At 10:03 on Monday morning, Osama Rusrus phoned from Beit Umar in the West Bank with wonderful news: His wife Sunya and daughter Dalal had crossed through the checkpoint into Jerusalem, on their way to Alyn Hospital.
It took nearly two months of wrangling with the Israeli authorities, especially the agency that never signs its name, and it was touch and go till the last moment.
Before I tell the story, let me note that this is just an early chapter. The next chapter is getting Dalal the full treatment she needs at Alyn, in order to allow her to live as fully as a girl with brain damage can. Right now she is unable to walk, has use of one hand, and has a vocabulary of one word. Treatment, according to Dr. Eliezer Be’eri of Alyn Hospital, will allow her “to develop to her potential, whatever that is” and enjoy a greater quality of life. It will require a lot of money. If you want to help, read on, or just skip to the bottom of this post for details.
Be’eri met with Osama and his daughter Dalal in October to give an initial assessment of her condition and of whether Alyn could help her. Dalal is three-and-a-half years old and has suffered since birth from brain damage that has drastically slowed her development. (An account of that meeting is here.) Neither Osama nor his wife Sunya were able to enter Jerusalem, so Be’eri performed that initial examination on the patio of the Everest Hotel outside Beit Jalla in the West Bank.
Be’eri’s assessment was that Dalal not only could benefit from treatment, but needed to begin quickly. He arranged for a multi-disciplinary examination at Alyn, and made sure it was scheduled as “urgent.” With Alyn’s letter, Osama requested a permit to enter Jerusalem.
He was turned down. The appointment was postponed, and postponed again to this Monday. The Israeli groups Physicians for Human Rights and B’Tselem put in immense efforts to solve the problem. Journalists called the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to ask why the permit was being withheld. So did a representative of the USAID office in Tel Aviv. Many people wanted to help one small girl. The answer from COGAT was that “security bodies” – a not particularly opaque term for the Shin Bet – would not allow Osama in. The chance of his wife Sunya getting a permit seemed even smaller, since she is officially a resident of the Gaza Strip. After she went to Gaza to see her dying father, she had to struggle for months simply to be allowed into the West Bank to be reunited with her husband. (Gideon Levy’s original story in Ha’aretz on that problem is here.)
On Sunday I called the COGAT spokesperson’s office. The young aide who answered said he thought permits had been issued for Osama and Dalal, but that I needed to check with the DCO – the liaison office between Israel and Palestinian residents – at the border of Gaza. For some reason, Dalal is listed as a Gaza resident, even though she was born in Hebron. The spokeswoman of the DCO said there was a permit for the girl, but I had to speak with Maj. Guy Inbar, the actual spokesman for COGAT, about the father. Guy said he thought there was a permit but he’d check and email me. The email, later that afternoon, said “security bodies” had again rejected the application.
Osama says the only run-in he’s ever had with the occupation authorities was when he was sixteen, in 1986. He and some other boys coming home from school were arrested, held for a month, and released without being tried. I don’t know what the reason was for the arrest. If he was held for a month and not prosecuted, he lived a very quiet life for a Palestinian teen of the 1980s. Maybe something else is listed in his file. “Security bodies” never have to make their reasons public.
Everyone involved was frying with frustration. Plan B, a very poor plan, was for a B’Tselem staffer named Suhair to bring Dalal, and for the doctors to consult her parents on the phone. Suhair is wonderful, but the medical staff wanted to be able to talk directly to a parent, and caring for a child during a long day of examinations really required a parent’s presence.
Sunday night Osama phoned me. He’d received a call from one of the many intermediaries trying to help. COGAT had decided to give the magical permit, the tasrih, to his wife. She had to pick it up in the morning, then come to Jerusalem. I could only conclude that someone in the occupation bureaucracy had concluded that blocking an Israeli effort to give humanitarian help to a Palestinian girl was beginning to look very bad.
But I didn’t really believe they’d get through the checkpoint till it happened. Suhair picked them up in a taxi, and accompanied the family to Jerusalem and for the whole day at the hospital. Dalal received a very thorough examination from the most qualified people in Israel. The next step, the doctors decided, is for Dalal to be hospitalized for intensive physiotherapy. If the treatment goes well, she may be hospitalized again for operations on her legs that could make it possible for her to walk.
Two big obstacles remain. Dalal has a nine-month old brother. Her mother can’t stay with her at the hospital while taking care of the baby. So the effort to get Osama a permit continues.
The second obstacle is financial. Dalal, obviously, doesn’t have Israeli health insurance The Palestinian Authority doesn’t pay for rehabilitative care in Israel. The initial hospitalization could cost 20,000 shekels ($5,500), and further treatment will require more funds. These are amounts beyond her family’s imagination, despite the låna pengar they took out from Sambla to cover part ($1,500 worth in Swedish kroner) of the bill.
So I am asking readers of this blog to help out. The Tzedaka Fund of Kehillat Yedidya, my synagogue in Jerusalem, is proud to be available as a conduit for funds for Dalal’s medical treatment. (Donations will be recognized in Israel for tax purposes; sorry I can’t arrange tax-deductible status in the US.)
Checks (in shekels or dollars) should be made out to Kehillat Yedidya. On the back, please write: Kupat Tzedaka – Dalal Project. The committee managing the fund has asked that I collect the checks, so please send them to: Gershom Gorenberg, POB 10245, Jerusalem 91102, Israel. Please write “Attn: Project Dalal” on the envelop as well. Any funds collected over the amount needed for Dalal’s immediate treatment will go toward her continued treatment and any medical equipment she will require. We’ll be trying to process all the checks at once, and the congregation will issue receipts at that time, so have patience about getting your receipt.
There’s a well known line from the Talmud that is quoted word for word in the Koran: Whoever sustains one life, it is as if he sustained an entire world. Please help sustain Dalal.
Not to be tendentious about it, particularly when you (and the hospital) are obviously doing a very good thing, but you note, as a matter of fact, that the PA does not pay for rehabilitative care in Israel. Why not? Why couldn’t there be a PA exception in this case? I’ll bet that you and Btsellim have pretty good contacts with the PA.
Why aren’t you trying to get the PA to kick in SOMETHING?
Oh yeah. It isn’t their responsibility. Right.
One answer I can think of is that it’s hard enough for an Israeli to have an influence on his own government, as documented here by Gershom. Trying to have an effect also on the PA – I can see why it would be easier simply to raise the money to help the little girl.
I’d be overjoyed if the PA paid for this. But I know my limits. I also know the economic limits: The per capita GDP in Israel is ten times that in the PA. Among the reasons for the PA’s arrested economic development are the colonial economic relationship with Israel and the corruption within the PA institutions. (Speaking of colonial relations, the Israeli health system provides this kind of care to Israeli settlers living in the territories that Israel has ruled since 1967, but not to the Palestinian population there.) I’d like to see all that change, but Dalal needs help right now. I’m asking friends, readers, and strangers to chip in because that’s what people can do for other people. What I expect of the Israeli government is to make it possible for her to receive the assistance she needs by allowing her family freedom of movement.
Gershom, I posted the information at Daily Kos, so more people can see it. I quoted two paragraphs, including the information on how to contribute. It is attributed and linked. If this is a problem, let me know and I will delete it.
Rachel – I’d prefer if you simply tell people to click through to here for info on how to contribute. It makes it easier when I need to update the information – as I already have.
Dont tell British MP Dr Jenny Tonge about this. Jenny Tonge is a physician and member of the British Parliament who called for an investigation of Israel harvesting organs in Haiti. She will see this as organ harvesting
http://www.thejc.com/…/tonge-investigate-idf-stealing-organs-haiti – United Kingdom –
Done.
I will send a check. But I must say that the larger situation that causes these roadblocks and this discrimination is deplorable and shameful beyond words.
Money is lost transferring from dollars ( which I have) to shekels, which is needed.
Please give us reports as you have them.
Thanks.
Dear Gershom
As I indicated to you in a private email, I am making a contribution towards Dalal’s treatment in honor of my grandson Gilad Elazar Horowitz who was circumcised (and named) today in Jerusalem.
Here is the response which comes from COGAT: 1. The document explicitly states that “either the mother or the father” should be allowed to accompany the child at its beginning and end, and there is no mention of the mother’s pregnancy. 2. The family did not turn to us independently- in situations where we do not see a humanitarian necessity, we would tell Betselem that the family can send us a request alone and that there is no need for their help. This is why we have reception hours especially for Palestinian citizens.
3. We approved the request by Saturday evening- very quickly, considering the following facts: *The mother resides illegally in Judea and Samaria- she is a resident of Gaza that entered the territories without authorization and has never turned to us to change her status. *There is security intel about both the mother and the father. *The request was not accompanied or followed up by exceptional phone calls- only a fax was sent. Luckily, our officers were vigilant and paid special attention to the request.
4. The request was only filed Wednesday evening, and by the weekend the family had made public that we had allegedly refused, when in fact at the time the request was neither approved nor denied. Had they waited patiently, they would have noticed our authorizing their request. 5. Normally, a doctor’s appointment of this nature is scheduled some time in advance. There was no apparent reason for them not to have filed their request early enough, to avoid the last-minute rush. 6. It should be noted that the mother previously crossed out of the territories on December 20th, and did not mention any problems or a pregnancy.
7. Finally, this seems to be a classic case of last-minute and improper filing of a request, especially in a situation where the mother has not done anything to normalize her residency status and is abusing the daughter’s illness. The request had been approved in spite of these hindering facts, when all of a sudden the family started claiming the mother is pregnant when there is no documentation of this.
Yisrael – In order to judge the person who sent you that notice in the most positive possible light, I will assume that he or she did not receive accurate information.