If you’re a cancer patient undergoing radiotherapy, you don’t have a lot of time. That sense of urgency permeated SHATIL’s Galilee branch when they decided to launch a campaign for cancer patients living in the North. These patients must make long, painful daily trips to Haifa, where the closest – and only -- radiotherapy center in the North is located, for treatment that lasts only a few minutes.

Within two weeks, SHATIL recruited local partners, inspired a media blitz and got the Knesset to put the issue on its agenda as an urgent motion. On July 9, in the presence of a delegation of Northern cancer patients brought to Jerusalem by SHATIL, the Knesset unanimously decided to advance the issue by bringing the matter to the labor and welfare and health committee. In the days following, SHATIL dispatched dozens of letters to members of Knesset and the head of the relevant committee, as well as a letter to the Minister of Health demanding the opening of a radiotherapy center at Ziv Hospital in Safed in the eastern Galilee. SHATIL also helped cancer patients in the North compose a personal letter to the Minister of Health in which they asked him to consider their distress and suffering and open a radiotherapy center closer to their homes. SHATIL also has plans for a demonstration, if needed, and has already launched a petition campaign.

 “This is a classic example of how residents of the periphery are twice-over deprived of state services simply because of where we live,” said Amiram Goldin, director of SHATIL’s eastern Galilee office. “Once because of the distance from the center and again because the state says it is not cost effective to provide resources to smaller numbers of people.”

SHATIL will capitalize on its success in connecting local activists with government forces to promote equality in the periphery by teaching this model to other social change activists. SHATIL will also leverage the connections it made with new Knesset members for future actions to benefit the North.