Category: Journals - Page 116 - International Solidarity Movement

Trying to provide health care in Tubas

By Tom

At the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Tubas we heard about the impact of the occupation, the checkpoints, and the road blocks on the ambulance staff. When we heard that ambulance staff had been made to walk on the bodies of dead people by the Israeli Army we didn’t want to believe it, but it was clearly true.

Tubas is a town of 24,000 people. It is in the west of Tubas region, which covers an area aproximately 24km accross and 28km north to south. Most of the Tubas region is in the Jordan Valley and only accessible by via checkpoints.

In 1999, the PRCS (an NGO) was set up in Tubas. They have the only ambulance in the area. A part-time ambulance from Jericho is stationed at Al Jifflik in the Jordan Valley from 8am-2pm each day. What happens if soembody needs an ambulance at any other time? To try and overcome this problem, they are training local volunteers who can set up ’spot centres’ if there is a major incident in their area.

The Tubas Red Crescent provides:

* Primary health care
* Mental healthcare
* Rehabilitation for adults and children with physical and learning disabililties
* A phyco-social project for children affected by armed conflict (funded by the EU)
* An ambulance

They never charge for service costs and charge as little as possible for medicines. Despite this, they are operating against the odds. They have constant problems of being held up at road blocks, with the ambulance often being stuck for hours. As if the army wanted to prove to us that this was true, when we left the area the next day, we saw them causually holding up and searching an ambulance at Huawa Checkpoint. I wanted to photograph this, but was warned that the army could use this as an excuse to close the checkpoint altogether.

So far this year, they have had to perform two births at checkpoints, and 3 people have died because an ambulance could not get to them.

They have to run a psycho social project specifically for the ambulance staff who continuously have to deal with traumatic situations. We were given the following examples:

* People have been injured by landmines left in the mountains by the Israeli army
* Tayasir school was attacked by the army, who fired bullets and rockets into the school
* Ambulances are fired at by the army
* On one occaision, the ambulance was on its way to see a sick man when they found the army there. it was dark and the army directed them where to walk – they found themselves walking on the bodies of people who had just been shot by the army.
* We met an ambulance man who told us about a time when he had been doing a long shift with nothing to eat. He stopped for something to eat, and the army informed him to eat his food off of the body of soembody they had just shot.

They have international volunteers working with their ambulances because they are deperately short of money and staff, and they believe that the presence of internationals can curtail some of the more extreme behaviour of the army.

http://brightonpalestine.org/blog/?p=21

Tel Rumeida Journal

Monday, April the 24th

Today was a quiet day. Volunteers doing a lot of work preparing for the press conference on Wednesday. A Press release and open letter to the police and army about rising settler violence are being drafted.

Jerusalem Post visit Tel Rumeida and visit two families who recount stories of settler and IDF violence. I hope their words get through to the journalists because it is obviously painful for the people to tell their stories. While we are with the journalists and international and a Palestinian are spat at and threatened by settler children on Schuhada Street.

Tuesday, April the 25th

The morning school run goes well. Three settler visitors wearing the orange threads signifying opposition to disengagement come to talk to the soldiers.

As we are leaving a soldier comes to check our passports, he grabs our passports out of our hands and tells us we are being detained. We try to reason with him but he is obviously intent on causing us as much trouble as he can. In the end five internationals from CPT and ISM are detained for three hours at the Bab-a-Zawiyye Machsom. After three hours the shift changes and we are released immediately – it is patently obvious that this particular soldier does not like the internationals and wants to cause as much trouble as he can, his peers do not seem to share his animosity.

The Jerusalem Post are here again and watch what we on the school run with interest. Surely they must wonder why so many internationals are needed to watch this group of schoolchildren walking home.

The soldiers stationed near the Tel Rumeida settlement stop three schoolgirls from walking home. The family that these girls belong to has won a court battle for access to the land below the Tel Rumeida settlement. However, today the soldiers are not aware that the family have permission to use the path to their home and they have to wait by the guards post dangerously close to the settlement buildings. A settler child emerges and throws a stone before he is shooed away by the soldier. This exact same situation occurred last week and could be avoided if IDF soldiers were properly briefed.

Wednesday April the 26th

Men doing building work at the school are stoned by settlers and later a large group of settlers come and destroy the building work.

“That terrible feeling inside “

http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

Ok I admit I’ve been a little lazy this week. Part of that is has to do with the fact that, wrapped up in my pre-travel anxiety as it were, and my mad rush to tie up as many loose ends as possible and write as much as possible, I think I burnt myself out.

Yousef
He makes it all better

That and being here can be overwhelming at times; this week has been one of those times. Sometimes I’m too caught up to notice, but then on a “down” week, it catches up to me. I feel powerless, even crushed, in the face of an ugly, foreboding, larger than life force that seems to grow and mutate with every passing day. It is everywhere and nowhere at once. And try as you might, you cannot hide from it.

It squeezes you tighter and tighter, instilling within you a feeling of helplessness and dejection and isolation, until you begin to feel you are alone, even among 1.5 million others. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Sometimes I don’t want to do anything about it. I just want to run away, somewhere I hope it can’t reach me. Sit on the beach, listen to the troubled stories that the Gaza’s lonely Mediterranean is desperately trying to tell. “Take me to the beach at sunset, so I may listen what the beach says…when it returns to itself, calmly, calmly.”

Yousuf frolicked about in the sand, building and destroying his imaginary creations, pleased with his new-found prowess. He glanced over at me, sensed something of sadness in my eyes, and patted me on the shoulder-“ma3lsh, mama, ma3lish” he said… “It’s ok”…and suddenly, just like that, everything was.

Lee’s Journal: Visiting Mohammed

I visited Rafidia hospital this afternoon to check on the condition of the boy I last saw unconscious, being taken from my arms into the back of an ambulance. I notice small patches of his blood still visible on my jeans and shoes as we walked into the ICU.

Mohammed Saqer (17) is critically injured and on life support systems in Rafidia hospital. He is in a medically induced coma following emergency brain surgery by Dr Madher Darwazeh. The attempt to revive him will come some 72 hours after the operation and, as this is all his doctor would confirm, only then will his condition truly be known.

For now his heart beat is an artificially steady 80 per minute, his blood pressure 121/71 whilst other unknown measurements are an unchanging 100, 13 and 37.7

Mohammed, from Askar refugee camp, was shot in the head almost exactly 2 days ago by a rubber coated metal bullet fired from an Israeli military jeep at no more than 20 meters distance.

His Aunt – Am Baker – was at his bedside. Stricken with grief she told us of how this was the second time he had been shot in the head. She said “The first time was much better. He was OK after two days. Now, I think its worse. It’s bad. Yesterday he was better than today”.

In all honesty, I don’t know if this is a bad sign or a good one. Neither, I think, does she.

The aunt goes on to tell us that, if this horrific event wasn’t enough, the boy’s father is in jail at the moment (he’ll be released in 2 weeks) and his brother has cancer. It’s just too much ill fortune to take in.

I ask that Ahmad (our guide in Balata/ Nablus) explain how we – Bjarke, I and others – carried him into the ambulance. She smiles weakly and says, “You helped him. Thank you.”

Then she looks down at his prostrate body with tubes in his arms, mouth, wrist and asks: “How do you see the situation? What’s your opinion?”

Now this really hits home. How on earth can I, with no more than 30 atrociously pronounced words of Arabic to my name, even begin to answer such a question. Even in English I know I’d fail, and fail badly.

All I could reply to Ahmad was a lame “tell her that I hope with all my heart that he pulls through.”

At times like this if I were religious I could make statements about fervently praying to god, shit, I would be praying to god, any and all that I thought conceivably might listen. But I’m not, so I can’t. This is no time for taking refuge in mysticism; human action put him in this condition, and human intervention is his only hope of recovery. But of course I wouldn’t think to say this to his no doubt devout Muslim aunt.

I stay 10, perhaps 15, minutes. Take some photos. Look helplessly at his body and face, feel helpless. Know and accept I am helpless.

Bjarke is upset, what normal person wouldn’t be?

Yet I seem strangely able to deal with the situation. After all I don’t know him, and in Balata, in Palestine these shootings, and worse, are daily occurrences. I mean, the 8 yr kid in the internet cafe where I’m typing this has eagerly shown me 2 videos on his phone of other similarly hideous shootings.

But still in so many ways I wish I wasn’t able to ‘handle’ it. Am I really so cold, heartless? Is there something wrong with me? I don’t know. Am I mistaking some crass idea of being a “professional” with a touch of something of psychopathic?

Then I note that Ahmad seems totally fine, asking if there’s anything else we want or anyone we need to interview. He’s Balata born and bred, and for him death and human suffering is everyday life. In comparison I’m an emotional wreck. Better surely that Ahmad was in tears like Bjarke. Better we all were, if ‘we’ ever got to hear about it.

Lauren’s Journal: Shaheid means Martyr

Oh. God. They killed another one. Another shaheid. Another child martyr. Oh. God. Oh god. Ohgod. His blood. On the rocks. A hole in his head. It was a big hole. He is still alive after an hour from the shooting. But what does a rubber bullet 2 inches inside his brain with multiple skull fractures really offer? Oh god, when will this killing end? And I only just got here. Another mother lost a son. Another sister will cry tonight and every night. Another son only allowed to live 17 years. Prowling the streets, hunting for rocks the size of his hand to hurl at a jeep that would kill him. How does this make sense that this is all that was given to him in life?

But this boy was already free in a way before he was shot. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He stood up to the jeep. He was standing, until the bullet brought him face-down on the rocks. Maybe this is why they shot him, because the Israelis in the armored jeep were threatened by his fearlessness of them. He wasn’t suffering like the hundreds of thousands of people in Nablus from fear of their bullets.

Maybe he no longer wet himself at night dreaming of them burning down his house or killing his grandmother. Maybe he didn’t cower from the jeeps when they rolled down his street, or lose control at the sound of gunfire at close range. He was able to shake off this suffocating fear that I feel, that makes the ceiling descend and the world cease to exist beyond a few steps in front my feet – this is an admirable feat to have accomplished. And this is why he is a martyr.