Over the last few days hundreds of rockets have been fired at cities in Israel from the Gaza strip, threatening the lives of over 3.5 million Israelis, or 40 percent of the population of the country. Over the weekend, riots broke out in Israeli-Arab as well as Palestinian communities, including part of Jerusalem, threatening the lives of even more Israelis. Tensions are at an all time high since 2005.

In spite of it all, the Israeli moral compass is working full throttle in the form of its hospitals. Israel’s hospitals have continually treated patients from the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip throughout this conflagration as well as those that preceded it.

While Hamas attacks from Gaza, with half the State of Israel under the threat of rocket fire, many Gazans continue to receive medical treatment in Israel. Currently in Rambam Hospital in Haifa, home of the world-famous bomb shelter hospital wing buried underneath the hospital itself, there are 23 Palestinian patients, including 11 from Gaza and 8 children.

Rambam Hospital provides medical care to patients from Gaza and the PA year round, and more patients from Gaza are scheduled for treatments later this week. Over the course of 2013, Rambam treated hundreds of Palestinian patients from the PA and Gaza, including some 650 youth. These patients come to Rambam Hospital for a variety of medical problems, some of which are complex and require long-term hospitalization.

Many of the hospitalized children are in the pediatric oncology or nephrology wards. Of these, the majority are under the age of three and they are accompanied by relatives. Additional medical problems and the need for long-term treatment makes lengthy hospitalizations standard for these children as they cannot simply go home at the end of the day.

Medical cooperation between Israel and the PA continues despite the escalation and constant rocket barrages on each corner of the country. According to Yazid Falah, the coordinator for Palestinian patients at Rambam Hospital, “Despite the security situation, and despite the fact that both sides are fighting, all continues as usual in the realm of medical cooperation. Even in times of war we continue to receive patients and give them the care they need—children and adults.”

Dganit Kenig, a spokesperson for the hospital, explained that the patients who are hospitalized for long periods of time have built their own sort of “community” within the hospital.

“It’s natural,” she said. “These patients share rooms with other patients, they are here for a long period of treatment, and often they come in not knowing even a word of Hebrew. By the time they leave some of them are even fluent.”

Kenig tells of a young girl, whose mother accompanies her to the hospital and visits daily. “After a year-and-a-half of the child being a patient of ours, the mother now knows Hebrew fluently, and the child is quite verbose, but still makes some mistake.”

Rambam Hospital is considered normal in terms of the number of their Palestinian patients in the hospital. “There is no hospital in Israel that does not treat Palestinians or Arabs from other countries for that matter,” Kenig told Breaking Israel News.

She explained that Rambam has treated Syrian citizens, as well as Iraqi, and even the occasional Saudi citizen. “We treat all of our patients the same, a patient is a patient, no matter where they come from,” says Kenig.

The Israeli government allows for the patients to be transported from Gaza and the Palestinian territories to the hospital. Many of them arrive at the hospital with the help of various international organizations.

The patients have their insurance and hospitalization paid for by the PA. Even the language barrier in the hospital is a non-issue,  as one-quarter of the staff speak Arabic and the patients often learn Hebrew quickly.

While medical routine is maintained, the current situation cannot be avoided and there is a feeling of tension in the air. But at the end of the day, as Falah, a Palestinian patient at Rambam puts it: “Everyone simply want to live in peace. But people are realists, and often the patients here believe the situation will only to get worse.”

Despite the complications that the current conflict creates for the patients, the human factor remains of utmost importance to the hospital, which has become a second home to these patients. Israelis and Palestinians literally live together due to the long hospitalizations. Parents and children share rooms, activities, treatments, and begin to develop solid relationships. They are sick together and heal together.

“When the hostilities escalated, the Palestinian patients feared a cold reception,” says Falah. “We explained that would never happen in an Israeli hospital. Here you see people and not nationalities. Many times, Israeli patients reach out to their Palestinian ‘neighbors’ to help them feel more comfortable and to encourage them. Eventually, all are in the same boat.”