Sa'ed al-Atrash, Paramedic

Today [Monday, 6 August], while I was on my shift at the Red Crescent in 'Araba, the traffic-control officer at our station in Jenin, Ibrahim Yaseen, notified me that Kamelah Ibrahim, from Barta'a, was suffering heart problems and needed assistance and to be taken to hospital. The traffic-control officer added that members of the village council had arranged with the Israeli DCO for the ambulance to enter the village.

Around 6:50A.M., Fayez Ashkar and I drove toward the Barta'a crossing . We arrived at the crossing at 7:08 A.M. and drove up to the gate because we knew our entry had been coordinated. A soldier and several security officers standing there ordered us to move back. We backed up, stopping about twenty meters away from the crossing. We thought we would only have to wait until they finished checking the car in front of us and that they would then call us for inspection and let us pass.

About 25-30 minutes after we arrived, we called our hotline center. Fayez, who speaks good Hebrew, got out of the ambulance and went to the gate to try to convince the guards to let us pass. He came back and said that he failed to convince them. They said our matter had not been coordinated and that we would have to wait. While waiting, we called our station a few times, and at 7:50 A.M., the Red Crescent official in charge, Ibrahim Dababneh, told us to come back to the hotline center.

Before we left and headed for Jenin, a volunteer from Machsom Watch came and asked us why we were there. We told her we were trying to pass through the gate to pick up a patient who was in life-threatening condition and take her to the hospital. While the woman called someone on her cell phone, one of the security officers signaled to us to come to the gate. At the gate, the security-company guard told me to go back. At this stage, we decided to return to Jenin.

In the meantime, relatives of the patient took her by car to the crossing, hoping we would be there, but we had already gone back to Jenin. We arrived at our station in Jenin around 8:40 A.M. About five minutes after we arrived, Ibrahim Dababneh told us that a man named Muneer, from the Israeli Civil Administration, asked that we return to the crossing and said that the ambulance could pass through. We drove back, arriving at the crossing around 9:05 A.M. When we arrived, dozens of residents told us that the woman had died a few minutes earlier, while waiting at the crossing. We examined her and found that she had recently passed away. We wanted to take her to the hospital, but her family insisted that she be taken back to the village to be buried there.

At the gate, the Israeli officer Muneer asked us why we had been so late. I asked him if he was serious, and he said that he wasn't. He stayed with the family and tried to calm the residents, who were very angry.

Sa'ed Ghaleb Husni al-Atrash, 36, married with four children, is a paramedic and ambulance driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin and 'Araba. His testimony was given to Atef Abu a-Rub on 6 August 2007 at the first-aid center in 'Araba, Jenin district.