Rozana

6-15 Decembre 2024

 

The health professionals who work in seven major hospitals in the West Bank and Israel have undertaken a two-year cycle during which the teams improve their professional capacities, learn from each other, build up a collaborative approach and find answers to the daily obstacles linked to the lack of confidence and prejudices between themselves and their patients.

 
The third and last group of 2024 comprises 14 female and male nurses from the occupied West Bank and Israel who Coexistences received, in collaboration with the NGO Rozana Health Diplomacy.
 
These women and men, united by their profession, extended in Switzerland their preliminary work of more than forty hours concerning the problems and a common ideal where the circumstances in which they live and practice their profession are very different. For the Israelis, the conditions of life under the occupation of their colleagues have been a discovery and an awakening, and, for the Palestinians, many of them discovered the story of the Holocaust.
 
In the current context of extreme violence and unequalled distrust, this visit is a small miracle realised by men and women sharing the same fundamental values, human rights, equality and fraternity.
 
One of the Israeli participants resumed the general feeling by saying that this visit allowed her to understand that coexistence was possible, at least with the inhabitants in the West Bank. The group members, the male and female facilitators, as well as Rozana are extremely thankful and the group is reinforced, describing itself after the visit to Switzerland, as a family. It was accompanied by two Hebrew and Arabic interpreters Tagrid and Doly, as well as the project leaders, Maya Arnon for the Israeli side and Luke Atkin for the Palestinian side.
 
The group arrived on 6 December and went immediately to Château d’Œx where they stayed for 5 days. The internal work was centred on equality as a basis for building peace, the notion of partnership, and the obstacles in the construction of a just peace. It also approached the heritage of the Holocaust and the moral questions raised by the devastation of Gaza. Due to a good internal dynamic, the participants wanted to approach subjects we thought impossible since the 7 October: identities, the importance of Jerusalem, of the Temple Mount and Al Aqsa, the Palestinian refugees and that  of the right of return.
 
These discussions enabled them to understand each other in depth: one of the participants, although involved for many years on the Israeli left, organiser of demonstrations and who knew many Palestinians, told us that this was the first time that she had had such profound discussions with Palestinians allowing her to understand their point of view.
 
Apart from an excursion where the group walked in the snow and appreciated the beauty of winter in the mountains, several presentations were organised in order to familiarise the group with our country: three presentations on the health system, end of life and palliative care in Switzerland by the doctors Bernard Borel, Josiane Pralong and Pierre Corbaz, one on sexual and gender identities, and inclusivity in the reception of patients by the secretary of VOGAY Sarah Blaser and one on the Swiss political system by Coexistences. 
 
These discussions prepared the meeting which took place at the Riviera-Chablais Rennaz Hospital where, after a visit of this modern hospital, the participants presented to about fifteen Swiss or French colleagues their respective health systems, the tricky question of genetic diseases due to intra-familial marriages (in Palestine) as well as a project of mobile consultations in primary care for isolated populations. This was followed by a rich exchange.
 
The IMD Business School for Management in Lausanne offered them a full day on leadership and resource techniques. The group questioned the type of leadership that they had seen exercised as the one they practice and familiarised themselves with the notion de situational leadership (adaptable according to the context). During the day, the person charged with customised training, Ms Jennifer Jordan, based herself on the internal work already accomplished to lead the group to a new level of consciousness, that of being a united team through this training and reinforced by a better self-understanding.
 
After the days of intense coexistence in the chalet, our 20 visitors spent two days in host families with whom they were able to enjoy the Christmas market in Montreux. It provided for one and all strong experiences and the opportunity to go beyond new limits.
 
The stay was covered in the daily newspaper 24 Heures of Dec  23, 2024 and in the weekly Tachles of Dec 20, 2024. Thank you to Francine Brunschwig for her positive article.
 
After the visit
 
We received a very warm thank you letter from the woman director of Rozana as well as several feedbacks. You can discover more with this link.
 
Since their return, under the effect of the suspension of funds from the agency of American Development USAid (representing 40% of the global funds for humanitarian, urgency and development aid), which financed this programme, the group has not been able to meet in person as planned but have assessed its impact at a virtual meeting. Even without the financial funds, the cross-border collaboration on concrete projects (mobile clinics for women) is being pursued on an individual level.

The group also participated at the end of January at the hackathon of the NGO Tech2Peace and won a prize. At this event, two of the Palestinian participants (one from the West Bank and the other from Israel) wore the pin of solidarity with the hostages, the small yellow ribbon, an eloquent witness of the empathy and awareness resulting from their participation in this in-depth dialogue process. This event was covered in the daily newspaper Haaretz on 31 January 2025.
 
Very warm thanks to all those who were involved in a beautiful, convivial and incredibly effective work group: Marianne and Cyrille Francillon, François Feihl, Miriam Lazega Kuelling, Marion Mendelzweig, Sandra Modiano, Halina Sandri, Massimo Sandri, Fiuna Seylan Ongen.
 
And to all the host families for their interest, their welcome and their enthusiasm: Elizabeth and Jean-Pierre Clement, Georges and Genevieve Conne, Marianne and Cyrille Francillon, Sylvie and Francois Feihl, Delphine and Ariel Friedman, Daniela and David Hersch, Nathalie Katz and Yves Lachavanne, Danielle and Pierre Kohler, Miriam and Paul Lazega Kuelling.
 
Our warm thanks go to Bernard Borel, Josiane Pralong, Pierre Corbaz and Sarah Blaser for their excellent and fascinating presentations, Christian Moeckli and Nathalie Shai for having opened their work place and organised a captivating day in the Riviera Chablais hospital and, finally, Jennifer Jordan, Shlomo Ben Hur and his management to have once again made it possible to profit from the exceptional resources of the IMD. 
 
The Civil Protection ensured the transport of this group. The commitment of the canton of Vaud at our side is a strong symbolic gesture and the concrete expression of its involvement in favour of peace. We thank them most particularly this year for their great flexibility, having had to fetch the group at Zurich airport and coordinate a return simultaneously to Geneva airport and that of Zurich.
 
This stay would not have been possible without several donations, in particular from the Sandoz Foundation, The Swiss Society of Friends (Quakers) and from Daniel Halpérin and the commitment of Laurent Enser who works at raising funds. Should they find here the expression of our gratitude.
 
For the group of organisation, Fiuna Seylan Ongen