The Rambam Medical Center in Haifa has just issued a press release about a little Palestinian girl called Aya Aiid Abo-Mois.
Aya travels every day from a village near Jenin in the Palestinian Authority-run West Bank.
At 5.am every morning she and her mother are picked up by Jewish volunteers from an organisation called Derech HaChlama (The Road to Recovery). They operate regularly between the West Bank and Israeli hospitals.
Aya is just two and her sister died, aged one, of kidney failure. Now Aya also has kidney failure and requires dialysis every day.
It’s a struggle for her mother and traumatic for Aya but her mother Sahir is determined that her daughter survive.
The report relates:
Israeli Arabs and Jews, meet and speak freely about their fears and hardships and even discuss geo-political issues of the day. Sahir has developed a close kinship with the people she met at the hospital and says that there is a feeling of cooperation. She says, “I am especially grateful to ‘Derech Hachlama,’ and without their help I don’t know how we could provide my daughter with the superior life-saving treatment that she needs.”
So how did Derech HaChlama come about?
“Derech Hachlama” was founded in 2006. It began when a Palestinian member from the “Forum of Bereaved Families” asked his friend, an Israeli member of the forum, to help him with travel to Rambam. The Israeli, Yuval Roth, lost his brother 15 years ago; (his brother was murdered during his reserve duty service when he hitched a ride with Hamas terrorists disguised as religious Jews). Yuval didn’t hesitate to offer assistance to his friend and very quickly, with the aid of other members, a network of approximately 60 patients’ using the organization’s travel services developed. “The demand is great for travel from Palestinian villages to Israeli hospitals, and at least two new patients join our service every month,” states Yuval.
Sometimes, amidst the darkness of hatred and prejudice a bright light shines.