects may be what is known as "attachment disorder"; when a parent is psychologically shattered before their child's eyes, the basic attachment system suffers a wound that may leave its marks throughout life. A child who does not find a safe haven, and whose role model collapses before them when they see them helpless, may develop disturbed attachment strategies that reflect on their social relationships, their trust in others, and their ability to build healthy bonds later. The family is the first circle of psychological protection for the individual in any society, and it is the first reservoir of belonging and security. In the current Palestinian context, the family structure is subjected to accumulating pressures that almost negate its primary function of protection.The impact does not stop at the individual and their family, but extends to the societal impact, where civil servants and their families constitute a broad social segment that connects vital sectors of society: the teacher, university professor, doctor, engineer, and security officer. When this segment is afflicted with chronic frustration and its motivation declines, the quality of public services declines with it in a cumulative manner that is difficult to measure in the short term but burdens society in the long term.Salary interruption also leads to the erosion of institutional trust, as a discourse of despair seeps from institutions and spreads throughout the social fabric, feeding what is known as "learned helplessness at the collective level." The feeling that the system cannot, and that individual effort will not make a difference, is one of the most dangerous collective psychological states and the most harmful to paths of recovery and change in societies.The current Palestinian context poses a deep psychological problem: how do we continue to adopt a cohesive identity in a reality that threatens the continuity of existence itself?Erikson refers to "identity diffusion" as a state that arises when a person fails to build consistent links between their past, present, and future. In the Palestinian context, and under an extended colonial reality, the citizen experiences a kind of this diffusion: their past is displaced, their present is restricted, and their future is suspended on checkpoints, promises, and settlements in which they have no will.However, the picture is not without another important dimension, which is Palestinian steadfastness, documented by studies as an exceptional psychosocial phenomenon formed in the face of a long reality of oppression and displacement. Research on collective identity has observed how Palestinians develop "social resilience" as a collective defense system, based on daily interaction and adherence to land and memory, to produce an identity resistant to erasure, removal, and displacement.Steadfastness does not mean the absence of pain; it is the ability to continue despite pain, and it does not mean absolute mental health; many who appear steadfast carry unhealed wounds deep within them. It is important for us to distinguish between positive steadfastness (based on meaning, connection, and belonging) and defensive steadfastness (based on emotional repression and denial). It is also necessary to point to "future alienation," which is formed when a person loses their ability to imagine their future, and when they lose one of the most important psychological pillars, which is hope.Steadfastness in the Palestinian context is the product of an integrated system, reflecting the depth of belonging to the land and place, the strength of family and community ties, faith in justice, religious faith that gives meaning to suffering, and collective memory that connects the present to a long history of challenges, struggle, and survival.The degree of steadfastness is formed based on factors that can be built and strengthened, the most important of which are: the ability to satisfy biological and psychological needs, the existence of a social support network, a sense of individual and collective efficacy, and the possession of narratives capable of absorbing and overcoming suffering. In the Palestinian case, these factors constitute real fuel that prevents complete collapse in the face of pressures described by international reports as "unprecedented."Trauma psychologists believe that recovery is possible, but it requires time, safety, and resources. A person does not recover in the midst of a fire; rather, when the fire is extinguished. What distinguishes the Palestinian wound is that its fires have not yet been extinguished, and what happens under it of steadfastness, cohesion, and continuity is, in itself, a testament to an unbreakable character.Steadfastness does not mean the absence of pain, nor does it mean the absence of the need for healing, but it is a description of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that requires serious and urgent responses, local, regional, and international, to save a people suffering under occupation and siege for decades, but its current siege may be the most dangerous and impactful on the individual, society, and the cause.