By Aryeh Savir
Rambam Health Care Campus provides medical care to hundreds of patients from Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA) year round. 650 children and teenagers in were treated in the hospital throughout 2013. Currently, hospitalized patients include 3 adults and 8 children from Gaza, and 3 adults and 2 children from the PA. In addition, this Haifa hospital has 7 patients from the PA being treated in the outpatient clinics. Additional patients from Gaza area are scheduled for treatments later this week. These young patients are further accompanied by relatives.
Medical cooperation between Israel and the PA continues despite the shooting. According to Yazid Falah, the coordinator for Palestinian patients coming to Rambam, “Despite the security situation, and despite the fact that both sides are fighting, all continues as usual in the realm of medical cooperation,” explains Falah, “Even in times of war we continue to receive patients and give them the care they need-children and adults.”
While the medical routine is maintained, the current situation cannot be avoided and there is a feeling of tension in the air, the hospital reports. Falah is in close contact with the Arab patients. He shares that they feel trapped in an impossible situation. “On the one hand they are in Israel and see the consequences of the actions of Hamas and how people get hurt on this side of the border. On the other hand, their families in Gaza are under attack by the IDF and they fear for the lives of their loved ones,” says Falah, “there are those who have told me they are ashamed of what Gaza is doing, and others say they are afraid of how people will talk and look at them here in the hospital. Others have said they are afraid to return to Gaza. Others yet just don’t know what to think. Some have made contact with their families and learned of property damage and casualties near their homes. Those people have a life there and see the kind of life people have here. At the end of the day, they simply want to live in peace, but it is clear to them that the situation has changed. They believe the situation will only to get worse “.
Despite the complications, the human factor remains the winner. The hospital has become a second home to these patients. Israelis and Palestinians literally live together due to the long hospitalizations, as is the case in all Israeli hospitals. Parents and children share rooms, activities, treatments, and begin to develop solid relationships.
“When the hostilities escalated, the Palestinian patients feared a cold reception,” says Falah, “we explained that would never happen in an Israeli hospital. Here you see people and not nationalities. Many times, Israeli patients reach out to their Palestinian “neighbors” to help them feel more comfortable and to encourage them. Eventually, all are in the same boat.”
Tazpit News Agency
I’m sorry to tell u there is nothing to be proud of here. You dont help hour enemy especialy in war time so it can come back to kill u.
If they had any appreciation for all this maybe we could discuss it but they don’t value life like we do at all so no we’re not in the same boat !!
My response to the above article is that the author & the readers should please read the following from Dr. Eldad, M.D., Physician at Hadassah Hospital in Israel:
An example of why it is so hard for Americans who cherish life to understand some of the Arab minds.
By Dr. Arieh Eldad an M.D. at Hadassah Hospital in Israel
I was instrumental in establishing the “Israeli National Skin Bank”, which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations.
This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the Chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her.
Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of something. We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was
successfully treated by my friend and colleague, Prof. Lior Rosenberg and
discharged to return to Gaza.
She was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in
Beersheva. One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt.
She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life.
It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her.
This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of
Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization and barbarism.
I have never written before asking everyone to please forward onwards so that as many as possible can understand radical Islam and what awaits the world if it is not stopped.
Dr Arieh Eldad