The ambulances of Tulkarem

Rachel Boyd from Tulkarem
21st August 2002

Things are very intense here. The week before we got to Tulkarem there was one targeted assassination with two civilians also killed {one garage mechanic just opening up his work, shot in the chest and died slowly because no ambulance was allowed to pick him up, one 17 year old student also in the wrong place at the wrong time - shot on his way home from collecting his exam results). On our way here from our nonviolence training and affinity-group-forming in Bethlehem, we stayed a night in Jerusalem and met a woman called Rebecca who had been ambulance riding in Tulkarem for that week. Hearing about her picking up these bodies, and other stories she related, I think all our group were probably thinking that "Have a boring day" was going to be the most appropiate greeting for each other.

Daily life and ambulance drivers
The first few days stayed quite happily uneventful. In December I wrote about how the phrase 'daily humiliation' had never meant anything to me until I saw for myself the power 18-year old Israeli soldiers have over middle aged Palestinians, and the petty things they can do with it, while the Palestinians react with such amazing dignity. This trip I'm learning more about the phrase "daily life under occupation".

Most of what I am doing here is riding with ambulances. The idea is that an international presence will make things safer for the ambulance drivers who are prone to getting harassed, sometimes beaten up, and occasionally shot at and killed. Also the white face and foreign passport tend to help the ambulance speed through checkpoints a little quicker.

I heard from both a friend of mine who had been riding ambulances in Nablus, and someone I met here who is in Qalqilia, that in both times it had happened that one night when no international stayed up with them, the ambulance team had been beaten by soldiers. There's quite a small team here, partly because there are only two ambulances left that haven't been involved in an accident (actually they fixed one a couple of days ago, so they're up to three again now - note how I strive for accuracy) but there are lots of stories. Ziad was telling us today about being stopped at 1.30am just by the hospital, being blindfolded, hands tied behind his back, and having cigarettes stubbed out on his arm. Adiy, who laughs alot, and is generally always smiling, told me about when he was stopped by soldiers who asked "Why are you smiling? Why are you smiling?" and bent his thumb back until it broke.

The worst story is Sofia's. She was sitting next to Ibrahim last March when soldiers opened fire without warning. Ibrahim pushed her head down, so she survived, but he was killed. Last week Rebecca rode in that ambulance when it was taken to the Red Crescent HQ in Ramallah. They had trouble at checkpoint explaining all the blood on the ceiling. She told me about explaining it to one soldier who just could not possibly believe that it had been Israeli soldiers who had done it. I'm afraid it doesn't take long here to be able to believe that kind of thing pretty quickly. I saw the ambulance in the car park in Ramallah, and it had a serious amount of bullet holes in the windscreen. We have also seen footage starting just after those shots, where the tank smashed into the ambulance and then swerves deliberatley to smash into another ambulance behind it.

Going on ambulance rides
So, obviously with our daily wish for a boring day, we have no idea if our presence is helping prevent any harrassment. (Although one night shift a few days ago, an ambulance was stopped by a tank driving right up to it with its gun barrel pointed. Everyone got out and was made to lift their shirts up and Cindy said in her american accent "Do you want to see my passport?", and then they were free to go) But we have been told that the time it takes to get through checkpoints has reduced in such a way that one worker told me it was like an awareness of our presence had meant that all checkpoints had been told to go easier on ambulances.

Many of the trips made are tranfering patients to the bigger hospital in Nablus. That's where the nearest kidney dialysis machine is, so some people have to make that journey three times a week. It used to take 30 minutes to get there. Doing this journey is the bit where the 'Ah - life under occupation' penny dropped for me. On Sunday we were made to wait three hours at a mobile checkpoint, and were given no decent reason. There were four other ambulances with us. Getting to Nablus can be quite a nightmare for an ambulance, but other people can't get anywhere at all. I've now passed so many checkpoints where we may have got through okay, but there's a huge crowd of Palestinians not going anywhere at all.

On Saturday I was waiting at one checkpoint in our lovely air conditioned ambulance, watching the scene. I could imagine how hot and irritable the soldiers must get standing in the sun, with their heavy kit and big helmets on, and I know how much I hate wearing my bike helmet when it's hot. And there's just three or four of them, and they're really young as usual, and they're making a group of around a hundred Palestinians wait in the sun, and it doesn't seem clear to anyone why.

It's a scene repeated whenever (and it hasn't been that often) there's people travelling around other than in ambulances. So what must it seem like to the Palestinians? Most have been under almost constant curfew for two months, and even before that when they were allowed around their own town, movement between cities is extremely difficult.

Someone said to us "This is the last place in the world under occupation", which I thought was quite a daft thing to say, because I can name others. But I can't imagine conditions in Tibet, Western Sahara or West Papua being anything like this. Maybe people don't have political freedom, but I'm guessing they're allowed out of their homes to go shopping, and that they can travel to their place of work.

Affect on childhood
Today the curfew was lifted for more than for a few hours, for the first time in two weeks. But I write this to the sound of intense gunfire. I'm in an internet cafe surrounded by little boys playing wargames, and I'm finding it quite off putting.

We went to a scout group in the refugee camp two days ago, and they told us that they aim to provide something for the kids which had nothing to do with the conflict.

They said that in the day it's not so bad because of all the other noises (curfew isn't strictly enforced in the camps), but at night "we sleep to the music of bullets".

We then walked around the building, and though there was a lovely castle made from cardboard, there were also posters everywhere of people killed by soldiers, and even a couple of collages made from them.

When I was waiting in that ambulance for those three hours, the kids on a balcony above us keep saying and pointing "soldier, soldier" "tank, tank", like I've heard kids in England say "dog, dog".

Things get less boring
I was doing the night ambulance shift on Monday night when they invaded the refugee camp at 3am. We heard a fair bit of firing, and in the morning were told that one or two people had been killed, and maybe five were injured. The ambulance was allowed in at that time to pick up a woman, but wasn't allowed back for anyone else or the body.

Curfew normally isn't rigoursly imposed, so groups of kids and brave adults hang round outside, ducking into alleys and houses when they need to (although there's not really much to do outside when pretty much everything is closed). Curfew yesterday was very different. It was incredibly tense, no one was on the streets, and tanks went passed every now and then.

But as documenting and human shield work is kinda what we're here for, five of us decided to try and get into the camp. We made a big "International observors" poster, and agreed how to act - ie, never run, and make it clear we're internationals. We got to the edge of the camp, and there were a few people outside, mostly kids, and our arabic speaker just started talking to them when there was a sound of a jeep behind us, and all the palestinians legged it and we did the same. Doh.

But it did break the ice, and we were taken to one house which the soldiers had been in the night before because it had such a high roof. I was majorly paranoid about looking out because last December we had visited the family of someone who had been shot looking at a tank when on his roof. The palestinians obviously took it very seriously too - there was no one on any other roof, and any kid that ventured out with us got pulled back. We saw the tanks, APCs and jeeps on the roads surrounding us, which certainly made me feel very reticent to leave in a hurry. However, after they showed us what little food they had left, and then it became obvious that if we didn't leave soon they'd feed us the lot, we had to make a move. But that was after a coupla cups of tea and stories including people having seen 6 or 7 year olds being used as human shields that morning, the father of the house telling us about being used as a human shield a few months back, and the 12 year old son showing us his scars from being beaten by soldiers at a checkpoint. The father said the son and his two older brothers were held for 3 days in a jeep with no water.

So, I was pretty scared in that camp, and I'm very glad I don't have to live there and have that happen on a semi-regular basis. Pretty terrifying collective punishment going on.

I'm still not clear on the details, but the story we're getting is that there was one person killed who was a political activist not involved in the armed struggle. It was meant to be my shift when the call came to collect the body, but I was late for it, so Mat went. The body was quite mutilated, like it had been beaten with rifle butts, and there were bullet wounds around the body, including one close range under the chin.

This afternoon I stayed for ambulance duty, but the others went to visit the house where he was killed. The story they got was that he had been sleeping in one house, and they threw some sort of bomb in around 3am, and he was wounded, then escaped onto the roof and was shot and wounded some more, and jumped across to another house and got inside, and soldiers followed him in and then left him there in a bedroom wounded. When he heard that ambulances weren't allowed in, apparently he said something about knowing that was it. And the soldiers returned at 11am and killed him.

Note how at 7am we heard that one or two people had been killed, and now this story is that this man was killed at 11am. It's really very hard to follow what goes on. No journalists are allowed in Tulkarem, but I hope they would be better at it than me. Whatever happened, it doesn't seem to be what I just read on the BBC website, which only mentioned "a gunmen who died during an army raid on Tulkarm in the West Bank".

Nothing's been in the Guardian yet, but that's more likely to be closer to our story, seeing as we're providing it. Jonathan Steele came to visit us when I was on an ambulance ride. I was quite gutted he didn't wait around for me, thinking my British Jewish credentials would make me the most interesting in the group. In the end the old boy network won over. The other two Brits here are at Kings College Cambridge, which apparently he was quite excited by, because he went there too. grrr. (Although it's been quite fun teasing the young anarchists about them buying into our sick elitist system. he he.) So look out for us in the next few days.

When considering what sources to trust, one I'd steer away from is the IDF. A jewish friend in Jerusalem told me that me riding with ambulances would serve two purposes. One being to keep the palestinians safer, the other to make sure they weren't transporting bombs. I mentioned this when I met B't selem, the Israeli human rights group. They told me that of the five or six cases reported, all but one of them were outright lies. They did find evidence for one case of a belt being hidden under a child, but the other cases they could disprove.

One example they gave me was when the IDF issued a press release that they had arrested a suicide bomber posing as a doctor. He actually turned out to be a doctor after all. They questionned him for a while, tried to turn him into a collaborator, and let him go. One hour later a B't selem fieldworker spoke to him on the phone. At this point the IDF press office was still insisting he was a suicide bomber and that he was still being detained.

Okay, my eyes are going funny, and even though the internet cafe has started to play Michael Jackson, I should make a move. I shall try and write again sooner so I don't have so much to say.

Lve to you all,

Rachel

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