Paul Calvert spoke with Caritas Baby Hospital

Bashir: We do have a lot of suffering children and suffering families because of poverty. If we take the Palestinian society for instance, how they live and how things are now in Palestine, we are speaking about 20% of the Palestinians are living in a good way, like the middle class in a way and 5% of the Palestinians are very rich people, but we still have another 80% of the people who are living in bad conditions and about 60% of the 80% of the people are under the poverty line, which means living with less than 1.5 dollars a day. That is a problem and that is also affecting the health situation of the children directly. Here in the Bethlehem region we have a lot of tourism, but at the same time we don't have a lot of work for the people, so when we are speaking about Bethlehem we are speaking about 35-40% of unemployed people living in this place and of course this is affecting the children directly.

Paul: You are very close to the wall in Bethlehem. Do you have a good relationship with the Jewish hospitals?

Bashir: We do have relations with Israeli hospitals. This is very important in our work to keep this relationship good, because in a lot of cases we have to send the children to the Israeli hospitals if we don't have the possibility to have the children. It has always been good this connection between the Israeli hospitals and Caritas Baby Hospital. The only problem was of course the politics and the wall and even the checkpoints themselves, because in the end if you want to send a child to the other side you have to go through the whole procedure of getting permission for this child and family and to wait until you are allowed to go to the other side. We had some hard cases where even the children were lost on the checkpoint.

Paul: But the hospital is building peace and reconciliation as well isn't it?

Bashir: Exactly, that is what we are doing. What we are doing with the connection through the Israeli hospitals, when we speak about the Caritas Baby Hospital, it's also showing the tolerance between all religions. At the baby hospital half of the employees are Muslims and the other half are Christian. We are always working with the Christian belief and the Christian thoughts of what Jesus' thoughts are.

Paul: So the relationship between Muslims and Christians is good here?

Bashir: It is very good, yes.

Paul: What main difficulties do you face as a hospital?

Bashir: Our main difficulty that we are facing is actually, I don't like to get into politics a lot, but the political situation can also affect us. Before 2000 the roads and all the streets were open and we used to get from all over the West Bank, but after the walls have been built and because of a lot of checkpoints after the Second Intifada it was really difficult for a lot of people to reach us. Now the people in the northern part of the West Bank will say, "We don't want to go to the Caritas Baby Hospital because it's a long distance" and it can also be exhausting for the child. This is one of the difficulties we are facing. The second one is very important for us and it is how to get enough funds to keep this project running, because we need every year about 10 million euros in the way that it functions now and I have to say that 93% out of this budget of 10 million euros we get through donations and we try to get these donations through Europe mostly. With the economic crisis that Europe has, its can sometimes be really difficult.

Paul: Do you get any money at all from the Government?

Bashir Qonqar

Bashir: From the government we don't get anything, but we do have good relations with the Palestinian health ministry and we do cooperate as a provider organisation for the children healthcare section in the West Bank.

Paul: Is it important for you to be a Christian presence in Bethlehem?

Bashir: It is also important for us because in the end this is the holy place, it is the place where Jesus was born. This is of course very important for us as a Christian Catholic organisation working in this place and it is also very important to work with these things that Jesus has taught us also - what is in the Bible. The main message of Christianity is peace and to love your neighbour and to love your enemy.

Paul: Is the mortality rate for children here low?