“Occupation”- Definition: job, profession, line of work,
career, calling, walk of life.
So what work has Israel been doing in connection with the
Palestinian Arabs since my last
article on the subject earlier in the year?
In May, doctors at Schneider’s children hospital transplanted
a kidney into a 10-year-old Palestinian Arab boy. The kidney came from
3-year-old Israeli Noam Naor who died in a tragic fall and his parents decided
to donate his organs to save the life of others. Following the operation, Noam's
mother said, "To see Yakub today is very exciting. I wish him only
health, a full and speedy recovery.” In the same month, Hadassah doctors
performed an
extremely rare operation to deliver the conjoined (“Siamese”) twins of
a Palestinian Arab mother. The babies weighed 4.9 pounds and shared a heart.
The Israeli charity Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) performs
more life-saving surgery on Palestinian Arab infants than from any other part
of the world. In August, of the 22
children at SACH’s base in the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, seven
were from the Palestinian Authority.
SACH works with Christian organization Shevet Achim which funds and transports
PA and Gaza children requiring heart surgery to Israeli hospitals such
as the Wolfson and to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.
In July, IDF paramedics and Magen David Adom joined together
with the PA police and the PA Red Crescent to save
a Palestinian Arab who was hit by a car when riding his donkey near
Nablus (Shechem). MDA transported him
to an Israeli hospital for further treatment.
And coming right up-to-date, in December an IDF emergency medical team
rescued a 10-year-old
Palestinian Arab boy whose head was cut open following a car accident
and airlifted him to hospital. The team
also treated the boy’s mother, who suffered from shock after the accident.
In 2013, truck drivers from Israel were fully
occupied making 64,783 deliveries of food, medicines, finished goods
and building materials (some 1.3 million tons) into Gaza. Unfortunately for Hamas, their leader Ismail
Haniyeh was caught feeding orphans in Gaza with
“boycotted” Israeli yogurts.
Meanwhile in July sixty Gaza farmers attended an agricultural
seminar in northern Israel.
They completed workshops on cultivation methods, planting schedules,
soil preparation, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. In the following
video, dozens of Gaza farmers are shown at an Israeli exhibition earlier in the
year learning about innovative Israeli agricultural methods and new fruits and
vegetables developed in Israel.
When the December storm struck, Israel intervened in Hamas’ quarrel
with the PA by rushing in 1.2
million liters of diesel into Gaza to restart its power station. And when the snow trapped a
Palestinian Authority ambulance carrying a very sick woman, Israeli
soldiers from the Kfir Brigade were there to help it back on the road.
The PA shuns normalisation
of relations with Israel, but the 20,000
Palestinian Arabs working for Israelis in Judea and Samaria (25 percent
more than in 2012) illustrate that the reality is quite different. In August we also read about the hundreds
of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs who have become business partners and
colleagues in joint start-ups. For example Israeli startup Naked Sea Salt partners
with a Palestinian Arab company to use eco-friendly methods to harvest
salt from the Dead Sea. And the massive
project involving Israel,
Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority will construct a pipeline from the Red
Sea to the Dead Sea to produce millions of cubic meters of drinking
water for the region, hydroelectric power and replenish the critically
dwindling Dead Sea. Even Al Jazeera
broadcast the news of the joint project.
Work by Israel for the PA includes support for a new industrial park,
near Bethlehem (so much for the “apartheid wall”!). Further construction projects, like that of
Israeli water treatment company Mapal Green Energy, are recycling
domestic sewage and water for Palestinian Arab villages. This could
explain why the PA’s many leisure parks managed to keep their
swimming pools full throughout the summer.
Despite the PA being constantly occupied
with incitement, there are still occasional opportunities for
optimism. In September, five Arab
schools in East Jerusalem decided to switch
from the Palestinian to the Israeli curriculum so that their students
could study for the Israeli bagrut (matriculation exam). Then as Moslems celebrated the end of the
Moslem holy month of Ramadan, approximately one
million Palestinian Arabs received permits to enter
Israel as tourists – 200,000
more than last year. And we may
see more videos of Israelis (hopefully not in IDF uniform) and Palestinian
Arabs dancing
together.
Before anyone says that this is all new, here
is a selection of Israel's "occupational therapy" from
previous years. And here,
and here
and here.
Finally, future prospects for peace lie with the next
generation. We can only hope that
sufficient children remain untouched by PA hate education
to achieve this. Some will have played in mixed teams with
Israeli children in the May 2013 Mini Soccer World Cup at Israel’s
Kiryat Gat stadium. It was (UK)
Liverpool’s soccer manager Bill
Shankly who said, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and
death… I can assure you, it is much, much more important than that.”
More good news will occupy this space in 2014.
Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing
positive news stories about Israel.
For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com
