Peacebuilding through the eyes of a sceptic

Keith Dvorchik is a veteran of American Jewish communal life. He has visited Israel many times, but until recently he had never set foot in a Palestinian village.

He freely describes himself as a sceptic about what can be achieved through joint Palestinian Israeli grassroots initiatives.

I watched what happened to him over three days as he observed the work of Rozana's joint healthcare, and I found myself seeing things I thought I knew as if for the first time.

On our first morning, in Beit Oula on the outskirts of Hebron, we visited Rozana’s Women4Women mobile clinic. The clinic is staffed entirely by Palestinian women – doctors, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, nutritionists – and reaches three villages a week in areas of Area C where this level of care simply does not otherwise exist. That morning, an educational session on menstrual health was underway.

It is the kind of care we take completely for granted in Australia but can change the lives of women in Palestine.

One woman had walked two hours to reach the clinic. She had taken the long way round because settlers had attacked 12 women on the usual path the night before. She was the only one willing to come. I have cited stories like hers in donor briefings and board papers for years. Watching Keith encounter it for the first time, I felt the weight of it freshly.

The second day was harder. We visited Bedouin communities near Ramallah whose villages have been subjected to sustained, documented violence: homes burned, livestock stolen, water severed. One community had won a court order against settlers who cut their water line. The order is not enforced. For the past month, their water has been delivered by truck.