`An island of sanity'
They are required to obtain entry permits, to be at the bedside of their sick
children, and arrive at the checkpoints without any personal effects to
shorten the wait there. A day in the hospital with Palestinian parents from
Gaza.
By Joseph Algazy
Haaretz, January 2004
"I visited Tel Hashomer Hospital on Friday. As usual, most of the work
was carried out in the intensive care unit, to which I brought cooked food
and non-perishables (tea, coffee, sugar). The telephone cards were
grabbed up, and even though I had brought a sufficient quantity, none
were left for the other departments. All the adults in all the departments
received food. I brought disposable diapers in two sizes - for newborn
infants and for 2- year-olds."
This was the report that volunteer Nava Harnam made to her colleagues
about her most recent visit to Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer. For
more than a year now, she has been part of a group of volunteers that has
been regularly helping to care for Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip
and the West Bank who are hospitalized there, and to assist the parents
who are looking after them. Physicians for Human Rights has taken the
entire project under its organizational - and material - wing.
"In October 2002, I got a phone call from Widah al-Khatib, a Palestinian
resident of Beit Iba, a small village west of Nablus. He told me that the
parents of a 2-week-old infant from his village, Shihab Ishtawi, who was
born with a heart defect and was hospitalized at Tel Hashomer, were
crying for help," relates the coordinator of the volunteer group, Bilha
Golan, describing how it was conceived and how it works. "When I met
them the next day they were very worried about the baby's condition, and
because they had left three small children behind in the village. To my
astonishment, I discovered that for several days they had not eaten
properly, had not bathed and had not changed clothes. Later I found out
that other parents of Palestinian children from Gaza and the West Bank
who are also inpatients at the hospital live in the same conditions."
Golan decided to relate her experiences at the hospital to the public via the
Internet communications network of the Actleft human rights organization,
and called upon people to volunteer to help the families of the hospitalized
children. In this way a group was organized, which works mostly in the
intensive care, oncology, thoracic and cardiac surgery and rehabilitation
units at Tel Hashomer. It is now comprised of about 12 people - women
and men, Jews and Arabs.
One of them, T.G., a conscripted soldier, came to visit Shihab Ishtawi at
the hospital every day. Often he enlisted buddies from his unit to his aid.
"After a few days, the mother had to go home to take care of the rest of
her children," says Golan. "The father, Ka'ed Ishtawi, remained at [the
child's] side. From him we learned about the obstacles encountered by
family members who care for a Palestinian child hospitalized in Israel. He
praised the hospital, but complained of the difficulties he encounters on
the way to it.
"Equipped with a hospitalization certificate from a hospital, a sick child's
father, mother, grandfather or grandmother applies to the Israeli-
Palestinian liaison committee and asks for an entry permit into Israel. After
a few days they get the permit, but it is valid for only one day - from
morning till evening. It can happen that the application is rejected `for
security reasons.'"
According to Golan, a resident of Moshav Beit Shearim and a public
health nurse in Zarzir in the north, the Ishtawis came to the hospital
without any personal effects in order to make the passage through the
checkpoints easier for them
selves and to spare detailed searches of their things and the consequent
delay. At the entrance to the hospital, the parents deposit their identity
cards. As they usually have to stay there - with the staff's knowledge - for
days or weeks, they avoid leaving the hospital complex so as not to risk
arrest as illegal sojourners.
NIS 20 in their pockets
"At the hospital, close to where their dear ones are patients, the
Palestinians are protected, but the moment they leave, they are
vulnerable," says Golan. Thus, for example, Ka'ed Ishtawi was caught
outside the hospital when he went to get some food for himself and was
arrested by security personnel who took him to the Ramat Gan police.
With the intervention of the volunteers, who explained his situation, he
was released.
During the recent Ramadan month of fasting, Ishtawi went home, but then
the baby's condition worsened and he was called back by the doctors. He
was delayed at roadblocks, and only after Golan contacted the Civil
Administration was he able to get to the hospital and be at his son's
bedside.
In the end, however, despite all the doctors' efforts, his son died. "The fact
that their baby died was unbearably difficult for his parents, but they
know that the doctors and nurses at the hospital gave their baby the best
medical care and did all they could to save him," says Al-Khatib.
On their way to Tel Hashomer, patients and their relatives who reside in
Gaza pass through the Erez checkpoint; West Bank residents go through
the Oranit roadblock. In either case, they are detained for anything from
half an hour to two hours and often much longer. In an attempt to shorten
the procedures there, most of them enter Israel without any personal
effects, even though they will remain at the hospital for days or even
weeks. Many of them, because of their economic distress, come into Israel
with barely NIS 20 in their pockets. The volunteers try to provide them
with what they need.
Harnam, a retired teacher who lives in Herzliya, relates that on her shift on
Friday two weeks ago, she brought along cooked food, disposable
diapers, bars of soap and telephone cards. Like others in the group, it is
she who pays for these items out of her own pocket. Her husband drives
her to the hospital.
Last Friday, one of the volunteers, Amal Shehadeh of Haifa, a master's
student of translation at Bar-Ilan University, came along with her aunt with
cooked food that her aunts had made, in her father's car. Sometimes
neighbors also volunteer to prepare the food that is delivered, and add
soap, sweets and toys for the sick children.
Last week the volunteer group took care of 18 children. The needs of the
parents who are tending them are great.
Apart from the contributions provided by the members of the group, it
also receives donations. In the explanatory page that is distributed to new
volunteers, it says that the group members "do not give out money,
cannot provide medications, treatment, entry permits into Israel,
sojourning permits or payments to the hospital."
Two ambulances, one body
Yousra Dib, who lives in the Al-Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza, made
arrangements by telephone to have an ambulance from Gaza bring her
grandson - 3-month-old Abed al-Rahman Dib, who had died the previous
day of cancer that had spread throughout his body - home from the
hospital. She found out that under the new security regulations, the Red
Crescent ambulance from Gaza would not be allowed to enter the hospital
grounds. When the vehicle arrived at the hospital gate, therefore, another
ambulance, from the hospital, transported her grandson's body to it.
According to Dib, the doctors had treated her grandson devotedly and
also told the family to bring his 4-year-old sister Nura to the hospital for
examination.
"They found a hole in the heart of my 2- year-old daughter Ranya, who
suffers from Down syndrome," explains Iman Irba'I of the Sheikh Radwan
neighborhood in Gaza. "She is the youngest of my eight children. My
husband is unemployed. After great efforts, the Palestinian Authority
agreed to pay for the surgery and for the girl's hospitalization in Israel. I'm
worried, but I'm confident that the child is getting the best medical care."
Golan and her colleagues stress that since the day it began, the group's
volunteer activity has been carried out with the agreement and full
cooperation of Tel Hashomer's management and the various units. As an
example of the facility's openness, Golan cited the case of Muhammad Kot,
9, from the environs of Nablus, who suffered from pernicious anemia and
urgently needed a bone marrow transplant. While the Palestinian
Authority paid for the costs of the hospitalization and care - about NIS
95,000 - the hospital underwrote the cost of the transplant itself - over
$50,000. The transplant was successful and Kot will receive follow-up care
at the hospital.
"Through the bone marrow transplant, the child received life," says Dr.
Amos Toren, head of the pediatric hemato-oncology and bone marrow
transplant unit at Tel Hashomer. "In recent years we have performed 5
bone marrow transplants on Palestinian children from the territories. The
medical team relates in the most natural way to this medical activity, and
the hospital management gives it full backing."
Touching encounters
In the pediatric intensive care department, the parents of the Palestinian
children have at their disposal a waiting room, a kitchenette and two small
bedrooms, one for men and one for women, where there are bunk beds.
Last Wednesday a Jewish man wearing a skullcap and his wife sat down
to rest in this waiting room. The man made efforts to engage the
Palestinians who were also sitting there in a conversation.
"Sometimes, we overcome the communications difficulties with the help of
people who know both languages, Arabic and Hebrew, and sometimes we
use English, and when there's no alternative, we use gestures like in a
silent movie," explains one of the Palestinian mothers.
"The attitude and the atmosphere in the department are really contagious.
Girls who are doing National Service help us willingly," relates volunteer
Rina Moss. "The illnesses of their children bring Israeli parents close to
the Palestinians. Thus, for example, not long ago a mother from central
Israel was standing in despair near the door to the intensive care unit
where her 10-year-old daughter was being treated for a brain hemorrhage.
The father of a Palestinian child who noticed her distress brought her
some hot tea that he made himself and started a conversation with her.
The two of them sat there, relating their troubles to each other and
comforting each other. It was a wonderful scene."
Moss also tells, however, of a certain group that distributes food only to
the parents of sick Jewish and Israeli Arab children, but not to Palestinians
from the territories. The Palestinians spare no praise and gratitude for the
doctors, the nurses and the volunteers. They are wary when they speak
about the difficulties at the roadblocks at the entrance to Israel and do not
say anything specific about the conditions of their life in the territories.
Indeed, to the direct question of whether they hate Israel and the Jews, a
young Palestinian woman replies: "We hate, but not everybody, not the
ones who treat us like human beings, for example, here at the hospital, but
those who make us suffer."
Says volunteer Shehadeh: "The people who come to the hospital and
witness the medical care that their dear ones are given suffer from an inner
conflict because of the gap between the reality in which they live in the
territories, and the reality that they encounter here at the hospital."
"The reality in the territories," adds Golan, "is familiar to me from the
weekly volunteer medical project in which I have participated. The
occupation creates a destructive reality, whereas here at the hospital, there
is an island of sanity."
