United Hatzalah of Israel is the largest independent, non-profit, fully volunteer Emergency Medical Services organization that provides the fastest and free emergency medical first response throughout Israel. United Hatzalah's service is available to all people without regard to race, religion or national origin.
United Hatzalah has more than 2000 volunteers who come from a complete spectrum of Israeli society, religious and secular, male and female, Jewish and non-Jewish. Not only have the volunteers been able to redefine the government’s status quo of emergency first response, Arabs and Jews are also working together, side-by-side, and have been able to break down religious barriers through United Hatzalah's sole mission and unifying motivation: to save as many lives as possible.
United Hatzalah volunteers, all of whom are trained and certified as EMTs, paramedics or doctors, respond to any medical emergency in their vicinities, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. United Hatzalah volunteers establish a life-saving bridge of medical care to nearly 200,000 people each year within 2 to 3 minutes from a distress call. Volunteers treat an average of 500 people each day and individually respond to an average of 360 calls per year in Israel.
United Hatzalah trains and equips emergency first response volunteers who live and work in communities, cities and kibbutzim throughout the entire State of Israel in order to provide a more rapid, effective medical intervention. A proprietary GPS based deployment technology identifies the most qualified and closest volunteer to an emergency, maximizing efficient allocation of resources and minimizing response times. Fully equipped ambucycles travel nimbly through traffic, narrow alleys and obstructed roadways to bring all the necessary medical equipment an ambulance carries to the scene of an emergency.
After explaining us the concept, the equipment and giving further information, we go and see the central commando office. Very impressive! Not only the organization but also the devotion of all these volunteers! After a short presentation eli drives us to Tel Aviv - a different world. They say Israel is actually two states: Israel and Tel Aviv. The city is the most liberal place in the country (they had one of the largest gay parades last week) and it reminds us very much of Miami. Except that it is better!
After a short walk on the beach, we hit the pool, do some reading and writing and in the evening we have dinner with some of Eli’s friends. Again; a very lively place with Western people. What a change to the weeks before!!

Palestine, considered a holy land by Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and homeland of the modern state of Israel, was known as Canaan to the ancient Hebrews. Palestine's name derives from the Philistines, a people who occupied the southern coastal part of the country in the 12th century B.C.
A Hebrew kingdom established in 1000 B.C. was later split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel; they were subsequently invaded by Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, and Alexander the Great of Macedonia. By A.D. 135, few Jews were left in Palestine; most lived in the scattered and tenacious communities of the Diaspora, communities formed outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. Palestine became a center of Christian pilgrimage after the emperor Constantine converted to that faith. The Arabs took Palestine from the Byzantine empire in 634–640. Interrupted only by Christian Crusaders, Muslims ruled Palestine until the 20th century. During World War I, British forces defeated the Turks in Palestine and governed the area under a League of Nations mandate from 1923.
Following World War II, the British withdrew from their mandate of Palestine, and the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement rejected by the Arabs.
Subsequently, the Israelis defeated the Arabs in a series of wars without ending the deep tensions between the two sides. In keeping with the framework established at the Madrid Conference in October 1991, bilateral negotiations are being conducted between Israel and Palestinian representatives (from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Israel and Syria, to achieve a permanent settlement.
On 25 April 1982, Israel withdrew from the Sinai pursuant to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. Outstanding territorial and other disputes with Jordan were resolved in the 26 October 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. On 25 May 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982.