Background

Ten miles north of Jerusalem lies a town called Ramallah, "God's Hill". It is said that Jesus Christ passed through this town many times on his way to Jerusalem. Crusaders in the Holy Land, in the 11th through the 13th centuries, built a fortified castle in Ramallah that overlooked the coastal plains of the Mediterranean Sea. In the 1900's residents of Ramallah began to immigrate to the United States.

Today, there are 30,000 people living in the United States of America. They are concentrated in such major cities as San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Santa Rosa, and Los Angeles CA; Jacksonville, FL; Houston, TX; Detroit, MI; Chicago, IL; Washington, DC; Knoxville, TN; Lexington, KY; Greensboro, NC; Birmingham, AL; Cleveland, OH; Little Rock, AR; Buffalo and Hempstead, NY; Milwaukee, WI; and South Plainfield, NJ.

In all these cities, chapters were formed making up the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine. It was established in 1959 and Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan.

Goals

• To perpetuate and enhance the close ties that exist among all Ramallah people through the formulation of local clubs.
  
• To instill and nurture in the Ramallah Youth in the United States their ancestral language, culture and heritage.
  
• To orient the American public with Arab culture and heritage and to promote better understanding of the political aspirations of the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general.

Ramallah Hospital Foundation

The Ramallah Hospital Foundation was established in 1944 as a legal entity to solicit funds, build and maintain a hospital in Ramallah to serve its people and the surrounding villages.

What was once a dream is now a reality. The hospital is a landmark that symbolizes the Ramallah immigrants to the United States from generation to generation. This modern medical facility filled a great health need to serve the sick and injured of our Palestinian people in Ramallah and the surrounding area.