"'My wife will die in the car'"
"Last update - 17:31 28/02/2008
Twilight Zone
By Gideon Levy
They wanted to spend their old age together. An elderly couple, Fauziyah al-Darek, 66, and her husband, Mahmoud Qab, 70. They wanted to continue to enjoy their only daughter and their three young grandchildren in their modest home in Dir al-Ghusun. But now Mahmoud, a widower, sits on a white plastic chair in the center of the guest room in his house, a kaffiyeh wrapped around his bony face, alone. On the table stands a picture of his granddaughter and on the wall hangs a photograph of his wife, adorned with a black ribbon, pictures of colorful flowers surrounding the mourning photo.
Fauziyah died because of the insensitivity of soldiers who would not allow her to be rushed to the hospital in Tul Karm after she suffered a serious heart attack. She lay in the back seat of a taxi (the army had not allowed an ambulance to pick her up at home), breathing with difficulty and moaning in pain, her husband pleading with the soldiers, trying to persuade them, trying to explain to them that his wife was about to die - all to no avail. "Get out of here, we don't care if your wife dies," one of them said.
How would these soldiers feel if their mothers were treated like that? What lifelong memories would they carry with them? What goes on in the mind of a young soldier when an elderly Palestinian begs for his wife's life, the soldier sees her in serious condition in a taxi, and persists in his cruel behavior? These are questions that clearly did not preoccupy the soldiers who prevented Fauziyah from being transferred to the hospital. They had various excuses. They prevented her transfer, they caused her death, and to hell with all these superfluous questions.
A very old black and white photo: Fauziyah and Mahmoud when they were young exiles in Kuwait, where they spent many years of their lives. Mahmoud had this photo framed about three years ago, and hung it above their bed, the bed where Fauziyah died.
Part of the road to Dir al-Ghusun is breathtakingly beautiful. You cross the imprisoned and dying Tul Karm, the half-deserted city center no longer showing any signs of its good days. The refugee camps, Tul Karm and Nur al-Shams - light of the sun - look like ghost towns. Then you cross almond orchards at the height of their blossoming, and olive groves dappled with spring sunlight, until you reach Dir al-Ghusun, a town of about 15,000.
Mahmoud opens the door, a thin man who worked for years as a plumber in Israel. His speech is quiet and to the point. His only daughter is now with him, together with her children, taking care of her father during the difficult days of mourning. His wrinkled face expresses pain.
On Wednesday, February 13, Mahmoud took Fauziyah to the Dr. Thabet Thabet Hospital (named after the doctor who was assassinated by Israel) after she felt pressure in her chest. The hospital is in Tul Karm, about a 15-minute drive from Dir al-Ghusun. The next day, Fauziyah was released from the hospital, after doctors diagnosed a mild heart attack. The couple returned home by taxi with relative ease, although there were more roadblocks in the area than usual, due to warnings about a suicide bomber making his way into Israel.
On Friday, February 14, at about 11 A.M., they arrived home. A short time later, the Israel Defense Forces imposed a complete closure on all roads in the region, because of the warnings. Roadblocks were set up on every corner. During the following 12 hours, all the roads to Tul Karm were blocked and thousands of travelers were stuck on the roads in pouring rain, until midnight.
Fauziyah, leaning on her husband's shoulder, hurried to bed to rest from the trip and her short hospitalization. She asked for milk, and Mahmoud brought her a glass of hot milk. Afterward, she got up to go to the bathroom and returned to bed exhausted. Ten minutes later, she began to experience serious breathing difficulties. Mahmoud quickly called her brother-in-law, Dr. Abdel Fatah, but he didn't answer. Mahmoud dialed 101 and asked for a Red Crescent ambulance. About 10 minutes later, the Red Crescent informed him that the ambulance had been stopped at a checkpoint near the Shweike neighborhood, at the northern exit from Tul Karm, and the soldiers would not allow it to continue. The Red Crescent people suggested that Mahmoud try to go by himself with his wife to the roadblock that had been set up that same morning in the Al-Jerushiya neighborhood; maybe the ambulance would manage to get there. Mahmoud immediately phoned and called for a taxi from the village. Fauziyah managed to go down to the street by herself and get into the taxi.
They reached the roadblock. The taxi driver, Abdel Rahman Assad, would later relate that he bypassed a line of about 40 cars that were standing at the closed checkpoint and waiting. It was almost 2 P.M. Fauziyah was lying in the back seat, moaning. Mahmoud got out of the taxi and turned to a soldier. "Where are you going?" asked the soldier. "My wife will die in the car," replied Mahmoud, in Hebrew he had learned in the days when he worked as a plumber in Israel. "Let me take her to a hospital." The soldier: "It's forbidden. Go back home."
Mahmoud says he pleaded with the soldier at least five more times, asking him to at least look into the taxi and see how his wife was suffering. "Please, my wife is in the car. Let us go to a hospital." But the soldier wouldn't budge: "I don't care about anything. If she dies, she dies. That doesn't interest me." The pleas continued for about 15 minutes, as the woman's conditioned steadily deteriorated. "Take me to a hospital, save me," she shouted, gasping for breath. Finally, Mahmoud recounts, he tried to grab the soldier's face and kiss him in a gesture of pleading, but the soldier rudely pushed him away.
Helpless and terribly frustrated, Mahmoud returned to the taxi and told the driver to go back where they had come from. They drove to Dir al-Ghusun, to the town doctor, Dr. Azmi Zanibat, who lives at the southern entrance. Mahmoud entered the house and asked Dr. Zanibat to go outside to see his wife in the taxi. Equipped with a stethoscope and a device for measuring blood pressure, almost all his medical equipment, the doctor went out to the taxi. He examined the patient and discovered that her blood pressure was only 40/20. Her body was covered with beads of sweat, her face was yellow and she had increasing difficulty breathing. He injected her with Lasix (a diuretic) in order to release the liquids that had accumulated in her lungs. He knew that she was having a severe heart attack, but he was unable to help. Fauziyah was still conscious.
In his medical report, Dr. Zanibat wrote: "The patient arrived at my house at about 2:30 P.M., suffering from exhaustion, breathing difficulties and excessive perspiration. She was unable to stand on her feet. I examined her and I thought she was suffering from an accumulation of liquids in her lungs. I tried to give her first aid and thought that she had to get to the hospital quickly, to receive oxygen and urgent first aid treatment. She could have been treated had she arrived in time. Her husband told me that the soldiers had prevented him from reaching the hospital. I asked her husband to try to take her to the hospital in any possible way, because otherwise it would be impossible to save her. I estimate that if the patient had reached the hospital she would have received proper treatment and recovered. Fifteen minutes later I heard that she had died," wrote the doctor.
In bitter despair, Mahmoud returned home in the taxi, together with his dying wife. He had asked his brother-in-law, the doctor, to come to the house, and he was waiting for them at the entrance. Fauziyah's condition steadily deteriorated. They carried her to her bed. Those were the last moments of her life. The brother-in-law tried to resuscitate her and massage her chest, but in vain. Fauziyah was dying. A few minutes later she stopped breathing. That same evening they buried her in her village.
The driver of the Red Crescent ambulance, Hashem Khalil, told the field investigator of B'Tselem in the Tul Karm-Qalqilyah region, Abd al-Karim Saadi, about the sequence of events as he saw it: "I received a call about a sick woman in Dir al-Ghusun who was suffering from heart failure. At 1:45 P.M. I left the station. At the entrance to Shweike, I encountered a military roadblock. The soldiers ordered us to stop at a distance of 30-40 meters and didn't allow us to advance. I used the ambulance loudspeaker and told them that there was an emergency case of a patient with heart problems in Dir al-Ghusun. One of the soldiers signaled me to go back. I stayed in place and contacted the Red Crescent traffic officer in order to tell him that we were not being allowed to pass. The traffic officer turned to the International Red Cross and asked them to coordinate our crossing with the Israelis. We remained on the spot opposite the Israelis for about half an hour awaiting instructions. At 2:20 P.M. the traffic officer called and ordered me to return to the station. At about 2:35 P.M. the traffic officer told me that the Red Cross had informed him that the crossing of the ambulance had been coordinated.
"At 2:40 P.M. I arrived at the Shweike checkpoint again. The siren was working in order to signal to the soldiers to let us pass through the checkpoint without delay. The soldiers ignored it, and didn't let us pass. After a few minutes a military vehicle arrived and called to us on the loudspeaker: 'Get out of here.' I repeated the sentence in Hebrew: 'I have an emergency patient in Dir al-Ghusun with a heart problem.' The soldiers didn't care. I continued to wait until 3:07 P.M., and then the traffic officer ordered me to go back because the coordination with the Red Cross didn't help. We couldn't take the patient to the hospital. Later on I found out that the patient had died that same day."
No response from the IDF spokesman had been received by press time."
