From Occupied Palestine

PRCS paramedic: "You tell me why I am face-down on the ground"
GHASSAN ABU IBAID
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 18 November 2003

 printer friendly

Ghassan Abu Ibaid, 43, is a paramedic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Jenin. He has five children and a sixth on the way. In February, he will be moving with his family to California. We interviewed him in the sitting area of the PRCS building, while the television in the background relayed news of the Maxim Restaurant bombing in Haifa that had happened only minutes earlier.

---

Ghassan Abu Ibaid, PRCS Paramedic: I would like to relate to you stories that will show the kind of hatred and contempt that the Israeli army has for our people, the people of Palestine. I’ll tell you one of the stories that happened to me during the siege that was laid on the Camp in April of 2002. It happened on 8 April, four days after the incursion began when the army had finally allowed us to go in to the Camp so that we could clear some of the injured.

There were three injured people who the Israeli army had allowed us to go in for, so three ambulances went in. We started at 1:00 pm and we were finally out at 4:00 pm - it took us three hours and this distance is only about 100 meters. Before we could pick up the wounded, the Israeli army forced us to go to the soldiers and have our ambulances searched. After we had cleared out the wounded people, we had to go back to the occupation army to be searched again.

The leg of one the wounded men that we cleared out was cut and rotten, with flies and bugs swarming all over it. His body was full of shrapnel. When I came back to the Israeli Occupation Forces they attacked me and demanded to see documentation. The kid who as with me didn’t have his documentation, he only had a photocopy of his hawiya, his ID card. So they told me "This guy is wanted, this guy is Hamas." They ordered me to take off all of his clothes. I submitted to these orders and I stripped him of all of his clothes except for his underwear. Indeed, this person’s body was absolutely full of shrapnel. He was absolutely unable to stand up, and yet they forced him to stand up and dragged him away. As for me, they asked me to lay on the ground face-down while they went and arrested him.

An hour and a half later I was still face down on the ground, and one of the soldiers said: "Come over here." He turned out to be an intelligence officer, and he said, "What’s the deal with you? Why are you face-down on the ground?" I said "I don’t know. I want you to tell me why I am face down on the ground." He said "I’m sorry, a mistake has happened." And he permitted my release at that point. But they still arrested the wounded man who was absolutely in need of medical attention and not prison at this point. This just shows you the maltreatment that the Israeli army constantly bestows upon the Palestinian people.

~~~

On 10 April 2002, the 6th day of the invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, people began to flee the camp and congregate at the PRCS centre. After we ran out of food and water people were forced to leave the centre to go looking for more. Myself and several other PRCS paramedics led this march. The Occupation Forces came and began to attack all of the men in the group, as well as all of the people who were in Red Crescent uniforms. They handcuffed our hands and tied us up, and after two hours we were put into a military transport vehicle and taken to the Salem military base where we sat for four days.

After the four days, the International Committee of the Red Cross intervened, and finally we were released on the 13th or 14th of that month.

~~~

On 8 August of this year we received a report at around four o’clock that there were people wounded in the Eastern district of Jenin. We went over, and found that there were indeed wounded people. One man had been shot in both his knees, and as I was taking this person out, the Israeli soldiers began firing at the ambulance. There were four bullets that hit the ambulance directly, and one bullet that ricocheted off of a wall and hit me right in the knee. I had to have surgery to repair the damage. This stopped me from walking for approximately one month before I finally recovered.

~~~

Another time, in November of 2002, while we were transporting a female patient from Jenin Hospital to al Razi hospital in Jenin, an Israeli military tank came and blocked our way. Soldiers came out and arrested all of the people who were in uniform, all of the paramedics. They took us to al Jalame where we stayed for ten hours, leaving the patient in the ambulance until a French international by the name of Olivier finally got into the ambulance and took the woman to the hospital.

~~~

Finally, one of the stories that I would like to recount happened only two days ago when I was in Jericho.

I attended to a woman from Jenin who was in Jordan for an operation to amputate her leg. When I got to the al Hamra checkpoint between Jenin and Jericho, I went to the front of the line and parked right in front of one of the Israeli soldiers who seemed to be in charge of the checkpoint. He came to me and asked why I had come to the front of the line. I said to him: "I have a patient who is very sick. She has an amputated leg. She has to get to her home as quickly as possible. I also have a paralysed child."

The commander ordered me to go to the very back of the line to be the last car. I got a feeling of such hatred and contempt from this commander. I said to him: "This woman she is sick." He said to me "I don’t care, tell her to die. I have no sympathy for her." So I went to the back of the line, the last car, where I waited about an hour until I was finally able to pass through the checkpoint.

*Testimony taken by Valerie Zink and Jon Elmer - Jenin, West Bank on 4 October 2003; Translated by Tarek Loubani.

More testimonies from PRCS paramedics: Mahmoud Bajouri