Hospital Grounds

May 27, 2007 - 12:30 PM by Stephanie

Whenever I’ve spent time in Israel’s hospital wards, I’ve been surprised at the number of patients from Gaza & its refugee camps sharing the wards and hospital rooms.

I have mostly met parents whose children are in long-term pediatric oncology. The kids are usually getting radical treatments and the parents are with them day in and out sometimes for months at a stretch.

In April I met a father from Gaza whose 3-year-old was in oncology. We chatted about our children and I told him what I do for a living. He bemoaned the current Gaza infighting and asked for advice in trying to secure entrance for himself and his family of 9 to Canada. We chatted, parted ways and a week later ran into each other by chance at the Tel Aviv supermarket close to the hospital. The whole “casualness” of it all was almost surreal.

The Jerusalem Post’s Larry Defner recently wrote an apt article on hospitals as border-free meeting grounds for Arab & Israeli doctors working together in a seemingly seamless fashion; an example to us all for how things could be were we to put grievances aside.

A hospital, especially one in Galilee, the Negev or Jerusalem, is the only venue in this country where a foreigner who knew nothing about the Israeli-Arab conflict might spend time, then come away thinking that Israel is a country where a Jewish majority lives alongside a sizable Arab minority – and there is no problem between them.

The article here.

I’m thinking a Grey’s Anatomy episode.

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