Haaretz
Adar2 3, 5765
An imprisoned village. Kadum. With 4,000 residents
and no way out. A rocky, four-kilometer-long path is the only escape
route. When it rains, the route is impassable. And when there's no rain,
it makes for a very difficult and bumpy ride. Even on a clear day, only
vehicles that sit high on the road can negotiate it.
Women in
labor, the sick and the injured must make their way by ambulance over this
long and rough road, via the olive groves, solely because Kedumim Mayor
Daniella Weiss' armed security officers won't let them use the direct
route. This disgrace is visible from every home in Kedumim. In the past
three years, three ill Palestinians have died on the way. In recent weeks,
an ill newborn, a child with a head injury, another child who just had
surgery on his leg, and an old man who had a stroke (and subsequently
died) were all delayed here. Such is the state of neighborly relations in
the northern West Bank, even at a time of hudna (truce). A0nd they don't
call this terror.
The "highway" to Kadum: You park your private
vehicle in Haja and board a Palestinian transit taxi that lurches its way
to the village. There is no other way in or out. There are almost no cars
to be seen in the village. They're basically useless here. This is one of
the most beautiful villages in the northern West Bank, with many old stone
houses, and it has also been very quiet here during the second intifada. A
white flag was waved here, too, above this prison - the prison of
Kadum.
Council head As'ad Shatiwi explains that the two main
problems of Kadum are expropriation of land and the endless siege there.
The village had 21,000 dunams (5,250 acres) of fields and olive groves;
one-third of this was expropriated for the sake of the neighbors living in
the nearby settlement of Kedumim, which is continually expanding, skipping
from hilltop to hilltop and strangling Kadum. Meanwhile, the villagers
also cannot get near about another 2,000 dunams (500 acres) of their
property, for fear of the settlers, and another 4,500 dunams (1,125 acres)
are expected to be taken for the sake of the separation fence. More than
half of the village's land is essentially no longer the village's
land.
During the olive harvest, they couldn't get to some of their
olive groves because of harassment from the neighbors. The villagers
counted 3,500 trees in these groves that were not harvested or whose
olives was stolen by the settlers. The Israel Defense Forces allowed them
too little time in which they could go out to their fields. Sometimes,
they snuck in for another hour or two, until armed settlers appeared and
chased them away. Shatiwi's counterpart on the other side of the gate,
Daniella Weiss, recently screamed at and chased away a group of IDF
soldiers and officers, who were planning to hold a seminar in
Kedumim.
The only asphalt road leaving the village passes right by
the edge of Kedumim, near its outermost ring of houses, but does not enter
the settlement. The settlers installed two iron gates on the road and thus
blocked it. Armed settlers are stationed next to these barriers. For three
years now, the settlers here have kept the gates closed to the
Palestinians, with a few exceptions.
With no other choice, the
villagers began using the rutted farming road that leads to their fields,
which was originally meant for tractors and donkeys. Now this dirt road is
the main route. About two weeks ago, a man named Gilad from the Civil
Administration came, riding in a Jeep, and pronounced this road up to par
and sufficient for the residents' well-being. Gilad also suggested that
they take any complaints they might have to court. Shatiwi says Gilad's
Jeep also got stuck on the road and had to be helped along.
There
are 180 students in the village who attend classes in Nablus and
Qalqilyah. Another 150 villagers work in Nablus. To get there, they have
to take this rough, unpaved road that is twice as long as the regular one.
And the fee for the ride has just gone up from NIS 5 to NIS 20. When the
road through the fields was all muddy and the potholes filled with water,
they stayed home.
But the real problem is when people get sick. The
council head says that three residents have died in the past few years
because of the time it took to get to the hospital. What do you do with a
boy who gets seriously injured, with an elderly man who has a stroke in
the middle of the night or with a woman who has gone into labor?
End of the road
Majd Shatiwi is the village's
ambulance driver. He remembers all the bad cases. Late in the night of
January 14, the children of Mahmoud Da'as, 72, discovered that their
father had lost consciousness. They quickly summoned the village doctor,
who told them their father had had a stroke and must be rushed to the
hospital. Every minute was critical. The family members called Majd to
come with his ambulance, which does not have any resuscitation equipment
on board. The patient's condition was rapidly worsening. His pulse was
irregular. Shatiwi sped down the asphalt road, but when he reached one of
the iron gates, the guard there wouldn't let him pass. Shatiwi tried to
explain that he had a patient who could die in the ambulance, but the
guard explained to him that this was a military road and Palestinians were
not allowed on it. The driver's pleas were to no avail, so he had to go
back and try the dirt road, on which his ambulance could barely get
anywhere, between one rut and another. By the time they finally reached
the end of the road, the doctor pronounced the patient dead.
The
face of Mohammed, the man's son, is nearly expressionless as he describes
the events of that night.
Rawda Abdel Rahman, 60, was more
fortunate. About two weeks ago, she, too, suffered a stroke, but it
happened after heavy rain had made the road through the fields absolutely
impassable, and the compassionate settlers gave the Palestinians access to
the main road for a few days. Within 16 minutes, Majd Shatiwi's ambulance
arrived at the state hospital in Nablus and the patient's life was saved.
But the gate was closed again a few days later.
Rajd Usama was
just two weeks old when her parents saw that she was turning blue,
vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. Panicked, they called Shatiwi, who
was in Nablus with another patient at the time. This was about three weeks
ago. He rushed back to the village, and on the way, called the Palestinian
Coordination and Liaison Office to ask it to intervene and speak with the
IDF Coordination and Liaison Office to coordinate his ambulance's passage
with the settlers. But when the ambulance reached the iron gate, it was
forced to wait almost 15 minutes - even though the driver explained to the
guard that it was an emergency - until an IDF patrol arrived and gave the
okay to let him through. By the time the baby arrived at the hospital in
Nablus, she was nearly brain dead. She is still in the pediatric intensive
care unit there. Shatiwi credits his resourcefulness in calling the
Palestinian liaison office with having saved precious time.
The
next day, the driver was called upon to transport seven-and-a-half
year-old Nihad Hamzi back home from the hospital in Nablus. Hamzi was born
with one leg 10 centimeters shorter than the other and he had surgery in
Nablus. It was around nine in the evening. Shatiwi wanted to spare the boy
the rough ride over the makeshift road. He tried to coordinate the trip as
he'd done the day before, but the Israeli side did not approve it. He even
offered to bring the child to the coordination and liaison office, so they
could see that the youngster had just had surgery on his leg, but nothing
helped. "Not even a bird will pass here at nine in the evening," Shatiwi
was told. So he drove the little boy back over the bumpy road.
Now
Nihad lies in his parents' bed in the family's old stone house and smiles
his wonderful smile. His leg is still completely bandaged and he is not
allowed out of bed.
Shatiwi always takes the women in labor over
the rocky road, in order not to lose time. In Kadum, there are about 80
births a year. The trip that should take about 15 minutes by the regular
road takes about 45 minutes on the rutted one. On the way to Nablus there
is always at least one checkpoint, at Beit Iba or Hawara, and two or three
more might have sprung up that day, too. Entry to Nablus on foot is
currently permitted only to residents over the age of 25. Before Abu Mazen
was elected, entry to Nablus was only permitted to people age 35 and
up.
We ride in the ambulance toward the first iron gate. It is
painted white and manually operated. An armed settler stands there
impassively and doesn't ask anything. The gate stays closed. Afterward, we
ride in the ambulance over the dirt road, being constantly jostled from
side to side. There are sections where the vehicle has to come nearly to a
stop to cross a stream or an especially deep hole. When we reach the
second gate, on the other side of Kedumim, our Palestinian escorts hurries
away. The guard named Danny, whom the villagers particularly fear, is
standing there.
A not-so-young settler with a rifle and an
American accent emerges from the guard post and soon begins to throw
things out of our vehicle violently. Danny immediately summons the
settlement's security brigade - a collection of tough guys armed head to
toe with pistols and rifles, who appear almost instantly, driving
brand-new Japanese pickup trucks.
"This isn't your home here," the
thugs bark at us, threatening to call the police to deal with the invaders
from Tel Aviv.