Dateline ACT

Palestine Territories

"People are happy to have us"

Christian accompaniers support transport of West bank patients to hospital

Jerusalem, July 23, 2002
by Rainer Lang and Callie Long

"Things went surprisingly smoothly today," says Eske Sindby of the Christian Accompaniers Team. The young Dane is referring to his early morning trip from East Jerusalem to Hebron in the West Bank and back, to bring two young Palestinian girls and a woman to the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) run by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) – a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.

All three are in need of dialysis - three times a week - and the only place where they can receive this treatment is at AVH. The only way they can get to the hospital is if someone picks them up and brings them to the Mount of Olives where the hospital looks out over Jerusalem - a task that has kept Sindby and another Dane, Tavs Qvist busy during the last five months of their stay in the city.

The work of the Christian Accompaniers Team is a forerunner to the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme (EAPPI) of one of the founding members of ACT, the World Council of Churches. Essentially the programme will serve to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions to end the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

When Eske Sindby says things have gone smoothly, he speaks from experience, having done the Jerusalem-Hebron run many times. As a foreigner, he’s generally had it easier in gaining access to the villages and towns of the West bank that have virtually become prisons to the thousands of Palestinians who live here. Often, the decision as to who passes through any of the hundreds of military checkpoints and who does not is arbitrary and one made by the soldiers who man these checkpoints.

Typically, the soldier raises his right hand. The people – men, women and children - are lining up to exit Jericho at the checkpoint to the entrance to the town, and stop immediately. The young soldier then gives a signal that the first person in line can step forward – and so, one by one for the most part, people approach the soldiers. This is a daily routine for Palestinians traveling on foot across the checkpoints whenever the curfews are lifted in their towns and villages. For the Palestinian staff of AVH, the checkpoints are a nightmare, as was the case two days earlier when the staff member who needed to collect patients for dialysis treatment was simply not allowed through.

Although foreign passport holder’s movements are not quite as restricted, they too run the gauntlet of the checkpoints, sometimes having to wait hours to cross, or being turned away – a devastating blow to someone like Sindby who knows that there are patients needing medical care at AVH that he simply cannot get to when this happens.

The fears and frustrations of Palestinians are enormous in this environment of constant uncertainty, according to Sindby and Qvist, as they depend on the goodwill of the soldiers. They are two of several young people who make up the ecumenical accompaniment team and their work finishes at the end of July when they both return to their medical studies in Denmark. Both are extremely grateful to have been given this opportunity to help people the way they have and also bear witness to the social and economic impact the occupation is having on the Palestinian Territories.

Jericho, as with the other towns in the West Bank, is an example of a town whose economy is being strangled, in spite of it being the one town that has not had a curfew imposed on it. There is hardly any traffic, except for the odd taxis that are transporting people from the checkpoint into town or vice versa. Most of the shops are simply shut up, as are the restaurants. A brand new hotel has also been closed. With tourists being forbidden to enter the town, Jericho has about it the air of a ghost town.

Qvist says that the feeling of "melancholy" that seems so pervasive reflects the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Life here for many people becomes a serious of grotesque encounters", he says, describing his feelings about the recent escalation of violence in this troubled part of the world. There is the incident when an Israeli soldier injured two AVH patients, a mother and her ten-year old daughter, when they were both shot in the legs. There is the story of the doctor in Nablus whose newborn baby died after living only six hours – because an ambulance was not allowed through the checkpoint.

"And although so many sad things happen", Qvist says, he is often reassured by the people he works with and has accompanied over the last few months, "we are happy to have you here." And then he adds, "I might come back one day and work here as a doctor."