http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=53098&mador=4
Sunday, August 8, 1999
The unbearable lightness of the decision to impose closure
By Gideon Levy
This item didn't even rate a footnote in the
papers: Since last Tuesday night, 150,000 residents
of Hebron have been deprived of their freedom of
movement.The 35,000 Hebronites who live in the
Israeli-controlled part of the city are under full
curfew - no one may leave his house - and the
115,000 others who reside in the area under the
control of the Palestinian Authority are under
closure: No one leaves the city and no one enters.
Why? Because there is a standard procedure that
whenever a terrorist attack is perpetrated, that's
what you do. The pretext - security, of course - is
without foundation: Everyone knows that the
perpetrators have long since found shelter in the
PA's territory. Everyone knows that curfews and
closures won't help, and that only intelligence
work and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation will
perhaps bring about their arrest. But this way the
settlers are partially satisfied and the crime has
its punishment, collective and infuriating (though
not to the settlers) as it may be.
Never has a similar punishment been inflicted on
the settlers, who have also produced their share of
assailants. Imagine that every time a settler took
a shot at somebody, Kiryat Arba would be placed
under a week-long curfew. No, it's too far-fetched
even to imagine. But when it comes to Palestinians,
curfew and closure are a matter of routine. They
have long since become accustomed to life under
curfew and closure, to the fact that, at any given
moment, Israel can turn their lives upside down. No
work, no school, no socializing - just curfew. But
it's more than a matter of inconvenience; some
people have paid with their lives for the
capriciousness of closure and curfew.
A year ago this month, during the last closure of
Hebron, also imposed in the wake of an attack by a
lone terrorist, Naama al Addam and Kusei Haddad
died. They were infants - Naama was less than a day
old, while Kusei had been alive for 100 days.
Soldiers refused to allow their mothers to go
through a closure roadblock. Fadwa al Addam was
about to give birth and the soldiers refused to let
her proceed to the hospital; Shirin Haddad tried to
rush her sick son to a hospital and was detained.
Following press reports about the two deaths - they
were hardly the first two cases in which infants
died because of Israeli roadblocks - the IDF
spokesman explained that "the soldiers did not
identify signs of a medical emergency" in Fadwa al
Addam. She was groaning in the back seat of her
brother's car and her elderly mother tried with
tears and shouts to explain the situation to the
soldiers, but they "did not identify signs of a
medical emergency." And how are soldiers even less
insensitive than these supposed to identify a
medical emergency? And if they are incapable of
that, isn't the solution to allow the woman who
appears to be in the throes of labor to pass?
The IDF promised at the time to thoroughly
investigate the two incidents. A month passed, a
year passed. Two groups, B'Tselem, the Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, and Physicians for Human Rights did
not relent. Both organizations thought that someone
must be responsible for the death of the two
infants, that someone should face trial, that new
orders should be issued regarding procedures at
roadblocks in order to prevent similar tragedies in
the future.
A few days ago, a year after the infants died, a
reply was received from the chief military
prosecutor. Concerning the death of Kusei Haddad,
Colonel Einat Ron wrote, "Despite the efforts and
the debriefings that were conducted, the relevant
soldiers were not located." Concerning the death of
Naama al Addam, she stated, "The Military Police
investigation found that the complainant arrived at
the roadblock together with her relatives in a car
and did not have medical documents about her
condition."
Is Colonel Ron serious? What medical documents does
a woman in labor from a remote village need to
carry with her on her way to give birth? Two months
earlier, the IDF's judge advocate general,
Brigadier General Uri Shoham, wrote: "Even if the
decision not to permit the complainant to pass by
the roadblock turned out in retrospect to be
mistaken, the material evidence in the file does
not indicate that the soldiers deliberately or
indifferently ignored the complainants' claims."
Were they really not indifferent? The prosecutor
and the judge advocate general promised,
nevertheless, that lessons would be learned.
The IDF made the same promise following the death
of the twins of the Za'id family from Bethlehem,
whose mother was delayed at a roadblock in March
1996, and after the death of the newborn infant of
the Hadour family from Hebron four days later at
another roadblock, and after the death of the
newborn infant of Faiza Abu Daouk two weeks later
and again after the two cases in Hebron a year ago.
No one was brought before a disciplinary board - to
the IDF, everything was normal. In all these cases,
apart from one, no one even thought of apologizing
to the families or compensating them. No one
thought that if there were doubts about whether the
pregnant woman writhing in pain was faking and was
really a dangerous suspect, it might be possible to
rush her to hospital in an IDF vehicle, as Abu
Daouk pleaded with the soldiers to do, in fact.
But even though the infant's head was emerging from
the mother before their eyes, they refused even to
rush her alone to the hospital, which was two
kilometers from the roadblock. Last week the
Physicians for Human Rights group asked the new
defense minister to order the IDF to allow people
in need of medical help to be permitted to go
through roadblocks during the present closure.
There is something very sick about a country that
needs to issue such orders to its soldiers. Even
then there is no guarantee that those orders will
be heeded.
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