An-Najah Staff

Medicinal plants are increasingly utilized for treating various human ailments and diseases worldwide. This has been stimulated by several factors including the notion that plant remedies are safer and sometimes more effective than synthetic drugs. There has also been a worldwide growing interest to study medicinal plants for use in treating various diseases. Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is unique and diverse in its geographical location and its cultural characteristics, including traditional Arab Palestinian medicine especially herbal medicine and the use of medicinal materials for curing illnesses. This article presents a systematic review on Traditional Arab Medicine including historical background, and medical innovations introduced by Arab Physicians in this field, with special emphasis on Traditional Arab Palestinian Medicine (TAPM). The article also presents a systematic review on the state-of-the-art of the Traditional  Arab Palestinian Herbal Medicine (TAPHM) with special emphasis on the West  Bank and Gaza based on previous ethnpbotanic and ethnopharmacological studies. The urgent need for the current study was felt because of the scarcity of etnobotanic and ethnopharmacological data on the Palestinian communities specially in the Gaza Strip, and following recent reports indicating a rapid decline in the use of medicinal plants and associated traditional knowledge in the TAPM, and the concern for their disappearance. This study was therefore, partly, aimed at studying the current status of the Palestinian herbal medicine in the northern West Bank (NWB) and Gaza Strip, determining medicinal plants still in use, their primary health care importance at the household level, economic value, conservation status, and their healing potentials. The work was also aimed at documenting and preserving the traditional knowledge associated with the use of medicinal plants before its disappearance. The ethnobotanic study was carried out in the NWB and Gaza Strip in the period between July 2004 and August 2005. The field work was considered an important part of study, and included intensive field visits in the study area, and interviews with members of the study population, in order to obtain information on plants used for the treatment of various ailments and diseases using pre-prepared questionnaires. The study population comprised 535 subjects (340 women, and 195 men) selected from various Geographic regions of the NWB (382 subjects with average age of 55),  and Gaza Strip (153 subjects with average age of 42), belonging to three different groups on the  basis of their knowledge of traditional medicine: practitioners or healers, "attarine", and persons  with acknowledged knowledge of traditional medicine at their communities. Special emphasis was made on  women subjects, as women are traditionally responsible for the family primary health care. Many plant species  (261 species of which 253 in the NWB, and 120 in the Gaza Strip, belonging to 84 families and 226 genera), are still in use in traditional medicine in the Palestinian communities, for treating various human diseases. The most  representative families are: Leguminosae (21 genera, 22 species), Compositae (18 genera, 20 species), and  Rosaceaea (16 genera, 19 species). The  following plants were the  most commonly used  medicinal plants in the NWB and Gaza on the basis of the total number of informants who mentioned the plant for any medicinal uses: Matricaia aurea,  Salvia fruticosa,  Allium sativum,  Anisum