Optometry Volunteers Complete Project in Bethlehem and Gaza Following Equipment Confiscation

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

Despite serious harassment by Israeli authorities at Ben-Gurion Airport and at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, a volunteer group of Oregon- and Washington state-based optometrists was able to provide free eye examinations to some 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank this spring. Two doctors of optometry, 12 student doctors from Pacific University College of Optometry in Forest Grove, Oregon, and three support workers completed a six-day volunteer project in the Bethlehem and Gaza City areas from May 3 through 8 despite having all of their equipment, medicine and 5,000 pairs of donated eyeglasses impounded at Ben Gurion Airport.

Dr. Dina Al-Sharif Hamideh, O.D., a Palestinian from Tulkarem on the West Bank who lives in Oregon, initiated the project through the volunteer optometry group Amigos, which began at Pacific University in 1975 for doctors wishing to provide services to the underprivileged. Amigos has done similar volunteer projects in Mexico, Central and South America, Vietnam and Russia.

A graduate of Pacific University, Hamideh got the idea of organizing a volunteer project to Palestine in 1990 while she was still a student. The idea came to fruition after a fund-raising campaign that started last year to pay for airfare, lodging and materials. The plan was to provide free eye examinations over a six-day period for up to 250 people per day in the densely populated areas of Bethlehem and Gaza City.

The Damerow Ford dealership in Beaverton, OR donated $5,000 and T-shirts for the volunteers. Airline tickets were provided at cost by Royal Travel in Beaverton, and the Amigos organization contributed $800 for lodging.

The United Palestinian Appeal donated $3,000 and Hamideh’s family and friends contributed $2,000. In addition, each student volunteer raised an average of $400.

Hamideh also enlisted the help of Dr. Jeff Forrey, O.D., of Redmond, WA, who has done extensive overseas volunteer work through Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity (VOSH). Recruitment at Pacific University resulted in 12 student volunteers: Winter Lewis, who is the vice president of Amigos, Amy Lin, Ron Hampel, Sandra Wurst, Beth Fischer, Katherine Kim, Sarah Kane, Carrie Gordon, Huy Hoang, Alfred Lo, Rania Bishai, and Matthew Pierce. The three other volunteers were Pomp Montecillo, Lauren Hampel and Hamideh’s husband, Mohammed, a Palestinian from Bethlehem. The volunteers are from the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, Egypt and Palestine.

“When we arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport, Mohammed and I were the first to be checked by immigration,” said Hamideh. “They took Mohammed’s American passport, then took him away,” she said, adding that airport personnel then separated members of the group and questioned each person alone.

“They asked me questions like, ‘Why are you here?’, ‘Are you going to any other Arab countries?’, ‘Do you have relatives in Israel?’”

When Mohammed Hamideh returned, the security guard repeated the same questions to him. “They would not let us pass through,” Dina Hamideh said, “but just kept repeating the same questions after I had already answered them.”

Following repeated questioning, the group proceeded to baggage claim for their personal luggage and 15 boxes containing equipment, medicine and donated eyeglasses. “All our luggage came out on the belt,” said Hamideh, “but none of the boxes appeared.” She said that they reported the boxes missing and, after a two-hour wait, someone from lost and found came out with the boxes. Hamideh said, “ We learned later that they had been automatically taken to a room where they were opened and the contents examined.”

After loading the boxes into carts the group attempted to exit through the customs area to meet the bus and driver donated for their use by Near East Transport, a Palestinian tour bus company. “But they wouldn’t let us take the boxes outside,” Dina Hamideh said.

Customs officials at the door questioned her again about the contents of the boxes. After lengthy explanations, and after presenting a letter from this writer which had been provided at Dr. Hamideh’s request stating the charitable purpose of the volunteer visit, the officials notified the group that they would be allowed to enter Israel, but the boxes would not.

Dr. Hamideh insisted that the contents were needed the following morning at 9 a.m. to begin scheduled eye examinations, but the airport officials complained that they had not been notified in advance of the group’s intentions. They advised Hamideh to get additional documentation of the group’s purpose in Israel and consult a customs lawyer. Hamideh was told to return to airport customs the following morning.

The exhausted group left the airport without their equipment and supplies and scrambled to make emergency alternative plans for the next day’s work. They spent the night in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, and the next day set up for work in the hall of the Latin (Catholic) Church, where people were already lining up for eye exams.

Using photocopies of an eye chart borrowed from the Beit Sahour Medical Clinic, they were able to begin performing simple examinations. Early that morning, Mohammed Hamideh, Lauren Hampel and Pomp Montecillo, with the assistance of Father Majdi Siryani, pastor of the Beit Sahour Latin Church who had offered the church hall and parish volunteers to assist, contacted human rights workers in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and were referred to Iham Shaar of the human rights group Society of St. Yves, which represents religious organizations in cases involving the Israeli government, and Hanna Saleh, a negotiator for the Latin Patriarchate, both Hebrew-speakers.

Together they went to the office of the Ministry of Religious Affairs to present authorization from the Patriarchate for the group to carry out its work and to request the return of the confiscated materials. Once at the office, they waited an hour and were finally told by the secretary that an important meeting was going on. Finally, the secretary told them they would have to leave.

They decided to return to airport customs with a letter from the Patriarchate. “The head guy who took the documents said ‘five minutes,’” Mohammed Hamideh said. “But then he came back and said they were closing early—two and a half hours early. It was just part of the harrassment. They didn’t close.” The group returned to Beit Sahour without their equipment and medicine.

On the following morning, Mohammed Hamideh, Montecillo, Hampel, Shaar and Saleh arrived at the airport at 8:40 a.m. and were stopped at the checkpoint. “We were pulled aside by five soldiers and they searched everything in the car, wiped it for chemicals, and took our passports,” Mohammed Hamideh said, noting that they physically searched only the three Palestinians—himself, Shaar and Saleh.

After a half-hour search, the group entered airport customs, where “we went through the whole thing again,” Hamideh said. “This time they wanted documentation from the Ministry of Health concerning one box that contained medicine.”

Iham Shaar immediately sent a fax to Minister of Health Yacov Katz, who finally approved the release of the boxes on the condition that St. Yves send him copies of the letters and the license of either Dr. Dina Hamideh or Dr. Jeff Norrey.

However, even after having their materials returned, the group encountered difficulty. They couldn’t load all the boxes into their car, so had to hire an airport taxi. “We loaded the taxi but then the Israeli taxi driver refused to take us to Bethlehem,” Mohammed Hamideh said. “They had to unload the taxi and call someone in Jerusalem who came with a truck.

“The airport authorities accomplished their goal by making our work difficult,” Dina Hamideh stated. Even without their equipment and tools for the better part of two full days, they were able to see about 500 people, “but had to turn away about 300,” she said.

She explained that a lack of affordable health care on the West Bank causes people to neglect basic things like regular eye examinations and this can lead to major eye health problems such as diabetic retinopathy, which is common in people with diabetes. “We advised about 10 percent of the people we checked to see a specialist for this,” she said.

Following their work in Beit Sahour, the group went to Gaza, where they were welcomed by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health and Dr. Haider Abdul Shafi of the Red Crescent Society. Their work in Gaza was focused on children and based in a girls’ school, a boys’ school, a kindergarten and in area refugee camps.

“We were able to see a total of about 2,000 people, counting those in Bethlehem,” Dina Hamideh reported. “Even though volunteer work can be very challenging, it’s very important for people to do this and it’s the duty of Palestinians living outside to be involved in such programs.” She said the experience at Ben-Gurion on leaving Israel was not as difficult as entering, although they were questioned again on their activities. The Society of St. Yves in Bethlehem is considering pursuing the case in court.

Bethlehem University Hosts Inaugural Conference for Journalism and Mass Communications Students

Achievements and challenges facing Palestinian media were considered at the First Conference for Journalism and Mass Communications Students in the Palestinian Universities, held April 17 at Bethlehem University. Coordinating the event was BU journalism and media teacher Jawdat Manna’, who also is a correspondent for various foreign media. Other conference organizers were Qustandi Shomali, Zein Al Abdeen Awawdeh and Dr. Omar Shakarneh, all from Bethlehem University’s Faculty of Arabic.

About 300 students from Bethlehem, Birzeit, Al-Najah, and Al-Quds Universities on the West Bank participated in the conference. Students from three Gaza institutions who had registered for the conference were not permitted by Israeli authorities to attend. However, five members of the Arab Journalists Association from Gaza did come.

Panelists at the conference included Washington Report correspondent Maureen Meehan, who spoke on “Media: Truth and Propaganda.” Meehan, an American who has lived in Palestine for four years and previously worked as a journalist in Latin America and Ireland, said that since this is “a crucial moment in Palestinian history” it is therefore “crucial for Palestinian journalists, writers and historians to take the lead in telling the story.”

She pointed out that Palestinian history has been told by the foreign press corps, people who don’t live in Palestine, or by the Israelis who use the media for propaganda purposes. One of the challenges for Palestinians, she said, is to establish reliable news sources and easily accessible translations “that would give foreign reporters a chance to see what is going on here.”

She added that most journalists get information on major events from news agencies and news wires. “Who works at these news agencies? Who chooses what angle the story will take? Who will be quoted? Who will be left out?” she asked listeners to consider.

She reminded the audience that the story of two Gazan fishermen shot by Israeli troops received no major international coverage and asked, “Can you imagine if two Israeli fishermen were shot by Palestinian troops?” She advised Palestinians to get their story out, but “not as a reaction to what Israel or anyone else is saying or doing.”

In 1997 the Palestinian Authority and U.S. Information Agency co-sponsored visits by PNA officials to U.S. media and government agencies to study government and media relations in the U.S. for the purpose of developing democratic government/media relations within Palestine (see WRMEA Aug./Sept. 1997). The PA continues to be criticized by human rights groups and foreign governments for violating the rights of journalists and for closing newspaper offices for security reasons.

In light of all this, Manna’ said that publishing now is even more complicated than in the past because of confusion over who is in control, the Palestinians or Israelis. He told participants of a recent experience in trying to publish the results of his investigation of the District Cooperation Military (DCO), a joint Palestinian/Israeli military organization controlling information on military, water and security issues in areas from which Israeli forces have fully or partially withdrawn. It is located in Beit Jala, a Palestinian town just west of Bethlehem.

Manna’ wanted to write about the problems Palestinian and Israeli DCO personnel have in working together and how they resolve their differences. Manna’ said an Israeli military person saw him inside the building and found out what he was doing. “He told me not to write anything without first their censoring it,” Manna’ said.

Manna’, who lives in Bethlehem (Area A which is under Palestinian control), subsequently finished his story but did not send it in. “They [the Israelis] have no right to control the media in Area A,” Manna’ said, “but they do control it.”

He said that Israel puts pressure on the Palestinian Authority through the DCO and usually gets its way. Manna’ said one reason he did not file his story was that he was also worried about being denied permission to travel to and from Jerusalem.

Other panelists at the conference were: Bajes Ismail, general director of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism; Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent from Italy; Oraib Al-Ramthawi, a journalist with Ad Dustour; Dr. Farid Abu Dheir, a professor of journalism and media at Al-Najah University in Nablus; Dr. Taysir Masharkah, professor of mass communications at Birzeit University; and Ibrahim Milhim of the Palestinian Broadcasting Company. The conference concluded with the showing of a documentary film prepared for Bethlehem 2000 observances entitled “Bethlehem Has a History.” Future conferences for Palestinian media students are tentatively planned in 2000 at Al-Najah University and in 2001 at Birzeit.

Sr. Elaine Kelley is an American grant researcher and ESL instructor at Bethlehem University.