Apartheid

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overcrowded. For example, Ramallah is only 15 km from Jerusalem, yet, if an accident takes
place close to Ramallah and it has overcrowded hospitals, and the ambulance which is
transferring the wounded to hospital has a West Bank plate number, then the ambulance (in
most cases) must seek another hospital in the West Bank (much more than 15 km away), since
it is not allowed to enter what Israel (alone in the world) considers Israeli territory (east
Jerusalem). Over 277 villages in the West Bank (containing 14 per cent of the population) do
not have access to health care facilities.
Another aspect of ethnically differentiated access to health care and emergency
medical relief is the lack of qualified personnel for Palestinian patients. In the Palestinian
territories there are only 12 doctors per 10,000 persons. In Israel, on the other hand, there are
28 doctors per 10,000 persons. 479
There are other, more repressive, Israeli military practices, which, according to Al
Haq, have been occurring during the past 25 years. For example, in December 1986, the
Israeli army delayed ambulances carrying Bir Zeit university students on the way to the
Ramallah hospital. There are a number of humanitarian agencies (e.g. UNRWA, the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency), which have repeatedly reported interference with their
efforts to collect, transport and treat wounded Palestinians. On January 24, 2001, a 28-yearold
woman who had suffered a heart attack and was being driven to a hospital died during a
45-minute wait at an army checkpoint. The woman had previously been prevented several
times from passing through the same checkpoint and had been forced to walk about 300 yards
along a dirt road carrying her recently born baby, her fifth child. 480
In 1987 Israel prevented hospitals from increasing the number of ambulances by
systematically denying license permits to prospective ambulance drivers. 1987 was the year
that marked the beginning of the first uprising, thus medical equipment was essential as
people were being killed and wounded on a daily basis.
During both Intifadas, curfews were imposed regularly, but according to international
humanitarian law, in times of war, parties of a conflict must reach agreements concerning the
evacuation of the wounded, sick, children and others. At the same time, Israel as the
occupying power should provide adequate food, water, medical supplies and health services to
those living under occupation. 481 Yet, during the Intifadas, Palestinians under curfew were
479 Palestinian Development Plan 1997: 11. The so-called ‘by-pass’ roads or ‘safety’ roads, between Jewish
settlements and enclaves in Palestine, and between these and Israel are de facto roads for ‘Jews Only’. See N.N.:
The Israeli Apartheid Maps, no date.
480 Al Haq 1988: 70; N.N.: Palestinian Dies at Israeli Checkpoint - Hospital, January 24, 2001; In a first reaction
to Reuters, Peter Lerner, spokesman for the military-run Israeli civil administration of the West Bank denied that
the woman had died at the checkpoint. He contended that ‘from what we know’ there had been a ‘short check’ at
the checkpoint and then she had died in the hospital in an operation for a caesarean child delivery. But Moussa
Abu Hmeid, director of West Bank hospitals, challenged the Israeli version of the story and said the caesarean
operation had been carried out over a month earlier ‘and we have all the records to show it’. He said: ‘She died at
the checkpoint because they prevented her from crossing’. Ibid. A similar situation occurred when Amira Nassir,
a 50-year-old diabetic died en route to a hospital in Jenin. Israeli troops refused to let her car through a roadblock
and an Israeli patrol jeep stopped the car again as the family member driving her attempted another route. See
N.N.: Palestinian Dies, Kept by Blockade from Hospital, March 14, 2001. Three months later, a Palestinian
woman said she gave birth inside a car at an Israeli checkpoint near Jericho after Israeli soldiers refused her
access to a hospital. Jamla Ihreizat told Reuters from her hospital bed in Jericho that soldiers manning a
roadblock at the edge of the city had not believed she was pregnant until she delivered her baby girl. Mother and
child later arrived at a hospital in critical condition, but were responding well to treatment. See Ass’adi:
Palestinian Gives Birth at Israeli Checkpoint, 2001. By February 2002, however, three Palestinian children had
died after being born at Israeli checkpoints during the first 16 months of the Second Intifada. According to the
human rights organization, The Palestine Monitor, they would all have lived if the cars or ambulances carrying
their mothers to hospitals had been allowed to pass normally. They were among 245 other Palestinian children
who were killed by Israelis during the same period. See N.N.: Israeli Police Murder 14 Year Old Boy, February
12, 2002.
481 Article 55, IV Geneva Convention, 1949