Last week the PLO Central Council decided to end security co-operation with Israel. So I decided to retrieve from my newsletter archives just a few of the hundreds of examples of news articles showing Israeli cooperation with Palestinian Arabs. Here are some of the enormous benefits received in the past year that Palestinian Arabs will be missing out on, if their leaders end security co-operation and once again abandon their own people.
Medical
Without security cooperation, it would have
been extremely dangerous for the IDF medical personnel on routine patrol in
Hebron in November to
perform CPR to save an unconscious Palestinian Arab youth with no pulse,
due to having accidentally electrocuted himself. Or the other IDF medics to treat
20 Palestinian Arabs who were injured in April when their mini-bus
crashed into a car. Or to rescue
4 Palestinian Arabs, whose speeding vehicle flipped over and fell into
a wadi in March. And then to evacuate
the severely injured and a two-year-old child by helicopter to hospital. It is highly unlikely that Magen David Adom
and IDF paramedics would be on hand to resuscitate
a six-month-old Palestinian Arab baby after he suffered a heart attack
on the way to Jordan. No more scenes
of delight as on his parents’ faces at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem
hospital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQvH5Saw5ZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQvH5Saw5ZA
Without
security cooperation, how could doctors
at Haifa’s Rambam hospital in February deliver
twins to a Gaza woman with a severe blood clot disorder and then deliver
a baby to a Gaza mother in a critical condition due to Rh incompatibility and then
fix the baby’s congenital heart condition?
How could surgeons at the same hospital in September perform a
unique kidney transplant on a 14-year-old boy from Gaza? I’m sure that the wife of PA president
Mahmoud Abbas and the mother-in-law and granddaughter of Hamas leader Ismail
Haniya would have complained if their
operations in Israel last year had been cancelled due to lack of
security co-operation.
During
Operation Protective Edge, Israel demonstrated time after time that ordinary Gazans
are not its enemies. During the
fighting, the IDF set up a
field hospital including a delivery room at
the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Those that were prevented by Hamas from
travelling to Israel for treatment were evacuated
by Magen David Adom to Turkey. But
around 100 Gazans were brought for treatment to Israeli hospitals every
month.
Although her hometown Ashdod
was under constant missile attack from Gaza, Irena Nosel, pediatric ICU head
nurse for Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH), cared for critically
ill Gazan children at Israel’s Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. Whilst the three murdered Israeli teenagers
were still missing, SACH doctors saved
five Palestinian Arab children, plus four-year-old
Muath from Hebron who was born with the same congenital heart disease
that killed two of his brothers previously.
Not only did SACH save the brother of
Palestinian Arab anesthesiologist Wafiq
Othman, but they then trained
Wafiq, who subsequently returned home to co-ordinate the training of
Arab doctors.
Without security co-operation, how can Dr.
Yitz Glick, an orthodox Jew from Efrat in Judea, make his weekly
personal house calls to Wadi Nis, providing medical treatment free of
charge to Palestinian Arab patients? How
can the Efrat Emergency Medical Center that Dr Glick founded in 2000, continue
to treat PA residents? Will Israel
continue to comply with PA requests for medical equipment, such as screening tools for
diagnosing the Ebola virus among Arabs entering via Jordan into
PA-controlled towns? Will Jerusalem’s
Hadassah Medical Center physicians continue to perform complex cardiac surgeries
on
Palestinian Arab children and train Palestinian Arab physicians?
Without security co-operation, we will see
an end to the measurable
improvements that Israeli policy has made to Palestinian health and
welfare in terms of higher life expectancy, lower mortality (infant, maternal,
perinatal), better immunization coverage, nutrition etc. etc. etc. Facts that even the
Arab media has been publicizing.
Humanitarian
Aid
Without security co-operation, how will
Israel continue to ensure the weekly supply of thousands
of tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza?
Even during the summer conflict, the Israel Electric Company transferred
10
generators to hospitals in Gaza.
The PA will have to hope they can do without Israeli
help in clearing snow blocking roads to Ramallah, or dealing with
flooding in Tulkarem and in Gaza,
or help alleviating the subsequent water
crisis.
Economic
Support
Without security co-operation, how can
Israel continue to support
the construction and growth of the new PA city of Rawabi which is installing
Israeli wastewater treatment systems and planting JNF trees? Will Israel continue every year to fund
1200 Palestinian Arab farmers to study
in Israel and upgrade their facilities?
Do you expect Israel to facilitate the
establishment of new industry in Gaza as it did with the new
Coca Cola plant last year? If
you had any doubts, just see what happened to SodaStream
– called by its Palestinian Arab employees as “the greatest company” where “you
wouldn't get treated like this anywhere in the Arab world”. Despite the workers’ cries of “don’t
boycott us”, it closed down thanks to the PA and its crazy BDS
allies. Such a pity, as a survey
conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, funded by the
European Union, showed that Palestinian Arabs who work in Israel or for Israelis
in Judea and Samaria are paid more than double the wage of those employed by
the Palestinian Authority and triple those working in Gaza.
Good
relations
So goodbye to projects like the joint
team to promote community preparedness and emergency response. And the religious Jews of Beitar Illit will
probably stop visiting the nearby Palestinian
Arab town of Husan where they have been shopping and receiving services
from for years (to the benefit of both communities). And who would risk organizing the travel of
hundreds of Palestinian Arab kids to attend Shimon Peres’ Twinned
Peace Soccer Schools which build friendships between Jews and Arabs? Or
joint teams such as the wheelchair basketball
team, comprising disabled athletes aged 15 to 25 from the PA town of
Beit Jala and from Israel’s Ramat Gan.
Here are the links to two video clips of examples
from last year that show Palestinian children getting on extremely well with
IDF soldiers. You may be amazed to see them,
and you won’t see any more once the PA stops security co-operation with Israel.
What
the Arabs Say Themselves
You don’t have to take my word about any of
these facts. The Arab media praises Israel’s
treatment of its Palestinian Arab workers.
Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida commended Israeli employers for much higher wages, job
security and other benefits. In Judea
and Samaria 15,000 Palestinian Arabs work side by side with Israelis.
Finally, in a debate on the Al-Jazeera’s
Arabic service, the presenter and a guest question an Assad supporter as to why
the Syrian army, Hezbollah and other Islamic military groups cannot be more
humane like the Israeli army.
What the PA leadership really needs - is to see sense!
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
