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CNN Live Today
Jerusalem Hospital Handles Israeli, Palestinian Casualties
Aired May 06, 2002 - 11:29 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now we go live to the Middle East. This is to a special place where hate between Israelis and Palestinians take a back seat to healing.
Our Carol Lin is in Jerusalem, in the suburb of Ein Kerem with a story with a different perspective of anything else that you have seen so far in Mideast coverage -- Carol, hello. Greetings from Atlanta.
CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning, Daryn.
Yes, we wanted to take you to the other side of the front lines. This is where many of the victims of both the bombing attacks as well as many of the major stories that we have covered, even the incursions into the West Bank, they end up here at the Hadassah Hospital.
Just in -- within a single floor, we spoke with a young woman who was the victim of the Jerusalem market bombing. Down the hall from her was an Israeli soldier who was wounded in the Jenin incursion, and also in this hospital right now is a baby who was born during that incursion with a defective heart, and is here for surgery. It is a very unusual crossroads here at Hadassah Hospital, a rare moment where you see the suffering from both sides of this conflict.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LIN (voice-over): An Israeli settler is shot in the head when Palestinian gunmen attack his West Bank home. Consider where he ends up, at this hillside hospital, lying just inches away from two Palestinians from the Church of the Nativity standoff.
(on camera): That's got to be weird.
JULIE BENBENISHTI, TRAUMA NURSE: It's -- yes, it's very strange. It's not strange for us because we've been doing it for a number of years.
LIN (voice-over): Julie Benbenishti, an Israeli, has been a trauma nurse for more than 20 years at Hadassah Hospital where suicide bombing victims and Palestinian gunmen are treated under the same roof, sometimes in the same room.
(on camera): Do they know that they are lying side by side?
BENBENISHTI: I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think it would be ethically professional to tell one patient about another patient.
LIN: What about the families though?
BENBENISHTI: I think that the families in the waiting room probably talk between each other, but here they just ask us the questions pertaining to their family member.
LIN: Do the people ever ask you as an Israeli -- do they challenge you -- how can you treat those people?
BENBENISHTI: Yes, we're asked all the time.
LIN: Really?
BENBENISHTI: Everyone on the staff is. We're asked all the time and we say we treat everyone who walks in the door as a patient.
LIN (voice-over): Hadassah Hospital is just being pragmatic. This is Jerusalem's main trauma center. They don't have space or time to segregate patients by politics. And this is the eye of the storm, smack between the West Bank and Jerusalem, so Arabs and Jews heal together and work together. Fifteen percent of the staff is Arab.
Dr. Ahmad Eid grew up in Israel to become one of the country's most famous transplant surgeons.
DR. AHMAD EID, CHIEF SURGEON: I know the people from both sides. We can bring them together, make a team and just start working.
LIN: Sometimes it's not that easy. More than a dozen staff members have lost loved ones in terror attacks. The intifada is taking its toll.
BENBENISHTI: Sometimes express very emotional opinions, but we keep it between ourselves.
LIN: Hadassah's nurses are now asking for group therapy to cope with making the emotional switch at work. Still, Hadassah remains a strange sanctuary where one minute Israeli soldiers guard a suspected Palestinian gunman, the next moment one is sharing a newspaper with the Palestinian's brother.
In the cancer ward, Palestinian and Israeli children share a magic moment. A solution to the Mideast crisis, no, just an unexpected glimmer of hope.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Just a very unusual situation, Daryn. And over the next couple of days, we are going to continue to take a look at this crossroads, where both Israelis as well as Arabs find themselves together and how they are affected by this latest conflict. Tomorrow, in fact, we are going to be talking with the general who fought in the Six Day War and Lebanon, and now he is in charge of an integrated city, and yet the situation has gotten to be so bitter that even this man is talking about building a wall between the West Bank, the Palestinians, and Israel -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Which brings me to a point that you made in your report there when you were talking to the nurse, how bitter are things getting in that one particular hospital. Do they fear it is going to get to a point where they can't work side by side?
LIN: You know, it is very hard. We were just getting an update on the group counseling that I was talking about in the piece, and that counseling is going on, and for selected employees who want to pursue additional counseling, one on one counseling, they can do that, but group counseling is going on. And what is interesting about that, is that again, the therapy is mixed. It is both sides in the same room, trying to work it out together, a dynamic that many people are hoping will take place in the political arena.
KAGAN: Carol Lin, thank you so much for that very different look at life in the Mideast. Appreciate it.
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