Update on Humanitarian Assistance for Palestinians

March 25 2003

by Michal Zak

Update on Malak Taiser

We would like to report on the wonderful progress being made by Malak. She is steadily recovering from her surgery, and yesterday she had a second smaller corrective operation and plastic surgery. Her recovery is not painless – even the regular changing of her bandages requires anesthesia. However the good news is that she is already standing on her foot, with new sneakers that light up every time she manages to step on it. Last week we even managed to bring Malak’s father, two brothers and a sister for a visit. It was the first time they had seen her since the operation, and their excitement at this was almost as huge as that brought about by their first ride in an elevator!

We now stand at a crossroads in our work. We are receiving further requests for help from West Bank families who require hospitalization. Since Palestinian hospitals are unable to treat severe or complicated cases, this means finding a hospital in Israel that is able and willing to take on the case. However, as we already know, the costs are high and we will have to decide whether we can take upon ourselves another such commitment.

Medical Treatment Days

We are planning another day. Requests came from two villages – one a Bedouin village near Jerusalem, and one a village near Midya, not far from Neve Shalom ~Wahat al Salam. It is relatively easy to find doctors and nurses who will join us for a day; it is harder to make preparations for the operation. Preparations include a visit to the location, in order to get to know the contact person and find out about the community and its needs. Such a visit is life-threatening since we do not know the people yet, and they do not know us. We hope to arrange such a treatment day in the next two weeks.

A special collection

We are collecting money from NSWAS families this week for food to be distributed for two villages near Nablus. $15 buys a sack of flour, and the Gush Shalom peace organization is organizing a convoy for the distribution. The residents of these two villages, like many others, are nearing starvation due to the closures and the inability of the villagers to travel to work.

Networking

In the last few months it seems that our modest project has grown more substantial and well-known. We are receiving requests for help from various organizations. Some examples may give a sense of this:

-We are serving as a liaison for an Italian organization donating sports clothes and shoes to a Gaza football team. They send the equipment to us and we deliver it to Gaza.

- We were contacted by a hospital in Britain seeking to donate used equipment to a Palestinian hospital contacted us to help them find a hospital.

-A Jewish Israeli charity collected many packages of used clothes that they wished to donate to Palestinians. Since the charity did not want to make it known that they are assisting Palestinians, they asked us to make the connection and handle the shipment.

-A well-known Jewish Israeli lawyer who defends administrative detainees was looking for a doctor who would be willing to go with her to the detention camp (there are over 1,000 prisoners held without trail in army prison camps, in tents, in the cold of winter) and provide an opinion on the medical condition of one of the prisoners, and she asked us for help in finding a doctor who would be willing (the military court would be persuaded more easily by the verdict of a Jewish doctor (but what can we expect from a military court?).

-A Jewish Arab organization, which specializes in printing educational materials on peace, for children, is also, like us, engaged in humanitarian aid since the Intifada begun, and they needed help with a burns patient. Our connections proved helpful.

These are some of the examples. There are also requests we had to turn down, and these are the hardest. We are all dreading what the Israeli government will do now that the entire world is busy with the war in Iraq. The fact that there are no spotlights on Sharon now, and the fact that heavy bombing is made to seem legitimate could prove a fatal combination for the Palestinians.