The conversation with Jamal, a resident of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, was fraught with emotion — long periods of silence punctured by weeping. His 11-year-old daughter, Rima, was diagnosed several months ago with leukemia, and he fought for weeks with the Gaza health authorities to get permission to take her out of the Gaza Strip for life-saving treatment in Israel.
“When we got there, her situation was almost hopeless. They said she could not be saved,” he told Al-Monitor, asking that only his first name be used. Initially, he said, the doctors considered sending her home, but eventually Rima underwent a bone marrow transplant and her situation improved, though she was still not out of the woods. In November, she was released from the hospital to return to her home in Gaza. Once every two weeks she has to go back to the Israeli hospital for checkups and monitoring.
But the drive from Gaza to Tel Aviv is an expense very few in Gaza can afford. A taxi to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem from the Erez crossing on the Gaza-Israel border can cost as much as 500 shekels ($133). It's a fortune in the besieged enclave, where many inhabitants are unemployed and rely on handouts from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Were it not for a group of Israeli volunteers who turn up every morning at the Gaza border crossings into Israel (and at Israeli military roadblocks throughout the West Bank), these seriously ill Palestinians would probably not get the life-saving care they need.
Road to Recovery is an Israeli nonprofit that takes Palestinians from the crossings and roadblocks to hospitals. It was founded by Yuval Roth, whose brother Ehud was kidnapped and murdered by Palestinians from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades while he was serving in the military reserves in 1993. Another volunteer who organizes volunteer drivers is Buma Inbar, whose son Yotam, a Golani Brigade fighter, was killed in Lebanon in 1995. Buma has since taken on the task of driving Palestinians who essentially have no other way to get to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
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