Update from Beit Sahour
5 April 2002--Dear Friends, It is now the fourth day at the clinic in Beit Sahour. The team (two nurses, a lab technician, a female radiology technician, and two physicians) have been present 24 hours a day. Although our spirits are high, I feel nevertheless that everyone is afraid. The jokes and the way they make fun of each other seems to be working well to ease the tension. Often it makes me uncomfortable, but I think it’s the only way they can relieve their tension and stress.
The team is very well organized and there are also two volunteers. My 16-year-old son has also joined us to do his “civil duty.” We have enough water, we have electricity, the telephones work, and we still have food enough for two more days. (We discovered that eight people eat a lot under such circumstances!)
We are under strict curfew. No one is allowed to go out. We have no idea where the Israeli snipers are, but we know that they shoot at anything that moves.
Israeli tanks and armored vehicles marched in to Beit Sahour (the eastern entrance to Bethlehem) two days ago on their way to Bethlehem. Other tanks and similar vehicles came in at the same time from Bethlehem’s west and north sides. We hear on TV and radio news that the Israeli soldiers reached Manger Square. The local TV stations have stopped broadcasting. We hear a lot of shooting and shelling coming from the direction of Manger Square, which is about 800 meters away from us. Some pictures on TV have shown wounded people on the streets and in their homes. Ambulances are not allowed to circulate. If they do attempt to reach the wounded, they are shot at immediately.
Although we have been here at the clinic for four days, we haven’t seen a single patient, nor we were allowed to go out and attend the wounded. During normal times, the clinic has over 70,000 patient visits per year.
The encounter of yesterday evening, our fourth day at the Clinic, will remain with us for the rest of our lives. An ambulance dared to bring a four-year-old girl who needed an x-ray after she fell down and broke her elbow. The ambulance miraculously arrived and stopped in front of the Clinic under a heavy barrage of shooting. The Clinic entrance was immediately surrounded by armored vehicles and a tank. Many soldiers got out of the vehicles and pointed their machine guns at us. After about 10 minutes (an eternity for us), the mother of the child was allowed to enter the Clinic. The soldiers followed. No one in the ambulance was injured.
As the girl was being x-rayed, the soldiers told us that there is curfew now and no one should go out in the street. Not even ambulances. So the ambulance and the mother and the child must stay over night at the center. The mother told them that she had a seven-year-old boy at home who is taking care of his six-month-old brother. One of the soldiers gave the mother “instructions” on how the seven-year-old should make milk for the infant.
In the meantime, the three paramedics from the ambulance joined us and had time to relax from the fear of coming death.
The Israeli officer in charge asked me, as the doctor in charge, to make everyone sit in the lobby. He then asked me if there were any patients in the Clinic. I told him that there was a wounded young man who was referred to us from the Bethlehem Hospital for recovery. The patient had been wounded in the leg during previous clashes. The soldier ordered me to make him come to the lobby. Later, the patient was arrested and was taken away by the soldiers.
Meanwhile, the tank was positioned directly in front of the clinic and had its canon aimed at the entrance. The officer who was asking me a lot of questions repeatedly told me that he would kill anyone who moves. He said he would arrest everyone if he found I was lying to him about anything. I told him that no one else was in the clinic and that he could search if he wanted. He did not make a search, and nothing was destroyed.
The Israeli soldiers seemed to be very nervous, and maybe as afraid as we were. During the whole ordeal we could hear shooting and shelling coming from Bethlehem. At even the slightest sound, the soldiers went down on their knees, and were prepared to shoot. Even I, as a physician, could have told them that the noises we were hearing were far away.
One of our paramedics speaks Hebrew. He was engaged in small talk with an officer explaining to him what we are doing. As they were speaking, the paramedic could hear orders and questions coming from the walkie-talkie. One of the questions came from the tank outside: “Shall I shoot?” The response from the soldier with us came quickly: “No, are you crazy? We are still inside!”
The Israeli officer tried to calm by telling us that nothing will happen to us as long as we do not go out. I asked him if we were under curfew. And if we are, why doesn’t he announce it clearly to the population. He responded by saying: “We do not want to announce it publicly so that we can kill those who walk on the streets.”
The telephone kept ringing during this whole exchange, and we assumed that our relatives were calling just to see if we were okay. But we were forbidden from answering the telephone and the continuous ringing added significantly to the tension of the moment.
After the soldiers decided to leave, the officer in charge told us that it is only a matter of 48 hours before they kill everyone in the Church of Nativity. He again tried to calm us down by saying that nothing would happen to us. He threatened me before he left, by telling me he would shoot me immediately if I should set one foot outside the building.
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