Just a few pictures - we couldn’t help but share our joy with you. These are pictures of Malak walking. She is doing great, improving every day. Last week she returned home for the first time in three months, in a wheel chair. This week she went home again, but on crutches. The doctors are very pleased with her recovery: she can now stand and walk on her leg. She still has bolts in her leg, which will be extracted after about a month. When she is walking again and can be released from hospital, the doctors there will start to plan the next stage of the treatment, which will involve treatment for her burns. Terrible scars cover her body and part of her face, however this treatment was less urgent than saving her leg.

The joy of helping this girl constantly recedes as new requests from Palestinian families pour in. Many of these need similar help in getting to an Israeli hospital, and support for the high cost of treatment there. In the last week we received requests to help three babies who need bone marrow transplants: a procedure that cannot be performed in Palestinian hospitals. For one of these babies it is now too late. Irreversible damage has been done to his brain, so they cannot save him even if money were to be found.

We know it is not possible to help everyone, but these newborn babies seem to be the ultimate victims. Their only crime is being born on the wrong side of the border; ten minutes from hospitals where they could be saved. If any of you who read this report can suggest ideas about how to address this situation, we welcome your experience and thoughts. If the Palestinians had health insurance, if their hospitals were upgraded, if the borders were open... If, if, if - so many political and moral questions come to mind, but the bottom line is that some people who could be treated and saved will die or suffer because we couldn’t find a way to struggle effectively against the system. I am sorry if I burden you with these thoughts, but the facts are overwhelming.

Do you know that in the Oslo agreements, buoyed by the promise of help from abroad, the Palestinian Authority took responsibility for the health of the Palestinians? True, some of the allotted funding was lost due to corruption in the Palestinian Authority. However, decades of Israeli rule had left the health system in such bad shape that even a much higher level of funding would have been insufficient to build a proper medical infrastructure.

Do you know that the Israeli occupying forces claim on the one hand that they allow free passage for “humanitarian cases”, but in reality allow the army to prevent all but a small number of people to cross through the checkpoints?

Do you know that even if a Palestinian is able to pass through the checkpoints and be accepted at an Israeli hospital, the lack of insurance and prohibitively high fees make this virtually impossible?

Treatment Day

On Saturday April 24, we sent a medical team for the fifth time to the village of Media, to administer treatment and medicines to about one hundred village residents. The first patient was not from Media at all, but from the village of Beit Liqya, which is along the way. She was waiting in the ditch dug by the army to block the entrance road to her village. She needed to see an orthopedic doctor for a shoulder condition. Although Beit Liqya receives visits by general practitioners, no specialists ever arrive there. An orthopedic doctor on our team met her there, out in the open, under the eyes of the soldiers at their hilltop outpost.

It is not hard to find doctors and nurses to volunteer. As on the previous visit, the team was made up of both Jewish and Arab medical staff, all of whom were very glad to contribute their time and join our efforts.

Finally on her 2 feet

Her father carries her to the army checkpoint

documents being checked by a soldier

through the checkpoint, on the way to the hospital

The children's hospital at Tel HaShomer

In physiotherapy