At least six Israelis will use the vital organs of Ahmed al-Khatib, 12 from Jenin, who was killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank city of Jenin when the troops mistook his plastic gun for a real one, last week, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday.
Ahmed’s family donated the organs of his son ‘for the sake of peace between peoples.’
The boy was clinically dead for couple of days before he was pronounce dead at the Rambam hospital in Haifa.
ÂÂ
Three Israeli girls, two Jewish and one Druze, underwent surgery Sunday to receive Al-Khatib’s lungs, heart and liver. Twelve-year-old Samah Gadban had been waiting for a heart for five years when doctors called her family late Saturday and told them of the Al-Khatib donation. By Sunday afternoon, the Druze girl had a new heart and was recovering at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.
ÂÂ
The family of the Druze girl expressed gratitude to Al-Khatib family.
ÂÂ
‘This morning, I did not know anything about the boy. I only knew that the doctors said they had a heart,’ said Samah’s father, Riad. ‘I don’t know what to say. It is such a gesture of love … I would like for [the family] to think that my daughter is their daughter.’
ÂÂ
Jamal Al-Khatib, the father of the boy, said he hoped to meet the Israelis who received his son’s organs, and added: ‘The most important thing is that I see the person who received the organs, to see him alive.’
ÂÂ
The boy’s liver was divided in two and given to a 6-month-old baby and a 56-year-old woman; his kidneys were given to a 5-year-old boy; and his lungs were given to a 5-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, Israel radio said.
ÂÂ
‘I don’t mind seeing the organs in an Israeli or a Palestinian. In our religion, God allows us to give organs to another person and it doesn’t matter who the person is,’ said Jamal al-Khatib, the boy’s father, who added that he hoped the donations would send a message of peace to Israelis and Palestinians.
ÂÂ
‘I had an older brother who suffered from kidney failure,’ he told the Israeli TV Channel 2, ‘and there were no transplants available. When the doctor told me that my boy was clinically dead, I remembered my brother.’
ÂÂ
Dr. Tzvi Ben-Yishai, spokesman for Rambam Medical Center said the boy’s parents decided to donate his organs ‘to bring hearts closer and bring peace closer.’
ÂÂ
The death of Al-Khatib who is a victim of the Israeli trigger-happy soldiers, became source of life to six Israelis.
