On walls in Nablus there's a shaheed poster
-- a poster commemorating a martyr killed by the Israeli army
-- showing a middle-aged man standing in front of an ambulance.
We're told he was the head of the ambulance service in Jenin.
During the reoccupation of Jenin by the Israeli army, when a convoy
of ambulances went to pick up people who had been wounded or killed,
the Israeli army energy-bombed the ambulances. An energy bomb
is an incendiary device which vaporizes everything around it with
fire. After the bomb, there was nothing left of his body. Palestinians,
trying to explain it, point to the ashes of a cigarette.
Palestinian ambulances, ambulance drivers
and EMTs are under constant attack by the Israeli army -- in spite
of international law which says that people have a human right
to health care, and that health care workers must be allowed to
provide it.
Because of their protected status, ambulances
are the only vehicles technically allowed on the roads during
curfew. Especially under curfew, ambulances have become essential
to every aspect of health care. People can't leave their homes
to buy medicine, and they can't travel to the hospital for urgent
outpatient care like dialysis. People who care for elderly or
ill family members can't get to them. People who are discharged
from the hospital after an illness can't get home. So ambulances
have become the conduit for all health care, and they are constantly
out on the road trying to make sure Palestinians survive. This
is in addition to the continued need for emergency service, which
is exacerbated by semi-daily shootings of Palestinian civilians
by the Israeli army. (See Nablus reports on the army's random
shootings of Palestinians during lifting/re-imposition of curfew.)
But every minute that a Palestinian ambulance
is on the road or attending to a patient is dangerous. Although
the Israeli army is forced to allow ambulances on the roads, soldiers
take every opportunity to impede them, and to ensure that health
care workers know they are unsafe. Every roving tank that crosses
an ambulance's path stops the ambulance. At every checkpoint (which
is not just one blockade on a road, but two, with the army controlling
the space between), ambulances are stopped and may be delayed
for hours, and then may be stopped and delayed again 100ft later
at the other side of the checkpoint.
When internationals are present, stopping
an ambulance means checking the ID of everyone on board, including
patients; searching the ambulance; searching the EMTs and possibly
the patients; and waiting. The ambulance can't move until the
army says it can. Often, the soldiers just stand there, delaying
it.
When internationals are not present, stopping
an ambulance may mean doing all of the above, possibly strip-searching
the EMTs, possibly beating them, possibly damaging the ambulance,
and randomly delaying for hours.
These criminal violations by the Israeli
army of the right to health care are only part of the incredible
stress endured by EMTs. Many EMTs are young volunteers, in their
early 20s, who have been living full-time at the ambulance depots
for months, sleeping on mattresses on the floor between long shifts.
Especially under curfew, there's little else to do -- no other
work, no school, no place to decompress. So, in addition to spirit-crushing
24-hour curfew and the daily threat of violence directed at their
bodies both as Palestinians and EMTs, they face the stress of
being medics in a war zone, having no place to go "home for
a break", no time for vacation, no forseeable end to their
tour of duty, witnessing daily military violence visited on their
own community and land, and daily having to fight to get basic
treatment to members of their community who need it.
To me, as an American Jew trying to understand
how Palestinians are surviving this intense psychological and
physical battering, it looks like amazing spirit of resistance
combined with zombified carrying-on-with-life. But the truth is,
I have no idea how they're doing it. We have the same questions
about how Jews, queers and others survived in WWII concentration
camps. How much deliberate crushing can a people take and still
be alive? People survived the concentration camps, but not everyone
came out whole. Although for some Jews that experience reinforced
the need to fight oppression, others have clearly lost their sense
of justice, turning to violence and conquest. Will Palestinians
be like those survivors in 50 years, using past suffering to justify
evil acts? I hope not -- they aren't yet.
REPORTS
FROM 2 AMBULANCE RUNS, NABLUS
1
Ambulance is called for an older man having
chest pains, at the top of a hill:
As we come up the hill, we see that the
army has taken over (double-occupied) an apartment building and
closed off the road with razor wire. There's no other way up the
hill. The army does not let ambulances through road closures.
The EMTs acknowledge that there's no way to get to the patient,
but there's still a danger that the army will notice us. If they
do, they'll stop us, search us (or worse) and delay us indefinitely.
The driver quietly rolls the ambulance back down the hill until
we're out of the line of sight, and breathes a huge sigh of relief.
2
Ambulance is called for a Palestinian man
caught by the Israeli army on the street during curfew, with reported
trauma, possibly beaten:
We turn the corner onto the street where
the ambulance call came from, and are suddenly face-to-face with
a tank. One soldier is hanging out of the top of it pointing an
M-16 at us, and two are on the ground. We can't see the injured
man, but the EMTs assume the army is hiding him behind the tank.
The soldier motions for us all to get out
of the ambulance. I just met this tank 15 minutes ago riding in
a different ambulance, so I've already shown them my ID and told
them I'm a human rights monitor. They ignore me, and tell the
two Palestinian EMTs to lift their shirts, supposedly looking
for strapped-on explosives or weapons. (On other occasions, soldiers
have strip-searched EMTs.) They take the EMTs identification cards,
which they hold onto as a sort of threat -- a Palestinian can't
go anywhere without an ID card. Then they tell us to step away
from the ambulance, and they start to search it. It's a totally
meaningless search -- they open the glove compartment, pull things
out, and rifle the medicines. They tell the driver to start the
engine, in case there's an ignition bomb. If there actually were
any explosives in the ambulance, their search wouldn't have found
them -- it was just another half-assed, transparent method of
delaying emergency health care and harassing EMTs.
5 minutes have passed since we arrived
on the scene. Now that the soldiers have moved us to the side,
the EMTs see the patient's legs sticking out from behind the tank,
about 25 ft away from us. They ask if they can go to him. The
soldiers say no, that he's faking his injuries. They call me over,
and closer to the patient, to ask me why I'm not doing human rights
work in Israel. Now I can see the patient, propped up against
a wall, holding his throat and struggling to breathe. They ask
again if they can treat the patient, and the soldiers say no,
he's fine and he's under arrest. I ask one soldier outside the
tank if he's a doctor, and he says no. The other says he's an
EMT. I ask if he'd be willing to sign a paper saying the patient
is fine, and point out that 10 minutes have passed. The patient
starts to throw up. Now the soldiers say I can approach the patient,
but the EMTs can't. I tell them I'm not qualified, and after another
minute they give in and let the EMTs come to the patient.
The EMTs come over and check out the patient,
and tell the soldiers he needs oxygen. The oxygen hook-up is in
the ambulance, so they ask the soldiers if they can bring the
patient over. The soldiers say no, the patient is under arrest,
and the EMTs have to bring the oxygen out of the ambulance. The
EMTs say they can't, and the soldiers just shrug their shoulders.
The EMTs ask permission to walk over to
the ambulance to get supplies.
The soldiers say okay, and we bring out their supply box. They
put a shunt in the patient's arm and prepare an IV. Just then
the soldier in the tank gets a call on his headphones, and calls
to the other soldiers.
They get in the tank, hand me the EMTs' and patient's ID cards,
and leave.
