Birth and death at a roadblock

Sunday September 14, 2008 00:13 by Doha Alwazany - Tanslated & Edited by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

File Photo

“My wife is dying in childbirth, please allow us to cross!”

“… Where is your permit?”

 “I am telling you my wife is dying, and you are asking me for a permit?”

This was part of the dialogue between Palestinian resident Moayyad Abu Reeda, 29, and a soldier at Huwwara military roadblock, south of Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, as he was trying to take his wife, who was in labor, to a hospital in Nablus.

He told the horrific details to Al Khaleej, “the Gulf Newspaper”, describing what happened that night, when his wife, pregnant in her seventh month, woke up screaming and suffering from pain in her abdomen. He brought a car immediately and began to drive her to the hospital.

“It was nearly 1:30 in the morning, we arrived at the Zatara Israeli roadblock.  There was a car there and the soldiers were searching it, it took us nearly 10 minutes until it was our turn…my wife was screaming and I asked a soldier to allow us to cross, but he walked slowly towards us.  I told him that my wife was in labor and that we needed to get her to a hospital immediately”, Moayyad said.

“The soldier continued to walk slowly, and saw my wife and my mother in the car, and then he went to talk with his superior officer who came over to the car, along with a number of soldiers, and asked, ‘What’s the problem?’.  I once again said that my wife was in labor and we needed to pass to reach a hospital.  But then he said, ‘Where is your permit?’.  I told him, ‘My wife is in early labor, she could die at any moment and you are asking me for a permit?!!’.  Then he told me that I could not pass without it”.

Abu Reeda added that his wife was screaming the whole time, and was in severe pain.  He said he even went to the officer and asked him to approach the vehicle to see his bleeding wife and even see the head of the infant …”

“I could not tolerate the situation any more, I asked the officer to detain me and my mother at the roadblock and to allow my sister to transport my wife to the hospital, but he refused and insisted that she must obtain a permit to cross the roadblock’, Abu Reeda said, “ then we phoned the Red Crescent and they dispatched am ambulance, by the time the ambulance arrived, half of the infants body was out, they immediately examined my wife and the infant and found out that the infant is dead as he could not breathe”.  

The medics extracted the dead infant and focused their attention on the wife as she was in a critical condition, the soldiers just stood there and watched, and the wife was finally allowed through the roadblock.

 After the issue was exposed by the media, an Israeli military spokesperson said that the officer in charge was sentenced to 14 DAYS imprisonment . He was also moved to a different battalion. That’s how much the human life is worth to the army, this is the Democracy is action, this is the morality of the army and respect for human life, welcome to the new millennium.

palestine | human rights | human interest saed at imemc dot org