Road to Recovery

By Sammy Stein

For nearly two decades, the Israeli non-profit organisation Road to Recovery had been transporting sick Palestinians from checkpoints in Gaza and the West Bank to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment.

Founded in 2011 by Yuval Roth, the organisation grew to include 1,300 volunteers and was assisting around 140 patients per day prior to the October 7 attacks. Roth’s motivation was deeply personal: in 1993, his brother was killed by Hamas. Yet rather than seek revenge, he joined The Parents Circle–Families Forum, a group of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who had lost loved ones in the conflict and chose reconciliation over hatred.

In 2006, a Palestinian member of the forum asked Roth for help transporting a sick relative to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Roth agreed—and quickly realised there was a much greater need. Many Palestinians required medical treatment in Israel, but had no way to get there. He began recruiting friends to help drive patients from the West Bank and Gaza to hospitals across Israel.

By 2010, Roth formally established the organisation now known as Road to Recovery, thanks in part to a donation from the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. Initially focused on helping patients from Gaza, the organisation expanded quickly. By 2014, it had around 500 volunteers and was helping approximately 450 families. That same year, a Palestinian construction worker named Naim al-Baida joined the team to coordinate transportation efforts from the West Bank.

In 2017, Road to Recovery partnered with the Green Land Society, a West Bank-based non-profit, to handle patient transportation within Palestinian areas. By 2018, the organisation had nearly 2,000 volunteers and completed more than 20,000 patient transport trips in a single year.

While the Palestinian Authority covers the cost of treatment in Israeli hospitals, it does not fund the travel or accommodation costs for patients and accompanying family members—often making access to healthcare financially out of reach. Some patients, particularly children with cancer or kidney disease, need to travel multiple times per month.

Road to Recovery’s volunteers—entirely unpaid—filled this critical gap. Most of the patients were children, and their treatments were unavailable in the Palestinian territories. The organisation aimed not just to save lives, but also to foster understanding, build bridges, and offer Palestinians a rare, personal connection with ordinary Israelis.

As relationships deepened through countless hours on the road, volunteers came to realise that recovery requires more than just medicine. A child undergoing dialysis or chemotherapy also needs joy, laughter, and a sense of normality. The organisation began organising day trips to the beach, safari parks, and holiday villages along the Jordan River—moments of happiness that offered relief to patients and their families.

Road to Recovery became the largest organisation of its kind in Israel, creating a unique space where Israelis and Palestinians, caught in an ongoing and bloody conflict, could meet face-to-face—not as enemies, but as human beings.

What seemed like a simple car ride from checkpoint to hospital often became something far more powerful. Bonds were formed. Language barriers were broken. Prejudices were challenged. And in these brief moments, on these quiet journeys, hope was born.

Volunteers believed these shared experiences offered a rare opportunity to lay aside politics, religion, and fear—and instead see each other simply as people. Every journey was a chance to build a bridge of reconciliation and friendship.

In 2022 alone, Israel issued more than 110,000 permits for medical visits by West Bank residents and over 17,000 for patients from Gaza, according to COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body overseeing civil affairs. Road to Recovery estimates that it has helped transport more than 50,000 Palestinian patients over the years. For the volunteers, each trip was a moment of peace—an opportunity for connection in Arabic, Hebrew, or English, and a chance to make the unimaginable, human.

Then came October 7.

On that horrific day, Hamas murdered six members of Road to Recovery: Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old Canadian-Israeli peace and women’s rights activist; Eli Orgad, Adi Dagan, Tami Zuchman, Haim Katzman, and Haim Perry.

Two other volunteers, Oded and Yocheved Lipshitz, were kidnapped and taken hostage to Gaza. While Yocheved was released a few days after she was taken captive, Oded who was 83 when he was kidnapped, was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad and his body was returned to Israel in February 2025.

And yet, astonishingly, on October 8—the very next day—despite the horrors of the Hamas invasion and the eruption of war in Gaza, Road to Recovery volunteers stood at West Bank checkpoints, ready to transport Palestinian patients to hospitals in Israel. And although the number of volunteer drivers has dropped from around 1,300 before the war to about 800 who continue to drive people from the West Bank, the organisation continues its work to help with this amazing challenge, driving patients from the West Bank to Israeli hospitals, in the face of grief, anger, and fear.

This may be because since the Hamas attacks on October 7, a growing number of Israelis have begun to question the continued operation of Return to Recovery.

One of the main questions is why the organisation’s volunteers are not focusing on the suffering and needs of Israeli families, but instead are extending help to those who are seen as part of, or at least connected to, a sworn enemy. Critics ask why efforts are directed at assisting Palestinians, when some of those being transported in Israeli vehicles might have close family ties to Hamas operatives, perhaps even connected to those who assisted and committed atrocities, including murder and rape, on October 7 thus raising fears that aid could inadvertently reach those complicit, directly or indirectly, in acts of terror.

Yet, volunteers, among them Yuval Roth, emphasise that their motivation is rooted in a deep personal conviction. They see their work as a moral obligation and an expression of their humanity. For them, this is a chance to extend a hand of compassion and to show Palestinians a different face of Israel—not that of a soldier or an adversary, but of a fellow human being.

Road to Recovery as an organisation continues to be a path of hope to many and is slowly returning to some level of its normality. But for the Israeli people and others living in the region, the road to recovery of any peace is one that has run red with the blood of innocent Israeli men, women, children, babies and the elderly. Peace feels a long way away.

Sammy Stein is the Chair of Glasgow Friends of Israel