The ABCD of providing disabled Palestinian children in the West Bank with a safe haven

Life under Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank is stifling, but for some, the lack of adequate infrastructure and inaccessibility of the surrounding area means a life limited to the home.

According to 2017 figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2.1 percent of the Palestinian population has a disability, amounting to almost 44,500 people in the occupied West Bank.

Following the numerous Israeli incursions into the occupied territory, the Sword of Jerusalem Battle of 2021 and the natural birth rate, the number is expected to be significantly higher today.

"Before ABCD they had nothing, they were carrying their children or using inadequate prams... now we are giving them properly designed wheelchairs and training them on how to manoeuvre them"

Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability (ABCD) has been working in the West Bank for over 35 years to help those born with disability integrate into society.

But, with a community suffering greater poverty year on year and an occupation which is tightening its hold on their land, this is no easy task.

Today ABCD is working closely with local partners in four refugee camps helping set up centres to support these children and the whole family. 

“I don't want to sound harsh, but disabled children are being neglected. There is no central system to support them. A child needs a mother to hug, someone to be close to, so they can have that comfort, that support, that integrity as an individual, I feel that is fragmented,” ABCD’s Deputy Director and Project Manager in the West Bank Firas Sarhan tells The New Arab.

Poverty, UNRWA budget cuts and no central health system mean children’s care is “based on aid from external organisations such as ABCD to move things forward for that child,” he continues. 

The charity works alongside UNRWA together with local partners on a referral system, helping children with disabilities through professional therapists and by offering home adaptations, installing ramps, shower chairs, providing wheelchairs and other equipment which may allow them to become a little more independent.

“Before ABCD they had nothing, they were carrying their children or using inadequate prams,” Sarhan explains. “Now we are giving them properly designed wheelchairs and training them on how to manoeuvre them.

“The big chunk of our beneficiaries are children with CP – cerebral palsy – but also many children with genetic disorders, some of which are linked to inter-family marriage, causing both physical and cognitive function disabilities,” Sarhan says.

“There are other disabilities related to the conflict too; children with gunshot wounds etc but 99.9 percent of our children are born with disabilities.”

One of the areas the charity had to tackle was people’s mindset where disability is concerned, with some families keeping disabled relatives indoors “because they don't want to have their family status affected, or their future marriage possibilities affected which will have a huge social impact on the family, this is why we are working urgently with them to change this,” Sarhan explains.

“We managed to successfully alter the taboo about having a wheelchair in the street or having a wheelchair in the house or having a disabled child within the family. The way we've done it is through collaborative work with our local partners and with the parents to help push the fact that disability is not a punishment, it is not a taboo and it is not something to disfigure you as a family or an individual – it is God’s will.”

In addition to changing mindsets, ABCD has worked to alter the way in which rehabilitation is offered to children. “It was a blanket approach to rehabilitation, it wasn’t a multi-speciality approach,” Sarhan says. “A single room with one physiotherapist and two voluntary people running the centre.”

ABCD introduced a comprehensive rehabilitation centre that the child would come to, for example, to see a physiotherapist, to be reviewed, have a meeting as a team where they can decide and plan the journey of that child, how the child is going to be developing and how they’re going to be taken forward.

“These centres are a safe haven for these children and their families, they feel supported, and connected to others. They create a strong network there," Sarhan adds. 

Sarhan, a Palestinian who was born in the West Bank’s Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah and came to the UK in 1988, says his work in the NHS as a specialist in spinal cord injuries and rehabilitation has influenced him professionally and personally to really develop the centres that they are engaging with in the West Bank.

"I’m applying my knowledge and skills to develop centres which are fit for purpose and fit for practice to support these individuals," he tells The New Arab.

“I’m looking at what they have here in terms of equipment, in terms of facilities, and I’m transferring that from here to there. We are having success in providing really well-equipped rooms and facilities to support these children."

Though the centres are improving and growing from single treatment rooms to complete buildings with a number of rooms and therapies on offer, the camps and Palestinians’ living conditions have not evolved as easily.   

“Camps are overcrowded – they lack the main facilities and the infrastructure. If you think about it, these camps were established in 1948-1949 and were set up with 800-1,000 people, and now all of a sudden they have mushroomed over 75 years to 15,000 in the same geographical space. 

"They are going upwards rather than spreading across the land, that by itself is a suffocating factor. If I want to stretch my arms, I’ll find a problem. How on earth will the sun enter this house?”

In spite of this and the psychological issues which often ensue from the harsh living conditions, Sarhan says the community comes together.

“Life in the camp, despite the misery, and despite poverty, it’s a joy. It’s a togetherness approach to life. Yes, it is heartbreaking to listen to other people’s stories, but I look at it – the camp – as one body; if you have a sore headache, the rest responds to that. People are together and stand by one another. People always wish good for others; there’s a simplicity of life.”

Shatha Khalil is a freelance journalist who focuses on the Middle East. Her articles have been published by Al Jazeera, Gulf News, the Star newspaper in Jordan and a number of global and regional news outlets.