THIS makes headline news on the pages of the zionist Blogs and in the pages of HaAretz….

Twilight Zone / Born in the shadow of a checkpoint

Gideon Levy, Haaretz

“You’ll never walk alone.” It’s doubtful that a slogan used by the Israel Defense Forces has been read in such a macabre context. The slogan, in the name of the 92nd Auxiliary Unit, appears on the sign next to the checkpoint that blocks off the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron. True, Kifah Sider did not walk there alone. Her husband and brother-in-law were with her. In fact, she did not exactly walk. Groaning with contractions, she was carried by her husband. The young woman of 23 was in labor.

The soldiers held her up at the checkpoint for 20 critical minutes, the family says. In any case, she had to proceed on foot because this neighborhood, where evil stalks – a place ruled by a handful of sometimes-violent settlers who have forced out half the inhabitants – is barred to Palestinian vehicles. Including ambulances that can rush a woman in labor to the hospital in the dead of night. Evildoing resides here. The windows are barred because unruly settler children throw stones. Cars are forbidden entry, and the way home passes through the checkpoint, with the message “You’ll never walk alone” on the gate. But the 92nd Auxiliary offered no support that night. Its soldiers only delayed the pregnant woman until her screams finally persuaded them to let her through. On foot, of course. That was 20 minutes too late. It was no longer possible to rush the woman to Aliyah Hospital, a five-minute drive away. Kifah lay on the road, the neighbors brought a mattress, the husband took off his jacket, and in the subzero cold another checkpoint birth took place, delivered by the Israeli occupation. It wasn’t the first, it won’t be the last.

Ahmed was born under a bad sign, blue with cold. The drive to Tel Rumeida is harrowing. It’s a ghost neighborhood: Everyone who was able to leave did so long ago. No decent Israeli can pass through without a choking feeling in the throat and chills down the spine. There are dozens of shuttered stores whose owners were forced to look for a different source of livelihood, hundreds of abandoned apartments whose occupants were terrorized by the settlers and fled. The streets, including the famed Shuhada Street, where the stores were once renovated by the U.S. government to allow life to carry on, are appallingly deserted. Only a settler’s car or an army jeep speeds by from time to time, shattering the oppressive silence. The neighborhood school once had 400 pupils; now there are 90, and the children who attend are in constant danger of being attacked by settlers. Happily residing amid this desolation are the settlers, the lords of the land. When Kifah was in her eighth month, she was assaulted by a settler. He pushed her and spat at her until she fled into her brother-in-law’s home, taking refuge behind the iron door. Just routine. Settlers once threw stones at her mother-in-law as she was hanging out the laundry on the roof of her home. The elderly woman was wounded in the head. The police came and left. “They are small kids,” the policemen said before leaving without taking action, at the sight of the settler children who had thrown the stones and were still on the street when the forces of law and order arrived. That was a few months ago. In the wake of that event, the Sider family – who have not left because they are unable to – decided not to file any further complaints with the police. “There is no point,” the father of the family, Ashraf, says drily.

Kifah and Ashraf Sider, a young couple, have two children: Shireen, not yet 2, and Ahmed, about two weeks old. Ashraf works for a local factory that makes heaters, but his home is freezing. Only a small spiral electric heater tries vainly to dispel the unbearable cold in the stone building that houses their well-kept home. They are wrapped in coats, the children in woolen blankets. It was bitterly cold on the night of January 7. Shortly before 3 A.M. Kifah was awakened by her contractions. The hospital where they had registered for the birth lies 250 meters from their home, but on the other side of the checkpoint. Crossing it, at least at night, is like venturing into the back of beyond. The checkpoint is open to pedestrians day and night, but crossing it at night is hard. Kifah woke Ashraf. The bag was ready with warm clothes for the baby about to be born. Their home and their children are well looked after – a glass cabinet filled with small dining utensils, a splash of plastic flowers, a “spritz” finish on the ceiling. And even the fan attached to the wall is kept under a colorful cover during the winter.

They called the family of Ashraf’s brother, who live across the way, and asked them to watch little Shireen. They took the bag for the hospital and walked slowly down the stairs to the cold, dark street. It’s a steep walk of a few dozen meters to the bottom of the street where the pedestrian checkpoint is located; you can see it through the bars on the family’s window. The brother-in-law, Firas, who works in the Mishor Adumim settler industrial zone in the West Bank and speaks a little Hebrew, joined them on the way to the hospital to ease the passage through the checkpoint. Kifah could hardly walk; Ashraf decided to carry her in his arms. She groaned. They reached the checkpoint in a few minutes. Before leaving home they had called an ambulance, knowing it would not be allowed to enter their street but wanting it to be waiting for them on the other side of the checkpoint. So they thought. Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker for the B’Tselem human rights organization, says a Palestinian ambulance can sometimes enter Israeli-controlled territory in Hebron, but only to save lives, and then the “coordination” takes up to two hours. At the checkpoint they somehow managed to get Kifah on her feet, with the help of her husband. Firas tried to explain to the soldiers that Kifah was about to give birth any minute. It was very cold. The checkpoint’s door was closed. The soldiers said they had to call their commander and ask him. Firas retorted that there was no curfew in the neighborhood and what was there to ask – the woman was obviously in labor. The soldiers told them to wait in the street. Firas asked them to open the door at least and let them into the heated space, but no. “Wait, wait,” a soldier said, “just a second, just a second.” They stood and waited. Kifah started to scream. She told her husband that she felt the baby was about to enter the world. Her cries intensified. It was only after what they estimate was 20 minutes that the soldiers agreed to let them through. “Only when they realized that it was serious,” Ashraf says. “Then they opened the door and said, ‘Yalla, yalla, go through.'” It was now about 3:15 A.M. They passed through the checkpoint. But after a few more steps Kifah felt she could wait no longer. Actually, it was the baby that could wait no longer. “The baby is coming out! The baby is coming out!” Kifah shouted to the cold, empty night, seconds after going through the checkpoint. The ambulance they had called was waiting but could not get closer because of the concrete cubes that block the passage. Ashraf had his wife lie down in the street.

Neighbors who heard Kifah’s screams hurried downstairs with a mattress for her to lie on, to ease the street birth as much as possible. Two paramedics rushed over from the ambulance. By the time they arrived the infant was out. They saw to mother and child, cutting the umbilical cord on the street. They asked for something warm to wrap the baby in, and Ashraf took off his jacket and covered his newborn son with it. Kifah tells us now, apologetically, that her clothes were bloodstained and so she could not use them to wrap the baby in. Ashraf says the infant was dark blue, “like my pants.” The paramedics decided to leave Kifah where she was, lying in the street – they asked her not to move – and to rush the baby to the hospital to rescue him from the freezing cold. Kifah says she was certain he was already dead. He did not cry when he was born. She was sure that all her nine months of waiting had been in vain. The ambulance returned 10 minutes later to evacuate Kifah. They carried her to the ambulance on the neighbors’ mattress and from there to the hospital. Kifah was admitted at 4:15 A.M., one hour after leaving her home on her way to the hospital, a five-minute drive. Throughout, they say, the soldiers watched the unfolding events from the checkpoint. “I thought they would have a different humanity,” Ashraf says. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office issued the following response: “On the night of January 7, 2008, a Palestinian women accompanied by two young men arrived at the checkpoint near Tel Rumeida, as she was about to give birth. When the soldier saw that she was pointing at her belly and expressing herself in an articulate manner he immediately called for an army medic, ambulance and doctor in order to assist her. The Palestinian woman passed through the checkpoint with no delay whatsoever and within a few minutes she was evacuated by a Red Crescent ambulance. The IDF employed all means possible in order to assist the birthing mother.” Ahmed was placed in an incubator for a few hours, to raise his body temperature. He weighed 2.5 kilograms. The next afternoon the family was quick to check him and his mother out of the hospital because of what they describe as the inferior conditions of the obstetrics ward. “It’s better at home.” Mother and son are doing well, as the saying goes, despite everything, almost miraculously. His name was given to him long before, because as a child his father, Ashraf, was called Abu Ahmed – father of Ahmed. Since the birth their home has been filled with well-wishers. The happiness this time is greater than when Shireen was born. With her they reached the hospital in time; she was born in the morning. They sit for a group portrait – mother, father, daughter and son – showing the semblance of a happy, secure, tranquil family.

The following editorial from today’s HaAretz is also worth reading…

The siege of Gaza has failed

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff