As all eyes are on the political differences between Israelis and Palestinians, unnoticed by the international media there has been a remarkable civilian-to-civilian act of kindness that transcended the boundaries of the conflict.

A Palestinian 3 1/2-year-old, Abdul Hai Salhut, died after a tragic accident at his East Jerusalem home. The parents donated organs, and in so doing saved three people’s lives.

One was a 5-year-old boy who required an urgent liver transplant. And the two lungs went, one each, to a 7-year-old girl and a 55-year-old man. It is not known who among the patients were Arab and who were Jewish, but it is understood that there were both among the recipients. This report on Ynet quotes the deceased boy’s father, Moussa Salhut, saying: “We’re happy to see him alive in other people, regardless of whether they are Arab or Jewish. It doesn’t make a difference when you save life. In the shadow of our difficult loss, we are touched to have saved lives.”

This isn’t the first time that organ donations have seen people in this part of the world help people on the other side of the conflict. Perhaps most moving, when the Scottish teenager Yoni Jesner was killed by a Hamas suicide bomber in Tel Aviv in 2002 — the thick of the Second Intifada — his kidney went to a Palestinian girl.

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