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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 22.12.2004 |
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| FEATURE: Israeli Wall Hinders Access to Hospital's Unique Services |
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LWF-run Augusta Victoria Hospital is a Link between Israelis and Palestinians
JERUSALEM/GENEVA, 22 December 2004 (LWI) - Dr Tawfiq Nasser stands high up on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem and points to the distant landscape below. He indicates the long wall circling Jerusalem and extending far into northern Israel and west Jordan. From up here, from the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH), where Nasser is Chief Executive Officer, the mighty wall looks almost harmless. Like a ribbon it winds through the hilly landscape, sometimes clearly visible, sometimes partly hidden. Yet Nasser knows firsthand how dangerous this wall is. He lives on the other side of it, and whenever conflict breaks out or the Israeli army closes the checkpoint for other reasons, Nasser is cut off from home. That is why he always has a small bag with spare clothes in his office.
But he is not the only one affected by the construction of the separation wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The entire hospital’s existence is at stake, he says. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has been running the AVH since 1950. The health institution is one of the projects of the LWF Department for World Service (DWS) program in Jerusalem. Around 75 percent of the AVH patients come from the West Bank. If the checkpoints are closed, they cannot reach the hospital. This is particularly serious if they are dialysis patients, as the hospital has the only dialysis center for children in the West Bank.
Eight-year-old Rafi Waits for a Kidney Transplant
Eight-year-old Rafi can no longer come to the hospital for his three-times-a-week dialysis, but has to stay there throughout. His place at the dialysis unit is decorated with many children’s drawings. Always smiling, Rafi has not given up hope. He is firmly convinced that he will soon get a kidney transplant and be able to live at home and attend school normally. But at the moment he suffers - he hardly ever sees his mother, father, sisters and brothers. Nazareth, is home, but it is too far away for a daily family visit. To make it worse, the “separation wall” has practically prevented free access.
“How can I heal people in view of such a terrible thing as the wall?” Nasser asks bitterly. But the doctor and musician, born in August 1964 in the very room which is now his office, is a good organizer, and one who never gives up hope. He is planning a community bus tour. The patients will be picked up daily and brought to the hospital through the only entrance in the wall. The AVH presence will also be strengthened through the use of mobile clinics in the Palestinian parts of the West Bank. It should be possible to fulfill the ambition of the hospital to be there for the poorest of the poor and, at the same time, to provide excellent services.
Making Modern Medical Care Available to All Patients
The AVH is a general hospital and offers medical care to all needy people regardless of their religion or origin. There is an increase in the number of patients seeking services that are not available in other hospitals in the West Bank. Besides pediatric dialysis, the hospital also specializes in ear, nose and throat surgery for children, gastroenterological treatment and pediatric neurology. In addition, it runs the only radiotherapy center for cancer patients in the West Bank. Nasser is proud to show the new modern radiation unit in the hospital basement, built with assistance from international partners.
And because he wants to make this new method of treatment available to as many people as possible, he is fighting on all fronts against the wall’s ongoing construction and other injustices. One example is Israel’s plan to impose an “employer’s tax” on the hospital, although the tax exemption status agreed in 1966 between the LWF and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was adopted by the state of Israel in 1967 after the Six-Day War. The costs of the tax are estimated at USD 350,000 annually, representing 13 percent of the hospital’s total operating costs. “If this is implemented, it would mean the end of the hospital financially,” Nasser cautions. “It would endanger the health provision for thousands of Palestinians.”
The AVH has a great symbolic status in the coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem, according to Tawfiq Nasser. “The hospital,” he says, “is a link between the two groups and we want to keep it that way.”*(757 words)
(Reported for LWI by Klaus Rieth, Stuttgart.)
*This article is part of the ongoing LWI Features on Healing under the LWF Tenth Assembly theme, “For the Healing of the World.” The Assembly was held 21-31 July 2003 in Winnipeg, Canada.
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