Strict security measures at Israeli checkpoints have claimed the lives of at least four pregnant women and 34 newborns. <
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"At the entrance of this small village near Jerusalem, Palestinian grandmother Khadijeh Musa Alaan was told at an Israeli checkpoint that she could not leave to visit her daughter in a nearby village.
Two Israeli volunteers, Laura Sznajder and Tamar Bilu, politely tried to persuade an Israeli army official to let the 59-year-old woman pass on that hot August afternoon.
He refused. Alaan, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, did not have a temporary permit from the district commander's office, he said.
She was also turned back at the checkpoint in July while trying to visit a doctor for treatment of her diabetes, she says.
Alaan is just one of many women whose health and safety have been placed in jeopardy as a result of Israel's nearly 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and increasingly restrictive security measures."
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