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• بالعربي الفصيح

Do you support any amendment to the Constitution as a solution to the Lebanese Presidential Vacuum? No 55.4% Yes 30.0% Not Sure 14.6% Total Votes: 130

If Americans Knew1: Birth and Death at a Checkpoint2
By Farah Salka, Staff Writer

Beirut, Lebanon –The following is a story of a Palestinian family. As Joel Kovel said in his book, Overcoming Zionism, it does not mean that what we are going to say is representative of Palestinians as a whole, though we have encountered enough stories like this family which seems only indicative of something real within these people who have endured more than seems humanely possible and still retain that spark which allows the flame of hope to be kept alive’.3 The story goes like this. It was time for Rula to give birth, so she was heading with her husband to the nearest hospital in the West Bank. Unavoidably, they had to pass some checkpoints on their way. Avoidable however, was the fact that the Israeli soldiers simply did not let the pregnant woman pass through. Rula ended up giving birth on the ground, behind a concrete block. She held the pains of pregnancy for nine months, and it only took a couple of minutes at that checkpoint for the unwelcome baby girl to die.

Rula and Daoud had previously planned on calling their newborn Mirna. They had prepared for the event by borrowing clothes for the coming Mirna from Rula’s sister. The family’s financial situation after several years of unemployment made buying new clothes out of the question. Now, they are standing at the checkpoint – Mirna dead, Rula in awe and Daoud flabbergasted, with the bag of unneeded clothes next to them.

‘We sat down next to the barbed wire fence. There were seven or eight soldiers and two jeeps and they had food and tea or coffee. They were talking and they all ignored us…’ Rula crawled towards a rock nearby to lie down while her husband was sill pleading with soldiers. She did not feel comfortable being seen in this utterly degrading state. She then started yelling that she has eventually given birth. Following that cry was another cry – her baby was dead. The soldiers got nervous and brought their weapons out urging Daoud to bring his wife into their sight. Although he tried his best convincing them that she was only giving birth there because they would not let her give it somewhere else, they would not understand. He had to scream back to his wife that his life was in danger so she would calm down. When the soldiers later on decided that it was fine for them to pass and take the ambulance to the hospital, the umbilical cord was on the ground, between the baby and the mother, full of sand and dirt. The girl was in her arms, all covered with blood. He had to get rid of it so he used two rocks to do so. Daoud ended his account saying, ‘The human mind cannot make sense of something like this; it is something that transcends nationality or religion. We were put in a situation of the most terrible humiliation imaginable. The whole time I was pleading with the soldier in Hebrew and in Arabic. Every word that my wife yelled, I told to him.’

The IDF spokesman declared that the testimony of the pregnant woman was false and that it had contradicted with what the questioned soldiers at the scene have said. He claimed also that there was no restriction whatsoever on letting Daoud and his wife pass. He said that the woman had given birth after crossing the checkpoint and not while she was there. In any case, he explained that if it was discovered that their story was really the case, then it sure would have been an ‘unintended accident’ and that the soldiers would be treated with utmost severity.

The midwife, who works at the hospital, testified that she was called urgently around 7 o’clock in that morning to the intensive care department. In the delivery room, she found a woman carrying a baby soaked with blood and dead. She was about to remove the umbilical cord when she realised that it was already cut. After asking the woman how that had happened, she explained that her husband had cut it using a rock on the checkpoint.

Such incidents that are repeated over and over again leave their marks on the shattered families that experience them. They devastate lives and make the most peaceful person unconsciously and involuntarily change into a violent beast. These incidents are never presented as headlines in news reports, not even as passing news in the US; they are only sidelined and repressed. The interview with Daoud was done by an Israeli journalist for the somehow liberal Israeli paper, Haartez. Such a story might sometimes flow in the Israeli media. However, it is an improbability to hear of incidents that are as gravely real as this in international media, let alone an impossibility in American media, which works on covering more for the reputation of Israel than Israeli media itself.

After all, it is absolutely part and parcel of life to have accidents happening in life. The problem is the hard task of differentiating between an actual accident and a fabricated, apprehensive one, especially in the occupied territories. For instance, the Palestinian ministry of health has reported that 68 women delivering their babies in the midst of delays at Israeli checkpoints, resulting in the deaths of four women and 34 newborns since June 2003.4 All these repetitions are categorised as unrelated accidents. Having a concussion grenade ‘accidentally’ thrown into a swarming school playground is another example.5 ‘Mistakenly’ setting 1200 Palestinian olive trees on fire, of which the ‘wall’ will pass right through their track coincidentally, is a further illustration. All these fall under the category of innocent by-standing accidents, Israeli style.

To be continued…

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