Palestinians learn emergency medicine in Israel

RAMAT GAN, Israel, Nov 22 (Reuters) ''He has a pulse!'' the Palestinian medic shouted above the sound of sirens and explosions as he and three colleagues tended to the motionless figure on the floor.

The exercise, in an Israeli hospital, was a dress rehearsal for more than a dozen medics and doctors from the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who often treat casualties of Israeli military operations against militants.

The emergency medicine course is sponsored by the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, a private group dedicated to professional cooperation with Palestinian doctors. Funding comes mainly from international donors.

''It is excellent that people from the Palestinian territories come to participate in an Israeli course,'' said Marwan Baqer, who heads a team of 120 ambulance workers back in Gaza. ''We do not care who is conducting the course.'' After several minutes of simulating blocked airways, fluid in lungs and vomiting, an Israeli instructor, speaking in Hebrew, told the Palestinian medics that the dummy they were treating was going to live.

''The first 30 minutes are critical -- you can determine if a person lives or dies,'' said Maskit Bendel, director of the Physician's For Human Rights' ''Occupied Territories Project''.

During the training, instructors also simulate bombing and attack scenarios with smoke machines and sound effects to teach participants how to treat wounded under fire.

Such violence is routine for many of the medics, especially in Gaza, which Israel has bombarded with air strikes in recent months to battle militants who have increased their rocket attacks against the Jewish state.

TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS Some 200 Palestinian medical workers have taken part in the Israeli training courses, begun soon after a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000. The sessions are conducted in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

The latest two-day course, the second to involve simulated casualties and sound effects, took place this week at the Chaim Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv.

Israel has killed more than 370 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began a major offensive against militants in June following the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gaza hospital officials and residents say.

Three Israeli soldiers have been killed and a woman in an Israeli border town died in a rocket strike during that period.

With tensions high, Israeli roadblocks and frequent closures of border crossings, especially to Gaza, have made it difficult for Palestinians to attend the training sessions.

''We facilitate everything, their travel papers. The request procedure is very difficult and unpredictable and dependent on the civil administration,'' Bendel said, referring to an Israeli military-run authority that issues permits.

''The medics from the West Bank were given permission (to attend the current course) just three days ago,'' she said.

Raphael Walden, a member of the Physicians for Human Rights' board of directors and head of surgery at the Sheba centre, said the group has a strong commitment ''to help our Palestinian neighbours in these difficult times''.

''We have a common enemy -- disease,'' he said.

Baqer said he would pass on what he learned in the Israeli course to his ambulance crews in Gaza.

''I will tell them that we learned something good here,'' he said. ''There is no difference when it comes to the health of an Arab or a Jew. All that matters is that it is a person.'' REUTERS SSC RAI0955