Palestinians: Ailing woman dies after IDF denies her ambulance

[ProgressiveMuslim]

A Palestinian woman who was refused access to an ambulance at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint died in her village in the West Bank on Thursday, a Palestinian doctor and relatives said.

Local witnesses said the husband of Fawziya Qabb pleaded with soldiers at the Jarushiya checkpoint near the town of Tul Karm to let his wife get to an ambulance waiting to take her to a Palestinian hospital but they ignored him.

An IDF source said the soldiers at the checkpoint were unaware of the woman's circumstances because her family did not inform the local military coordination office for humanitarian cases of the ambulance's arrival.

"If we had been made aware of the situation a path could have been cleared for the ambulance through heavy traffic in the area which was caused by a high alert around Tul Karm," the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

The source said that troops had sealed off the area in the northern West Bank as they feared a possible attack by militants.

Local witnesses and Palestinian security sources said the Israeli heightened state of alert had forced thousands of residents to wait at checkpoints in the pouring rain.

Qabb's relatives from the village of Deir al-Ghosoon close to Tul Karm said they called the ambulance but soldiers did not allow it through the checkpoint to pick up the 67-year-old.

"I asked the officer to let us cross but he refused," husband Mahmoud Yousef Qabb said.

Mahmoud said that after failing to persuade the soldiers for 20 minutes, he took his ailing wife back to the village doctor who failed in his efforts to save her life.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954643.html

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. Please read the Magnes' Zionist commentary on the morality of checkpoints.

This guy is a straight shooter, no doubt:
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/

Checpoints Don't Kill People -- People Kill People



Checkpoints, Israelis and their defenders concede, cause major discomfort for Palestinians. But they are justifiable because a) they save lives, and b) Palestinians share some sort of collective reponsibility for their terrorists, whom they hail as martyrs.

The common responses to these arguments are that a) an occupying army is responsible for the welfare of the occupied people, and that b) the measures it takes to ensure the security of its own population cannot be disproportionate to the pain and suffering it causes to the occupied population. Or to be blunt - saving the lives of your people does not override destroying the lives of an occupied people, if the measures you take are disproportionate.

There will be arguments, obviously, over what is disproportionate, but those arguments should not be held hostage to the sensitivities of the people making them. That is why we need a stronger system of international human rights law and its enforcement, not a weaker one. I am always more sensitive to my pain than to yours.

Haaretz reported yesterday that an Arab woman died because soldiers would not let her reach an ambulance to take her to a hospital. Instead, she was taken back to her village to die. The IDF spokesman said that the husband should have informed the "local military coordination office for humanitarian cases" that an ambulance was arriving. In other words, the soldiers at the checkpoint did not have the authority -- or the desire -- to let the woman through. Read about it here.

More Palestinians have died because of Israeli checkpoints than have Sderot residents because of Kassams. In the last year alone, there was a sharp rise in such incidents, despite the fact that there were no successful suicide bombings So in 2007 ten sick Palestinians died because of checkpoints in order to save -- possibly -- the lives of Israeli citizens. See here I counted ten on B'Tselem's website. And I am not talking of lives ruined or livelihoods destroyed. I am talking about physical deaths.

Some of my readers say that these deaths were not intentional. But they were. Because these people were intentionally prevented from getting medical care. It doesn't matter, either legally or morally, whether other lives could have been saved. It doesn't matter, either legally or morally, that ambulances have been used to smuggle weapons in less than a tenth of a per cent of ambulance use by Palestinians. So don't bother to remind me about it. Certain things cannot be done. I could reduce the murder rate in Washington DC by 98% if I clamped down a dusk to dawn curfew every night and shot violaters on sight. Does that give me the right to do that?

Some of my readers will, say, "Look, war is hell; it's us or them; life is tough, get over it." To those readers I say, "Fine -- as long as you have no problem with the morality of the suicide bombers beyond the fact that they are killing your family." I understand the tribalism that motivates that. I love watching the Godfather.

What really nauseates me are the people who have no problem with wiping out neighborhoods in Gaza -- such as the current Israeli minister of the interior Meir Shitrit -- and then try to claim the moral high-ground. Look, if your morality is "It's us or them", then when they blow up our babies, they are not being immoral -- they are just doing what we are doing.

There should be no illusions.

[shenmue]

2. Well, they did say...

"If we had been made aware of the situation a path could have been cleared for the ambulance through heavy traffic in the area which was caused by a high alert around Tul Karm," the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.


I mean, it is there.

[azurnoir]

5. This is also there

Local witnesses said the husband of Fawziya Qabb pleaded with soldiers at the Jarushiya checkpoint near the town of Tul Karm to let his wife get to an ambulance waiting to take her to a Palestinian hospital but they ignored him.

or is it implicit that Palestinians even sick elderly ones are terrorists?

But then there's this

An IDF source said the soldiers at the checkpoint were unaware of the woman's circumstances because her family did not inform the local military coordination office for humanitarian cases of the ambulance's arrival.

Explain just how one "coordinates" for an emergent situation?

[sabbat hunter]

3. considering the fact

that ambulances have been used as suicide bombs, it is not unfair to want to check the ambulance out. I feel sorry that the woman had died, but there should be a way to communicate from the ambulance dispatcher to the checkpoint that there is an emergency.

[subsuelo]

6. edited

[Tom Joad]

4. Progressive, hasn't this story been posted dozens of times already?

oh wait... different person each time. Same Occupation army though.

anyway, you know that Palestinian children only dislike Israel because of what they read in their textbooks. Otherwise, why wouldn't they like the "only democracy in the Middle East"?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

7. I often don't like to post "singular" horror stories.

But what I really wanted to post was the Magnes Zionist honest reckoning of the practice.