An Israeli charity for Palestinians is struggling to cope with the October 7 attacks

Nearly every week for a decade, Iri Kassel picked up sick Palestinian children at Israel's Erez border crossing with Gaza and took them with their guardians to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

But on October 7, the border crossing was attacked by Palestinian militants who shot at passport control booths and magnetic scanners as they stormed into southern Israel.

The deadly attacks plunged Israel into all-out war in Gaza and disrupted the work of Road to Recovery, the Israeli nonprofit that Mr. Kassel volunteers for, which transports more than 1,500 Palestinian patients to Israeli hospitals every year.

Several of the group's volunteers were killed in the Hamas-led attack, including Vivian Silver, a prominent peace activist who was killed in her home in Kibbutz Be'eri in southern Israel. Others were taken hostage, such as Oded and Yocheved Lifshitz, a couple in their eighties from Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the Gaza border. Dozens of others lost loved ones or were evacuated from their homes near Gaza.

The organization's staff and volunteer drivers were devastated. “It was a punch to the stomach,” Mr. Kassel said. Even for those who survived the attacks, he said, there was “an almost physical pain.”

Road to Recovery was founded in 2010 by Yuval Roth, a peace activist whose brother had been kidnapped and murdered by Hamas militants nearly two decades earlier. The group helps Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank access medical treatment in Israel, where health care is among the most advanced in the region.

To receive treatment in Israel, Palestinian families must overcome several obstacles. The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health must agree to cover the costs of treatment. Families then had to get permission from Hamas to leave Gaza and from Israel to cross the border.

Once in Israel, the cost of traveling to a hospital can become prohibitive for many Palestinian families. That's where Road to Recovery comes into the picture.

Yael Noy, the organization's CEO, said its work is as much about humanitarian aid as it is about promoting personal ties between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Palestinians see Israelis as soldiers at checkpoints, and many Israelis don't see Palestinians at all,” she said in an interview. “These rides are an opportunity for a clean, direct human encounter.”