Reuters Features
For Gaza's Sick, Checkpoint Reform Talk Rings Hollow
Date: Thu Apr 15, 9:08 AM ET
By Cynthia Johnston
EREZ, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Mamdouh, a teen-age Palestinian leukemia patient, gingerly clambers onto a plastic chair balanced atop a luggage cart for a ride through an Israeli checkpoint and out of Gaza for cancer treatment.
The 15-year-old boy wears a cap to cover a head made bald by chemotherapy and is too sick to walk unaided. But Israeli authorities will not let him pass the fortified Erez crossing into Israel by ambulance or private car for security reasons.
"This is our first experience with this," his mother said, declining to be named. "It's very difficult ... Last time, we came in an ambulance."
Israel, with a web of checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza it says serves to contain Palestinian militants, plans to ease friction with the Palestinian population by introducing new training and technology to speed up security clearances.
It says the changes will apply to an initial seven roadblocks and focus on avoiding hold-ups to civilians or their goods without clear cause and on smoothing passage of ambulances or anyone in need of medical care.
But Gazans, whose shortages of medical equipment make access to outside hospitals essential, laugh at talk of improving roadblocks -- a hallmark of Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says its ambulances have not been allowed to freely pass from Gaza to Israel since early February, and that seriously ill patients must cross by foot.
"Our patients go to the West Bank and Israel by themselves in bad condition," said Mouaweya Hassanein, head of emergency for the health ministry, as rows of white ambulances emblazoned with red letters sat motionless outside his office.
"Our nurses carry canisters of oxygen on their shoulders and families take children in their arms and carry them."
Israeli security sources said patients may pass by ambulance through Erez into Israel for critical emergency cases, and two ambulances are on standby on the Israeli side to help the sick.
ISRAELI CLAMPDOWN AFTER MILITANT ATTACK
But they said Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) vehicles had been barred from crossing Erez, except for emergency cases, since a failed March 6 assault on the checkpoint by Palestinian militants, some of whom were linked to President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) movement.
Israel says it has had to restrict ambulance passage because militants have often used ambulances to bypass security checks at roadblocks. That has left soldiers with no choice but to search vehicles for armed men and explosives.
Palestinian medics deny the charges.
A doctor from Gaza City's Shifa hospital pointed to the elderly cancer patient he was helping into a wheelchair at Erez.
"Could someone like this man be a danger to them?" Doctor Mohammad Sbeih asked. "He is not a danger to them. It is not a justification."
Hassanein said that at least 45 Palestinians have died at roadblocks in Palestinian areas after being prevented from reaching timely medical care since the start of a three-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian uprising.
In a 2003 report, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said more than 70 percent of West Bank Palestinians reported facing difficulty reaching clinics and hospitals due to roadblocks and curfews. For the sick, the crossing at Erez is a daunting one. Some patients are too ill to attempt the journey.
"They stay here to await God," Hassanein said, adding that Gaza hospitals were in dire need of medical supplies. "Many die in the intensive care unit in Gaza and the surgical department."
Patients at Erez -- headed for treatment in Jerusalem or the West Bank -- must pass a Palestinian police post into a long transit hall, and through revolving gates and a metal detector, before they reach the Israeli side for more checks.
Some of the patients walk. Others are carried and some ride wheelchairs or sit on the luggage cart most of the way across.
One cardiac patient died of heart failure after walking across Erez, according to Hassanein.
Israel disputes that, and calls Erez a symbol of daily cooperation between Israel and Palestinians.
SHOOTING AT AMBULANCES
Wael Qadan, director of emergency medical services for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), said any change in the checkpoint regime for ambulances was "toward the negative."
He said PRCS ambulances were often delayed at checkpoints, and could not pass by Erez. The PRCS has recorded 285 attacks on its ambulances since September 2000, and says 12 of its personnel have been killed.
The ambulances have frequently operated in zones of conflict between the Israeli army and militant groups.
"There is no respect for ambulances," said Gaza ambulance driver Khalil al-Khatib, who works for the health ministry. "Every day we have a problem."
"Today the ambulance is like every other car in the street," he said. "If they shoot at you, it is normal -- like saying hello."
SOURCE
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