By Anne Gwynne in Nablus
If crossing Kalandia and on to Ramallah brought tears, then travelling
to Nablus from Ramallah by UPMRC ambulance is beyond tears, beyond
words, beyond description, beyond anything I could have imagined experiencing. All senses are numbed; you ride on a sea of
despair
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The roads are empty - for Palestinians are not allowed
to travel in their own country. On the Western side of
the huge dual carriageway, miles and miles of
‘confiscated land’ lie empty - with every living
thing removed by order of the illegal Israeli
Occupation Force. The East side is garlanded with
miles of high-electrified fencing - barriers that
enclose the thousands of illegal houses of the illegal
Israeli occupiers. We face roadblock after roadblock,
wait after wait, search after search of the ambulance
with the icy wind blowing in through the thrown-open
doors. Everything is removed from the ambulance and
everyone ordered out – except me with my bulletproof
EU passport. Desperately ill patients lie on the
roadside in the rain – the wet cold chills to the
bone. Doctors and drivers are insulted and bullied by
insolent Israeli soldiers. At one roadblock, a young
soldier spent 10 minutes picking at his spots in our
door-mirror, while his mates searched the ambulance.
At the Huwarah checkpoint (the last before we reached
Nablus) an ambulance from the other direction was
stopped and held for 30 minutes with its maximum
emergency indicators going. Our ambulance waited 25
minutes there – I thought this was a long time;
later in my stay I would consider this a short wait.
At the road block /checkpoint everyone, as usual, gets
out at the one end and then walks until some minibus
or taxi comes along to pick them up – but only, of
course, if they have the money to pay and, with 70%
out of work, most do not. So they keep on walking in
straggling crowds on an exposed hillside, in
torrential rain and with a freezing wind sweeping
across the hills. Over-burdened, wet, cold, probably
hungry people carrying children on one arm and baggage
in the other, endlessly tramping through expanses of
muddy water, piles of rubble, huge holes, and
road-sides torn up by tank tracks.
The Doctor told me that the Director of a local school
had a heart attack in a village, which is
‘closed.’ A CLOSED VILLAGE is an area of
settlement to which all roads have been blocked by
massive barriers half a mile or so from the houses: an
area into which, and out of which, no one and nothing
is allowed to pass. So the ambulance could not go
there. A neighbour drove the school director around
the mountains to the checkpoint, where the Israelis
would not let him through without proof that he was
suffering a heart attack. In the long wait, the man
died and the driver asked the guard “Is this enough
proof for you?” This is a death which is not put
down in the statistics as ‘killed by the
Israelis,’ but, of course, it is.
This morning, a 5-year old child was taken to hospital
suffering from acute appendicitis. The Israelis
refused to let her mother accompany her because they
said that the ambulance then became a taxi! Imagine a
tiny 5-year-old in acute pain, forced to stay alone in
the hospital for an operation. This would not happen
anywhere else.
And then we reach the outskirts of Nablus, formerly
the most beautiful city on the West Bank, the
powerhouse of Palestine. We drive in along the
once-elegant main road with its dual carriageway
boulevards and colonnaded promenades of shops. Now
they are strafed and covered in bullet holes with
hundreds of shot-out windows; everything at street
level is boarded-up. Where was the street? ‘This is
not a road’, says our driver – ‘where is the
road?’ We bumped and bottomed and rocked and jolted
along a wilderness with huge mounds of rubble and
piles of rocks to negotiate – a journey whose
jolting pain must have contributed to the death of
many an injured person.
The bombing of more than 200 factories has destroyed
most of Nablus’ formerly thriving industry. Two
schools and a mosque have been demolished, and more
than 300 houses completely destroyed – tanked or
bulldozed; whole blocks have been gutted by bombs from
F16’s or missiles from helicopter gunships. I saw
the Municipal Building reduced to ashes together with
ALL the civil records of 186,000 people, and the
Ministry of Health, which has been denied access by
20-foot high roadblocks to either side. We passed a
house where eight people were bulldozed to death (‘a
mistake,’ said the Israelis), the house where a
75-year-old woman was shot to death, and another where
three young women were killed. Further along, I saw
the house where 9 people were massacred, and another
where two women were killed and a third lost her legs.
During this preview of the sights of Nablus, we passed
rows of gutted shops (now re-stocked with the help of
bank loans), a school covered with bullet holes, and
another with huge shell holes in the walls.
At the UPMRC Centre stood an ambulance with bullet
holes in the sides and rear, but also in the handles
of its stretchers – bullets in the handles of a
stretcher! It seems that soldiers routinely shoot at
Medics’ hands as they carry the injured and dying.
At the Centre, bullets constantly ping along the roof
as soldiers from the notorious checkpoint on the hill
take pot shots at the city - or the ‘settlers’ on
the hilltops do. Nablus is exquisitely situated in a
bowl with a flat base surrounded by the white rocky
mountainsides, which glow in the sun. On the hills to
the West and to the East are Israeli Military Camps
numbers 1 and 2, and on the other hilltops the guns of
the ‘settlers’ are ready to kill. From these
encampments, the tanks and armoured cars roll in every
evening to enforce the 6 to 6 curfew. Anyone venturing
outside can, and often is, murdered by Israeli guns.
This afternoon, we passed the street where courageous
residents have removed a huge iron gate, which
effectively cut Nablus in two. Sidewalks do not exist,
because the tanks, which roam the city in search of
prey during the night, are so big that when they turn
any corner they tear up the pavement leaving huge
holes, often taking the corners of houses with them
too. Tanks have destroyed gardens and trees – wide
avenues of palms and tree ferns have simply been
uprooted and driven over. Walking, driving, working,
and learning are all impossible here – impossible
that is to anyone but the people of Nablus, whose
bravery and strength seems without limit. Their
resolve, courage and determination never to leave
their city is palpable – everywhere. Their welcome
is warm, they are full of affection and friendship,
their banter is laughter-filled, and in their eyes is
a look so direct that you feel they see right inside
you and that they let you see into their souls. Their
sense of fun pervades everything and their hospitality
and generosity is legendary.
On my first morning, the delightful youngsters of the
Medical Volunteers insist I join them for a breakfast
they prepared themselves – delicious pitta, hummus,
fuul, tea and fun. The notice on the door of the
kitchen reads “help yourself, by yourself - no need
to ask – what is ours is yours”. They are
extremely interested in each other and in me, and they
want to know what my country is like. They ask if
there is anyone in the world who cares about them.
They want to know everything – language, foods, and
customs. Denied the universal right to education and
cooped up in villages for three months at a time,
prevented from attending school and university by the
closures - it is amazing how much they know. Their
intense curiosity is touching.
The Medical Centre here was set up 6 months ago.
Nablus has six hospitals, the largest containing 80
beds. Two are Municipal (free) and 4 are private.
There are sufficient beds in normal times, but the
incursions, murders and injuries place a great strain
upon these resources. The clinic here charges 5
shekels to see the doctor and three shekels for
medicine, which can be very costly. If anyone cannot
pay, he does not have to – the director feels that
even this little money can mean the difference between
a meal for the family and no meal at all.
So, I come to the end of my first day in Nablus –
everyone has a story to tell but I have been typing
for a long time and it is very cold in the evening
with no heating – no one has any oil for that
because the Israelis do not allow it. All this would
be a tough movie to watch – but these are real
people, suffering every moment of their lives. This is
a great city in the middle of Palestine – how on
earth can we let these crimes happen?
Anne Gwynne is working with the Union of
Palestinian Medical Relief Committees in Nablus.
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