Israel and the Middle East Conflict: When Donated Organs Are To Bring Peace

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Funeral of Yigal Yehoshua: The Jew was fatally injured in unrest in Israel.

His kidney has now been transplanted to an Arab Israeli woman.

Photo: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS

Yigal Yehoshua was on his way home on May 11, 2021 when the mob threw stones at his car.

It was not a targeted attack on him, but the arbitrariness of hatred that was supposed to cost the 56-year-old his life.

Yehoshua was a Jewish citizen and lived in the city of Lod, where many Arab Israelis also live.

For a long time they got along well with each other, lived together peacefully, or at least came to terms with each other.

Until the Middle East conflict escalated again and there were bloody clashes between Jews and Arab Israelis in Lod and other cities with mixed populations.

A stone hit Yehoshua in the head and seriously injured him.

He fought for his life for almost a week, then succumbed to his injuries on May 17th.

A toy gun causes a tragedy

16 years earlier, an eleven-year-old boy struggled for his life in vain.

He was also a victim of hatred, albeit outside the state borders of Israel: Achmed Khatib had run around Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank with a toy gun.

Israeli soldiers mistook the Palestinian boy for an assassin and shot.

The doctors soon determined that he was brain dead.

Both cases are fundamentally different.

Nevertheless, in their tragedy they are united by an element that is a rather rare commodity in the Middle East conflict: they have become symbols of hope and humanity.

Because the organs of those killed were donated across the borders of the conflict - to the camp of the alleged archenemies.

Yigal Yehoshua's kidney was successfully transplanted a few days ago - into the body of the Arab Israeli Randa Aweis, 58. The Christian from the old city of Jerusalem had been waiting for a new kidney for seven years.

"This Jewish kidney is now part of me"

"This Jewish kidney has now become a part of me," she said happily to the Times of Israel.

Aweis expressed her condolences to the family of her donor and declared that they wanted "peace between Jews and Arabs".

Her daughter also emphasized the "simple message" of the gesture: "There are no Arabs and Jews, we are all human."

The German filmmaker Marcus Vetter has also followed this gesture in the media.

"I was touched and thought it was great," he told SPIEGEL.

"If there is at least a glimmer of hope in this conflict, it means hope for the whole world."

Vetter lived in the region for a long time, he knows the sensitivities and knows what »energy and strength« such a symbol can develop.

Because in 2008 he made one of his most famous films about it: »The Heart of Jenin«.

The documentation traced the story of the killed Palestinian boy.

Hostile to human size

Achmed Khatib was in Haifa, in an Israeli clinic, when his brain death was determined.

In their grief and anger, his family grappled with a difficult decision.

"It was clear to me that the organs would go to Israelis," said Ismail Khatib's father later.

But he also thought: "Children cannot be enemies, children are not to be blamed."

So he agreed to the organ donation, but had to do some persuasion and first convince the Mufti of Jenin and other local authorities.

His wife was also for it.

Others hosted him for a long time for his decision.

Because Jenin is a prime example of the hopelessness and spiral of violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

There is the large refugee camp, there is the Israeli army, which Jenin often cordons off because they think it is a terrorist stronghold.

The violence escalated here during the first Intifada in 1987.

The pictures of youngsters throwing stones went around the world.

Jenin also became a battleground during the second Intifada, suicide bombers came from the camp, and the army moved in in 2002.

The kidney for an ultra-Orthodox girl

And yet, three years later, Ismail Khatib decided to make his grand gesture: his son's organs went to completely different families in Israel.

The heart to a girl from an Arab Druze family who lives on the border with Lebanon.

A kidney on a boy from a Bedouin family.

And the second kidney to Menuha - a Jewish girl from an ultra-Orthodox family.

Culturally, donors and recipients could hardly be further away: here the Muslim boy from the occupied territories, there the arch-conservative Jewish child, whose parents let it be known that they would have preferred a Jewish kidney.

Such a powerful symbol soon made Ismail Khatib famous, especially after the success of "The Heart of Jenin" with numerous prestigious awards.

"He deserves this film," says Marcus Vetter in retrospect.

And recalls the hope that he had sparked with his fellow Israeli director Leon Geller at the time.

A cinema for peace

Because the film triggered a lot more: A cinema that had been completely destroyed since the first Intifada was restored with public money, private donations and the help of many volunteers and opened in 2010 as »Cinema Jenin«.

That too was a powerful symbol: the return of culture to a place that had so often stood for lack of culture.

It should be »A cinema for peace«, says Vetter.

Young people were able to attend film workshops and film festivals were planned.

Jenin suddenly had the most modern cinema in the West Bank.

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Documentary filmmaker Marcus Vetter 2010 in Jenin

Photo: David Silverman / Getty Images

A lot has changed for Ismail Kathib too: he ran a youth center in Jenin and received the Hessian Peace Prize in 2010.

"Most would have thought of revenge," said Avi Primor, former Israeli ambassador to Germany.

The fact that he did not allow himself to be misled by this testifies to "real human greatness".

But, as is so often the case in the Middle East, dreams burst and the symbol of hope turned into its opposite.

The cinema not only lacked money, it never financed itself.

The ideal support from Jenin was also low.

Broken dreams

He underestimated that at the time, says Marcus Vetter: "Some Palestinians argued that such a project was unacceptable as long as they had to live under the Israeli occupation army." Others assumed it was too close to the Israeli state.

"The cinema became a political issue," says Vetter.

When the contract with the landowners expired after six years, the end came: the cinema was bulldozed in 2017 and was supposed to give way to a shopping center.

"Jenin's heart is no longer beating," was the headline in the "Welt".

"I was very disappointed," says Marcus Vetter.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to permanently counter the logic of violence." He is still in contact with Ismail Kathib, who lives in Jenin again and works as a car mechanic.

is working.

The mechanics of the conflict couldn't break his gesture.

And yet he would always decide that way, he said.

Kathib still has good contact with two of the now grown-up children who live thanks to the organs of his shot son.

Only the connection to the Jewish family of the ultra-Orthodox Menuha has since been severed: a donated kidney could not permanently bridge the differences.