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6 HASHALOM May
2017
May 2017
HASHALOM
7
Imagine this. You have a child with leukaemia and you live in the
Gaza Strip. Israel is right next door and they will have a cure: but
Gaza is ‘enemy territory’. Imagine finding three permits to get to
Israel.
Imagine having to stay with your child for up to six months while
they receive the treatment, away from family and friends and not
being able to leave the hospital campus for “security reasons”.
Imagine you’re facing a doctor who can only advise you in
Hebrew or English – neither of which you can speak.
Hadassah Hospital’s Ein Kerem campus on the western edge of
Jerusalem is bursting at the seams, trying to meet the medical
needs of 2017 based on 2007 planning.
Yet at Hadassah, and many other hospitals in Israel, children
from both the occupied West Bank and Gaza are treated with
the best care available.
As I walked through Hadassah’s paediatric departments, I saw
people spilling out of everywhere – children, parents, medicos,
nurses, carers and translators. Headscarves and flowing dresses
sit alongside the sombre garb of Ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Treatment may not be a quick fix, and during this time Jewish
and Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians from the West
Bank and Gaza are thrown together for the first time.
Parents share their concerns with other parents. They all want their
children to get well. In a nutshell, that’s it.
Professor Michael Weintraub, Head of the Department of Paediatric
Haemato-Oncology at Hadassah, sees all of this.
“I return home every day after constant problems and the resultant
pressures and feel all the better for having done it.”
Weintraub is an important advocate for the capacity of medicine
to provide a path to better understanding between Israelis and
Palestinians. A good man.
The walls between the occupied territories and Israel are both
physical and psychological. But with the best of goodwill, it happens.
We went to the infamous Erez checkpoint, the northern crossing
between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The Palestinian kids and their carers – mothers, grandmothers and
occasionally fathers – emerge from the Israeli border control after
already enduring a journey across Gaza, and then passing through
Hamas border control, and then Palestinian Authority control, before
passing through to Israel.
And then a wonderful thing happens. They meet volunteers from the
Road To Recovery.
It was established 10 years ago by a remarkable man, Yuval Roth.
In 1993, his brother Udi was murdered by Hamas terrorists. Later he
met a Palestinian who had suffered a similar loss. Yuval realised they
were both humans at heart and even though his brother had been
killed, “the terrorists hadn’t been able to kill my heart or my soul”.
Each morning he joins a group of Israeli volunteers at one of three
checkpoints to the West Bank and Gaza. These remarkable people,
1000 strong, use their own cars to make about 100 trips daily to the
key hospitals able to provide pediatric care.
It was at Erez that we met some of these volunteers. It was early
and they had already been on the road for some time to get to the
checkpoint. They had few details and had to wait patiently until they
sighted a “possibility” –perhaps a six-year-old with his grandmother.
The name was checked. They had connected.
Vivian Silver was one such volunteer. Why does she do it? “Just as
long as you feel you’ve been doing good, it doesn’t matter how small
the action might seem.”
Back in the hospitals we hear more. Health workers at all levels
dissociate themselves from the conflict which rules the airwaves in
this region. They just get on with their jobs. They shut out the noise.
They are more interested in practising their skills and providing hope.
Yes, running these programs costs money. Important funding comes
from the Palestinian Authority, although it’s never fully predictable.
But at the hospitals themselves, no one desperately in need of help
will be turned away.
Project Rozana is an important part of the money chain. We fill
in where we see gaps. Putting petrol in the cars of some of the
volunteers. Making sure important connections are occurring
between health authorities on both sides of the wall and between
east Jerusalem and Israel.
Beyond making direct financial contributions to this wonderful story,
Rozana is reaching out in other areas of support. More translators
are needed in the hospitals to make sure the right decisions are
being made and are understood.
Palestinian surgeons and other medical staff are nowbeing “upskilled”
in Israeli hospitals so they can bring this new knowledge back to their
own people. Not only that, they develop professional relationships
for the future. Physicians in the occupied Territories are now getting
second opinions on medical problems via WhatsApp from their
Israeli counterparts. Part of this funding comes from Rozana.
Rozana at its core is all about empowerment. We are not out to make
a point. We are just dealing with people and delivering outcomes.
We went to the West Bank to see whether these programs really
work. Ramallah is the bustling de facto heart of the Palestinian
Authority and lies only 10 kilometres from Jerusalem. But it could be
a world away.
It had been arranged that we meet three families who had benefited
from the medical treatment. An interpreter had been arranged but
was hardly needed. The children were happy and healthy and their
parent or parents were relieved and thankful.
Their journeys to Israel had started with fear and apprehension – fear
as to their children’s future wellbeing and apprehension as to how
the Israelis would treat them.
But the love of their children overcame their fear and their children’s
recovery meant that their enemies became their helpers, if not quite
their friends. They were effusive when they spoke about the Road
to Recovery volunteers. They had gone back to their communities
to tell different stories than the ones they had been taught about
Israelis.
They had spent enough time in the wards to discover they spoke
a common language – the language of parenting, the language of
family, the language of love and life.
Imagine the mountainous costs, thousands of dollars to save your
child, but your husband, the only family breadwinner, earns just $400
per month as a part-time construction worker. You can’t afford a taxi
from the checkpoint to the hospital.
And just imagine that no one really cared about any of these scenarios.
Now imagine that someone, somewhere, did care. And then did
something about it. That someone was Melburnian Ron Finkel.
Finkel set up Project Rozana, a multi-faith initiative that raises funds
ISRAEL
ISRAEL
Occupational hazards: sick kids cross
Israel border for medical care
By: Gareth Andrews- The Sydney Morning Herald
A Palestinian mother with her baby at Israel’s Sheba hospital. Photo: Lucy Lyon
Palestinian mother with her child being treated at an Israeli
hospital through Project Rozana. Photo: Lucy Lyon
The writer, Project Rozana board member Gareth Andrews, at the Gaza border.
Photo: Michael Krape
Israeli Road to Recovery volunteers help guide Palestinian parents and their children
through the hospital process. Vivian Silver, who drives families to and from hospital,
is in the red top. Photo: Lucy Lyon
to treat seriously ill Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza
at Israeli hospitals. I had come with other directors of Project Rozana
to see the program in action.