On the morning of Saturday, July 6th, we
were awakened by a blast that rattled the floor and the walls
of the house in Jenin camp where we were staying. When we ran
outside, we saw that the Israeli army was conducting house to
house searches. The blast had been caused by the detonation of
sound bombs.
We went
to the government hospital at the edge of the camp and found it
surrounded by a large number of tanks, armored personnel carriers
and army jeeps. Snipers had taken up position around the hospital.
With our hands in the air we walked through the tanks and gained
entry to the hospital, where we made our presence known in the
different wards. An Israeli captain claimed that there were wanted
men in the hospital, and said the army would remain until they
got them, even if it took months.
There were in fact no men in the hospital
on Israel's "wanted" list.
For three hours the director of the hospital
engaged in a tense negotiation with the soldiers. For part of
that time, all ambulances were grounded, and no movement was permitted
in the vicinity of the hospital. After about an hour, an ambulance
was permitted to pull up a block or so away, we walked patients
to and from the hospital. A soldier put a gun to the stomach of
a pregnant woman being escorted to the hospital to give birth,
and threatened to shoot.
Finally, the army withdrew without searching
the hospital. As the tanks pulled out, the soldiers detonated
more sound bombs.
They then went into Jenin town center and
announced a curfew, while firing live ammunition into the air,
crushing cars and mangling shop doors.
Later in the afternoon they returned to
the town, and sprayed the center with automatic fire. A 70-year-old
man who was standing at his door got shot in the stomach. He has
undergone an operation and his condition is stable. I later visited
his house, and saw that there was blood all over the floor and
walls.
Three days before when soldiers fired from
the tanks with live ammunition a 17-year-old girl had been wounded.
Soldiers called for an ambulance to come and pick her up and then
fired on it when it approached. Two other ambulances were turned
back before the girl was finally permitted to be moved from where
she lay in the dark on a stretcher between two army jeeps.
The harassment of ambulances is very frequent
in Jenin. A few nights ago I saw the damage done to an ambulance
that was parked outside the hospital with its blinkers on. A tank
tore off its bumper and shot bullets at it before driving away.
About ten days ago, an ambulance set out
from Jenin for Jerusalem carrying a patient who needed open heart
surgery. The Jenin hospital was not equipped to do this kind of
operation. The ambulance got stopped at many checkpoints but eventually
reached the outskirts of Jerusalem where the ambulance driver,
his co-worker, and the patient were all ordered to get out. The
Israeli soldiers claimed there were explosives in the ambulance.
After
they had stripped it bare and found nothing, they beat the driver
and took all three of them to the Moskobiya prison compound. The
driver was interrogated and again beaten, and the patient questioned
(but not beaten). Five hours later they were taken back to the
ambulance and escorted to Jericho where they spent the night.
The next day they returned to Jenin. The patient is now back in
Jenin hospital. The ambulance driver had to wear a neck brace
for several days because of the injuries he sustained during the
beating.
Even when the Israeli soldiers are not
physically present, trips in ambulances can be harrowing experiences.
Last Friday night, July 5th, an ambulance left Jenin to pick up
a 15-year-old who had been shot in the stomach in a distant village.
It had to navigate over rough dirt roads, and sometimes through
the olive groves to get around the barricades that the army had
erected. On the return journey, the ambulance had a blow out and
the crew had to change the
tire in the dark. By the time the patient finally reached the
hospital, his internal bleeding had been accelerated by the condition
of the roads.
Meanwhile, in the Jenin refugee camp, my
home for the past three weeks, sewage continues to flow down the
streets and alleys.
There are still electricity cuts and the
mountainous rubble of crushed homes remains untouched.
On July
5th, nearly three months after the Israeli invasion of Jenin,
between 150 and 200 people from the camp held a peaceful sit down
demonstration at the United Nations (UNRWA) School to protest
the lack of rebuilding activity.
