"For I Will Restore Health to You": A Palestinian Healthcare Initiative
By Omar Haramy, Director of Sabeel Jerusalem
For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord, because they have called you an outcast (Jeremiah 30:17, NRSV).
In 2018, Latin Patriarch (Emeritus) Michel Sabbah asked local Palestinian organizations to hold community meetings in the different parishes of West Bank cities and villages to listen to the concerns of the community. During the meetings in the West Bank, health care was identified as one of the major concerns of the Palestinian Christian community. People are concerned about the high cost of medical care and of the quality of existing health insurance systems. Countries around the world struggle to provide adequate health care due to the need to allocate necessary funds in the budget. For Palestinians under occupation, however, the challenge is greater.
Within the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the private sector offers health insurance as a complimentary service for other insurance services. Most health insurance policies from the private sector bring a loss to the insurance companies. As a result of this, most health insurance policies in the West Bank and Gaza are only accessible to large companies and organizations with a high number of staff. Most insurance policies in the occupied territories do not allow persons over 65 years, the age of retirement, to join existing health insurance policies. By contrast, Israel enjoys a superb universal health insurance system, which is available to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, but not West Bankers.
To solve this major concern of the Christian community, we must be creative and think outside of the box.
Sabeel, as a local ecumenical Palestinian Christian organization, proposed the concept of a joint-initiative health insurance policy in the West Bank/Gaza Strip. Based on our faith and in the power of unity and community, Sabeel began seeking creative solutions to the challenge of finding affordable and accessible health insurance for Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza. This would also cover Muslim employees of Christian organizations and their families, and it could also provide a model for the wider society.
In the past year, Sabeel contacted Christian-based organizations and local church leaders to nominate suitable members from their communities to help with the project. All 35 nominated individuals became steering committee members for the project. For a year, committee members have been meeting on a weekly basis and engaging in group learning about the intricacies of health insurance. As a result, to the recommendation of all, the steering committee came up with the idea of having all organizations and parishes apply jointly as a single group. The bigger the size of the group, the better services we would receive and for a better price. Utilizing the collective purchasing power of a large group allows the community to exert more pressure on insurance companies to comply with our demands.
The steering committee contacted all health insurance companies in the private sector, informed them of the project, and asked them to submit their offers. After a transparent procurement procedure, we have agreed on the company with the most competitive services. We found that with this large number of potential policyholders, we can obtain and make available affordable health insurance to this sector of society.
As of today, we have the major church leaders in Palestine, over 27 schools, 22 Christian organizations and 36 parishes partnering in our initiative. We are proud to announce that we have 4,000 Palestinian Christians who have joined the initiative. In addition, 50,000 Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Gaza now have the possibility to access a health insurance scheme regardless of their age, medical condition, or employment condition.
We would like to thank our longtime partner, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for providing Sabeel with the much appreciated and needed financial and moral support. The partnership of MCC enabled us to conduct the preliminary study and lay down the groundwork and for this project. The support of MCC also guarantees the sustainability of the project through supporting the work of the monitoring and development of the insurance policy.
The beautiful thing is that all the health insurance policies in the entire project were covered by the members of the initiative, without any outside funding, relying entirely on the their own resources. This model leads to the empowerment and development of an entire sector, rather than continued reliance on charity and outside support.
Friends of Sabeel North America is proud to be supportive of Sabeel in this initiative, which truly reflects a theology of liberation by using the model of the early church to address concrete local needs in the spirit of cooperation and caring, as well as justice and empowerment.
We are inspired by the manner in which the community came together, yet recognize also the fact that there remain those for whom even such a system remains out of reach. As the largest financial contributor to the work of Sabeel Jerusalem, FOSNA seek to establish—in consultation with Sabeel Jerusalem and the local Palestinian community—a means of assisting those who are unable to afford but would otherwise wish to join such a program.
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News & Announcements
FOSNA Executive Director Jonathan Kuttab recently returned from a month-long trip throughout Palestine. If you have been following our social media accounts you know that we have been posting regular updates on his travels. These reflections have been compiled and are now available at the link below:
In addition to meeting with Sabeel Jerusalem and promoting the Arabic and Hebrew editions of his book, Beyond the Two-State Solution (Free Download), Jonathan has been gathering the latest information about the current situation on the ground, so that the we in the FOSNA community might effectively and authentically serve the cause of justice for the people of Palestine.
As part of his travels, Jonathan was able to meet with both the Canadian ambassador to Israel in Tel-Aviv and the Canadian representative to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Read about it in the article below for The Electronic Intifada:
FOSNA invites you to join us in the following events and activities:
March 9: What about Hamas? (Hosted by the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine) Canada and the US officially call Hamas a 'terrorist" organization. And it is routinely described as blindly fundamentalist based on a presumed inherent anti-Semitism. But Hamas is a political party with a significant following in Palestinian society. No matter what you may think of them, any solution to the Israel/Palestine issue will need to include Hamas. It needs to be better understood.
March 11: "Is Sumud Sufficient?" Film Series: Blind Trust. (Hosted by the Middle East Focus Ministry of St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle) "Blind Trust" celebrates the life and work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Vamik Volkan, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee who has spent over four decades bringing enemy groups together in areas of conflict all over the world. This look into his pioneering fieldwork and peace-building missions in Europe, the Middle East, and the US sheds light on how large-group identity and shared trauma can both unite us and divide us for generations.
March 16: Holding Israel Accountable: Commemorative Webinar. (Hosted by The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice) Join a commemorative webinar marking the 19th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s stand in Gaza. How do we hold Israel accountable for decades of oppression, displacement, land theft, occupation and loss? What are the avenues for seeking peace with justice for Palestinians and Israelis? Five guests, representing many years of experience with this issue, will share their work and current perspectives.
Weekly
Kumi Now! Connecting activists around the world every Tuesday with the organizations working on the ground in Palestine and Israel to bring a just and lasting peace based on international law and nonviolence.
Week 10: Women in Peacebuilding. In other weeks of the year we document the hardships that women have had to bear due to the occupation. However, as the world celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8, we want to highlight the roles that women play in nonviolent resistance and the growing opportunities available to them in spite of the occupation. Here’s what you need to know and what you can do so that together we can rise up.
Sabeel Prayer Service. Join Sabeel every Thursday (6pm Jerusalem) for online Bible Study, discussion, and prayer. Examine scripture in light of the ongoing realities confronting the Palestinian Church and the pursuit of Palestinian liberation.
Wave of Prayer. Subscribe to receive Sabeel's Wave of Prayer, enabling friends of Sabeel around the world to pray over issues of critical concern to the Holy Land on a weekly basis.