Thanks to Shadi Fadda's PALESTINE TODAY for the following story:

==============================================================

Monday February 27, 2006
Fighting for Life in Balata: Eyewitness Account

Jareer, shot by IOF in Balata

25 Doctors and medics have been killed, scores injured, and 85
ambulances destroyed in more than 1,300 attacks on ambulances since Sep.
2000.

By Anne Gwynne

PalestineChronicle.com

Jareer Qanadilo is an ambulance driver, a man who has over the past five
years brought hope, help and life-saving skills to hundreds of injured
and assaulted people in the great northern Palestinian city of Nablus
and in the refugee camp of Balata.

Balata is the biggest refugee camp in Palestine, as well as the
longest-standing as its 100-year lease was signed with the Douwekaat
Family of al-balad-Balaata in 1952.

I tried to call Jareer many times yesterday: last night Muntasser, the
Jenin MRS Driver, told me that Jareer was in theatre undergoing surgery,
in the ultra-modern Nablus Specialty Hospital: this morning he is in
Intensive Care.

On Thursday afternoon he was in Balata, where he had been since midnight
February 18-19, almost continuously saving lives, when he himself was
hit and seriously wounded, at point-blank range by an Israeli soldier,
as he tried to take the critically-wounded children to hospital.

A piece of shrapnel was embedded in his hand and a very large piece had
sliced into his leg, severing the artery. When Feras al-Bakri tried to
take him to hospital, in a life or death situation, the Israeli soldiers
told him, “good, let him die, you can go only after he is dead” and held
the ambulance for more than 60 minutes at the camp exit, according to
Feras. But Jareer refused to die and, thanks to the depth of his medical
knowledge and the skill of the young Volunteers of MRS, he is still with
us in ICU today: he lost more than 2 liters of blood, requiring four
units of transfusion. Hundreds of liters of blood have been transfused
to the wounded, but there are no shortages in Nablus – quite the
contrary, queues of donors wind their way around the center only too
willing to give blood, however frequently it is needed.

Thursday was the 6th day of the total blockade and siege of the Camp:
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) are still there today, occupying dozens
of homes as temporary barracks and sniper positions, devastating dozens
of home, killing 9 youths among them 2 children, wounding more than 55
youngsters, several journalists, a doctor and medical staff, arresting
more than 40, and devastating or demolishing schools, goldsmiths
workshops, shops and family houses, such as the Hamimi home, the
Ishtiiwi home and the ‘Adel’Ayl 5-family home.

Jareer, as I said, is the driver of a UPMRC (now MRS) ambulance: he is
not on the IOF lists ‘wanted’ or ‘for assassination’ and he is not a
member of any armed group. He is a fighter and a great one, for the past
5 years fighting to save the lives of the countless hundreds of, mostly,
youngsters shot by the soldiers.

Jareer Qanadilo is a big, bluff man - an adored father of four. He has a
calm and sunny disposition, twinkling eyes and a wicked sense of humor.
He was the driver with whom I spent my first three weeks in Nablus, when
I was so green that he would have been forgiven for throwing me out of
the ambulance, and he can multi-task better than anyone I know: he can
drive at high speed alongside precipitous drops, eat a falafel sandwich,
admonish children who are too far from home, give me instructions on how
to save the patient’s life and talk on the dispatch phone and his own
mobile – all at the same time without batting an eyelid and managing to
operate the air-horn too.

He risks his life every time his MRS ambulance plunges into the center
of an IOF onslaught in Nablus or Balata. The last 5 years of constant
pressure which is the lot of all the MRS ambulance drivers, has clearly
taken its toll on him. During the current attack (dubbed by Israel
“Operation Northern Lights”), the worst for 12 months, now in its
seventh day, four MRS ambulances have been constantly in the camp. They
were allowed to move only within the camp and have not been allowed to
go outside: two 17-year-olds bled to death on the street within sight of
Jareer’s ambulance; he was refused access to them “until they are dead”
as the IOF soldiers said. Stretchers bearing wounded have had to be
carried on foot 2 kilometers to hospital and a field hospital has had to
be set up in the souq since both schools were taken over as barracks by
the IOF, the UNRWA staff assaulted and put outside.

Ambulance drivers from all around answered the desperate call: Feras
Al-Bakri, 35, also the father of four; the amazing Muntasser Abdel
Rahiim, 26, came from Jenin (both of whom many readers will remember
from previous stories); Uday Jallad from Tulkarm; and Fidaa’ Subuh, a
Jenin driver, from Al-Farrah Refugee Camp. They were constantly
harassed, threatened and pinned-down under sniper fire from the rooftops
of 25 occupied houses. Working with the drivers in Balata are the brave
volunteers Mustafa Farah, Muhammad al-Ghazzal and Taaher Al-Kousah
amongst others. And with them, as always doing more than his duty at the
center of the danger, Dr Ghasaan Hamdan, MRS manager in Nablus who, as
Manager, could remain at his desk as coordinator but he cannot think of
letting his staff and volunteers face this situation while he is safe.

All mobile communication with the Camp and Nablus Old City is, as
always, cut. Nowadays often the e-mail servers are cut from Northern
Palestine. Most people have SIM-cards in their mobiles and it is never
possible to call anyone in Balata or in Nablus when the IOF are in
occupation: immediately after they leave the signal is restored.
Obviously I don’t know how they do it, but from the moment they arrive
until they leave, no one can call out and we cannot call in. Those with
Cellcom (Israeli) cards are luckier: the IOF cannot cut their
communication since the settlers who surround Balata-Nablus in their
illegal colonies use the Israeli network. This week we were able to use
the landlines though those carbon-fiber cables have often been cut too.

Tomorrow we hope that Jareer will be out of Intensive Care and back on a
Ward, where I will be able to speak to him on his mobile. Like all the
drivers he will back in the ambulance as soon as he is on his feet again.

This is normal in the life of the Palestinian ambulance drivers – I know
few who have not been injured several times. On February 16, 2003 Feras
Al-Bakri was shot; on the 18th we were both shot at and injured by an
Israeli soldier in Nablus. He was shot again in the head in Balata in
June 2004. He was seriously injured in June at Sarra’ T-Junction,
September and December 2003 in his neck, eyes and feet, trying to reach
injured in Saalem village, and was shot in the head and in the hand
outside Al-Watani hospital in Nablus in December 2005: in addition he
has been used as a human shield many times. Muntasser suffers the most
appalling humiliation, delays and beatings daily, even being forced into
kissing the IOF boots to save the lives of the sick, especially at the
vicious roadblock at Shaffi Shamron: all the UPMRC ambulances are
spattered with bullet holes, even in the stretchers. Almost every day he
is threatened with death and one day it may happen.

Some 25 Doctors and medics have been killed, with scores injured, and 85
ambulances totally destroyed in more than 1,300 attacks on ambulances
since September 2000. This week Dr. Anaan Al-Atira was wounded in the
head in Balata Camp as she tended a dying child, and a young volunteer
was seriously injured.

“You know, Anne”, sighed Muntasser Abdel Rahiim, 26, last night, “we are
drivers of ambulances, not drivers of tanks”.

-Anne Gwynne, an elected member of the International Federation of
Journalists and the National Union of Journalists (UK), has worked with
the PMRS (UPMRC) in Nablus. She can be contacted at
gwynne_anne@hotmail.com.

Copyright © 2006 palestinechronicle.com. All trademarks and copyrights
on this page are owned by their respective owners.

===============================================

[snip]

<mercy cut>

Leftist racism is damned ugly, and this boy cracks every mirror he tries to
look into.