From hope to despair: The anatomy of a call to the emergency services in the war in Gaza

This paper examines an emergency call involving a Palestinian 6-year-old Hind Rajab, the last survivor in a car trapped and attacked by an Israeli tank during the ongoing Gaza war. It focuses on the transition from hope that she might be rescued, to despair, a transition that appears to have been a shared experience between the child and the emergency call operator. Using conversation analysis, it examines the anatomy of this call, including the participants’ responsiveness to external circumstances, their loss of hope, and demonstrates that the interactional dynamics of the call reflected the participants’ management of their institutional roles and tasks whilst also handling the profound emotions emerging in such a critical emergency call. The analysis reveals an unusual example of empathic interaction, notably the call operator’s intense emotional involvement with the child. This represents ‘empathy in action’, which drove the sequential and interactional progress of the encounter.