Steve Sosebee, an American who obtained Palestinian citizenship, married a Palestinian woman, had two children with her, is the founder and CEO of Palestine Children's Relief Fund.
In 2018, Sosebee was given a Palestinian passport and ID card. Since then, he has been living on and off in the West Bank as a Palestinian.
"I did not choose Palestine, but Palestine chose me," said Sosebee who was born in 1965 in Kent, Ohio, and who founded PCRF in 1992 which helps Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank get medical treatment.
Sosebee arrived in Palestine nearly 30 years ago as part of his university studies in international relations, during which he visited the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the first Palestinian intifada.
He returned to Palestine as a journalist and met during his trip Huda Al-Masry, a social worker at the YMCA in Jerusalem. He married Huda and had two daughters with her named Jenna and Deema. He lived in Palestine on and off for 30 years while the two girls moved there in 2009 when their mother died.
During his stay in Palestine, he helped injured children get treatment, notably two siblings from Hebron who got free treatment in the US. "They were the first kids to ever be sent to the US for free medical care during the intifada," he said.
PCRF, whose annual budget is about $10 million, has taken care of 2,000 sick and injured children as well as sponsored hundreds of volunteer medical teams from all over the world to treat tens of thousands of sick and injured youths in local hospitals.
When his Palestinian wife passed away after a long struggle with cancer, he founded the first public pediatric cancer department in Beit Jala Hospital, near Bethlehem in the West Bank named after his wife.
Sosebee remarried Zeean Salman, an American-Sudanese pediatric oncologist who gave birth to his third daughter.
PCRF relies on individual donations, as a model for American NGOs that do not receive funding from governments. The foundation has three offices in the Gaza Strip and six in the West Bank to help children get treatment.
"Gaza needs help. There is an urgent need to provide health services for children there. The private sector cannot cover the needs of the population, as is the case in the West Bank," Sosebee told Arab News
The Gaza Strip suffers from a deteriorating health situation as a result of the 15-year Israeli blockade, in addition to the Palestinian political divisions, and Israel’s restrictions on medical supplies and equipment needed for diagnosis and treatment.
More than 2.3 million people live in the Gaza Strip, which has been run by Hamas since it won the elections in 2006 and took control of it in an armed struggle in mid-2007.
Sosebee believes that the political division and the international community's unwillingness to deal with the government in Gaza have led to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the enclave.
"We do not deal with politics, our work is humanitarian only, and this is the reason for our success," he said.
"As Americans, we speak of freedom, but at the same time, we can’t ignore the human rights violations. There are people in Palestine who need help and assistance," Sosebee added.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, followed by the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the second intifada in 2000, the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and several rounds of escalation in the Gaza Strip, have left many Palestinians, especially children, deprived of treatment.
"I have faced many problems, but I learned how to work and overcome the problems, I believe in justice, I stay out of religion and politics, stay professional and work hard to serve the patients," he said.
If we deal with reality through politics, "we cannot succeed." Our task is to work from a humanitarian point of view only, he added.
"Our greatest success is the establishment of two departments integrated with existing hospitals in Beit Jala and Gaza, and what saddens me most is the inability to treat every child who needs medical care," Sosebee said.
