Amjad Abu Asab, in charge of Jerusalemite prisoners, said IOF soldiers stormed the suburb before dawn and broke into the home of Dr. Amani and wreaked havoc on it before taking her away.

He said that young men threw stones at the soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets indiscriminately. He added that the wife of detainee Mohammed Ode, Amani’s brother, was hit with a bullet in the face and was hospitalized.

Fuad Al-Khafsh, the center’s director, charged the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) with intensifying attacks on occupied Jerusalem especially after its inhabitants organized solidarity campaigns with the detained hunger strikers.

Dr. Amani Ode is the daughter of liberated prisoner Mousa Ode, who is now a member of the Bustan committee that was formed after the IOA decided to raze dozens of houses in the suburb.
]]> http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/ahrar-denounces-the-iof-arrest-of-palestinian-doctor/feed/ 0 defendtherescuers http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/activist-ambulance-stopped-by-soldiers-in-beit-ummar/ http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/activist-ambulance-stopped-by-soldiers-in-beit-ummar/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:38:20 +0000 defendtherescuers http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/?p=885 ]]>

HEBRON (Ma’an) — Israeli forces blocked the entrance to southern West Bank town Beit Ummar on Thursday morning, preventing an ambulance from leaving, a local activist said.

The ambulance officer informed the soldiers that the Red Crescent vehicle was taking a woman in labor and another patient to hospital in Hebron, popular committee spokesman Muhammad Ayad Awad said.

The Red Cross and the Palestinian military liaison called Israeli officials to press for the ambulance’s passage.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the entrance was temporarily closed due to heavy snowfall, but while soldiers were clearing snow, Palestinians hurled rocks at them.

GAZA, (PIC)– Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haneyya condemned targeting civilians, ambulance and media crews and hospitals by the Israeli occupation forces in the recent aggression, considering it a serious violation of all morals and international norms.

Haneyya visited on Friday the Jordanian field hospital which had been directly targeted during the aggression on the Gaza Strip

He said that the missiles, which targeted the hospital, were carrying a message to Jordan mainly to convince Jordanian solidarity activists to leave the Palestinian territories.

Parts of the Jordanian hospital have been destroyed, especially the administrative offices of doctors and nurses.

The Palestinian premier hailed the efforts made by the medical crews in the Jordanian field hospital located in Gaza since the Furqan war, four years ago, and their determination to continue to support the people of Gaza even after bombing the hospital.

He hailed the great cooperation between the Jordanian hospital and the Palestinian ministry of health, noting that the hospital has been working round the clock in the recent aggression, even after being bombed by the IOF.
]]> http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/haneyya-bombing-jordanian-hospital-a-message-to-amman/feed/ 0 defendtherescuers http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/855/ http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/855/#comments Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:00:22 +0000 defendtherescuers http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com/?p=855 ]]>

Ibrahim Abu Al Qas (34) has been working with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for seven years. He describes his motivation for being part of the ambulance team, with the intent to rescue others in often potentially very dangerous situations. He also shares some of his latest experiences in the field… (click to read)

Please post it on your blogs, paste it into your newsletters, print it out and pin it up on your noticeboards, print it onto the back of your fliers – basically just slip it into everything possible, whether Palestine related or not. Please contact us if you can translate it into another language.

We have posted it today, to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of our fellow Gaza ambulance accompanier, Vittorio Arrigoni. We miss you, Vik.

Thursday, 16 February 2012

At approximately 02:10, IOF warplanes fired two missiles at a training site used by the Izz Addin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in Yafa Street, east of al-Tufah neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. As a result, the windows in some of the surrounding houses and establishments, particularly Mohammed al-Durrah Hospital, crushed and locals were in panic. Additionally, 10 Palestinians sustained bruises and were transferred to al-Shifa Hospital for treatment:

1. Alaa Abed Abu Ghneima, 24;

2. Sharihan Uthman Hassan Abdul Al, 23;

3. Nader Ahmd Zaqzouq, 30;

4. Shaima Uthman Abdul Al, 14;

5. Maher Fadhel Ata Allah al-Jammal, 50;

6. Maher Yahya Jamal Khalaf, 40;

7. Mukarram Tawfiq Abdul Salam Hassouna, 54;

8. Asil Radi Abdul Al, 7;

9. Mohammed Ali Mahmoud Lubbad, 22, who is a paramedic of the civil defense service; and

10. Zakariya Said Helles, 21; who is a nurse at Mohammed al-Durrah Hospital and who sustained wounds in the nose as he was hit by glass shrapnel from the crushing windows.

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– Israeli occupation forces arrested four Palestinian citizens in the West Bank on Wednesday, three of them in Al-Khalil, and assaulted a Palestinian paramedic while on duty.

Local sources said that the soldiers detained Samer Awad in Edhna village, west of Al-Khalil, who was released from Israeli prison only 20 days ago after serving eight and a half years imprisonment term.

The sources noted that the soldiers fired a sonic bomb on the house to terrorize the family before breaking into it and unleashing one of the dogs at the family members.

They said that the dog bit the mother of Awad in her hand. They said that she sustained moderate injuries, noting that the soldiers did not interfere to restrain the hound. The sources said that Awad got married only a week ago.

The soldiers confiscated a Palestinian tractor in the same village owned by Edhna municipal council.

Eyewitnesses in Beit Ummar, another village in Al-Khalil, said that the IOF troops detained two teenagers after searching their family homes.

Soldiers manning Tarqumiya military roadblock also on Wednesday assaulted a Palestinian paramedic and detained him along with his ambulance vehicle for a while before releasing him.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Medical staff with the Palestinian Red Crescent treated a settler woman Sunday afternoon when she was injured in a car accident near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

Officials with the local Civil Defense Department told Ma’an that the woman, Moria Canal, sustained wounds to her left hand.

After receiving primary care from Palestinian medics, who were called onto the scene by residents who witnessed the car crash, an Israeli medical team was called in to transfer her to hospital.

The 25-year-old woman was said to be in stable condition.

Photo: Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN

The Separation Wall, built through Tantour in 2005, separates the village from neighboring West Bank towns Beit Jala and Bethlehem

BEIT JALA, 2 May 2011 (IRIN) – Fuad Ahmed Jabo’s mother was 70 when she died of a heart attack at their home in the Palestinian village of Tantour in Beit Jala, between Israeli-controlled Jerusalem and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

They had called a Palestinian ambulance but delays at the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Tantour held it up. The Israeli ambulance services told Jabo that because his house fell inside a militarized zone, they would not be able to help. With time running out, Jabo and his nephew decided to carry her to hospital. They had gone just 200m when she died.

“It would have taken two minutes for an ambulance to get here from Jerusalem. It used to take me three minutes to get to Bethlehem but since the wall was finished, it takes at least half an hour,” Jabo, 50, told IRIN.

The Jabos are among 80 villagers in Tantour and tens of thousands of Palestinian families across the West Bank and Gaza whose access to healthcare has been restricted by Israel’s security measures, including the wall and its strict permit system.

Work on the wall began about 100m behind the Jabos’ home in 2001. By 2005, when it was finished, the family was cut off completely from the West Bank. As West Bank ID holders, they are not covered by Israeli national insurance so cannot go to hospitals in Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem. They have to cross through a checkpoint into the West Bank to get medical help. They are also not permitted to drive on the Israeli side.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 1,500 West Bank ID holders have been displaced to the Jerusalem side of the wall and now face potentially life-threatening delays when seeking medical treatment.

Palestinian patients and medical staff with West Bank IDs are only allowed to enter Jerusalem through three checkpoints – Qalandiya, Az Zaytoun and Gilo. But these are often crowded because Palestinians can only cross on foot.

Photo: Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN

Fuad Ahmed Jado stands in front of his house in Tantour, East Jerusalem, where 80 residents have been cut off from hospitals in the West Bank by the Separation Wall

“Choosing life”

Israel officials say the wall was justified. “The City of Jerusalem regrets that Palestinian terror and the continued murder of innocent youth required [the wall's] construction, which can indeed cause a decrease in the quality of life of some Jerusalem residents,” Stephan Miller, a spokesman for the Jerusalem mayor’s office, told IRIN.

“But in the decision between decreased quality of life, and life, the people of Jerusalem choose life,” he added.

Palestinian locals have borne the brunt.Eight-year-old Ala’ Zawahri suffers from mental and physical disabilities that require regular medical treatment. Her family home is in Um Al Asafir, a Palestinian village stuck between the Ha Homa Israeli settlement and Israel’s wall.

“When she was little, we could drive to Bethlehem or Beiht Sahur in less than 15 minutes,” said her mother. “Now we have to find a taxi driver who actually comes here to drive us to Gilo checkpoint. We then cross on foot carrying Ala’ in our arms. Then we take another taxi to the clinic or hospital. All together 45 shekels [US$13] one way. Most of the time this takes one to one-and-a-half hours.”

Israel’s permit system means that Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza can only enter Jerusalem with permission. In cases of emergency, it is possible to be given a permit on the same day of the request but this requires security coordination and the patient has to be transferred from a Palestinian to an Israeli ambulance. There can still be delays at checkpoints, however. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, of the 440 ambulances delayed or denied entry across the occupied Palestinian territory in 2009, two-thirds occurred at checkpoints into Jerusalem.

The blockade on Gaza, imposed since 2007 when Hamas took control of the region, has taken a devastating toll on the health system. In 2008, the Palestinian Ministry of Health referred 3,118 patients to East Jerusalem for treatment, against 382 in 2006.

OCHA said between January and December 2010, of the approximately 11,600 patients who requested permission to be treated outside the Gaza Strip, 78.1 percent were approved, 16.3 percent were delayed and 5.6 percent were denied.

For Jabo, who has suffered three heart attacks himself, the only solution is to move the wall or change his status: “What can I do in this area now if I get sick?” he asked. “Either that or make me an Israeli citizen with full rights to health insurance and access to Jerusalem or re-route the wall around me so that I am in the West Bank. I will not move.”

pg/eo/mw

At approximately 15:00 on Thursday, 07 April 2011, IOF started to bombard several areas throughout the Gaza Strip. The Israeli shelling continued until Saturday morning, 09 April 2011, during which IOF killed 18 Palestinians, including 9 civilians. The civilian victims include a woman and her daughter and two children. IOF also wounded 38 civilians, including 14 children, a woman and two paramedics, and 4 resistance activists.

[...]

At approximately 16:00 on Thursday, 07 April 2011, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel fired at least 10 artillery shells and IOF helicopter gunships opened fire in the vicinity of Gaza International Airport, southeast of Rafah. A number of shells landed near 3 Palestinian civilians, including a child, who were in the airport. Two of these civilians were killed and the third one died of his wound later:

1. Mohammed ‘Aayada al-Mahmoum, 25;

2. Khaled Isma’il Hamdan al-Dbari, 17; and

3. Saleh Jermi ‘Atiya al-Tarabin, 38.

When a number of civilians attempted to offer help to the wounded, Mos’ab Mohammed ‘Obaid al-Soufi, 20, was killed and 14 others, including 5 children and a paramedic, were wounded. Later, Faten Subhi al-Liddawi, 44, was wounded when she was near her house in al-Salam neighborhood, as IOF warplanes bombarded tunnels along the Egyptian border.

[...]

[Friday, 08 April 2011]

At approximately 19:10 on the same day, IOF positioned at border between the Gaza Strip and Israel fired two artillery shells at a gathering of Palestinian civilians near the cemetery of al-Shuja’iya neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. As a result, two civilians, including a child, were killed:

1. Mahmoud Wa’el al-Jaru, 10; and

2. Bilal Mohammed al-’Ar’ir,. 24.

Another 10 civilians, including 4 children and a paramedic, were wounded.