Medical Initiative For the Benefit of

The Children of Palestine

Ear Surgery for Palestinian Children

By Dr. Ibrahim K. Ladaa

 

Message from Hebron, September 9, 2003

Dear Colleagues,

We left Nablus behind us and were on the way to Al Khalil (Hebron).  Considering the condition of the roads, the driver of the ambulance drove very fast.  It was mid-day and very hot.  As the sun was still at its zenith the roof of the vehicle afforded us shade. We didn’t drive fast because we were afraid, that would have been normal, but because there was a lot of unrest in Nablus and the driver had to get back there as quickly as possible.  The ambulance is the only means of transportation in this situation and sometimes the ambulance drivers are prevented from doing their work.   It has even happened that Israeli soldiers have shot at ambulances and, according to reports of the professional body of Palestinian doctors, several colleagues have been killed in this way.  The distance from Nablus to Ramallah is not long and as we were not confrontedby any checkpoints or harassment this time, we covered a distance of 50 km in about 45 minutes.

Our first stop was to be Ramallah.  There used to be a lot of commuters between Ramallah and Nablus, living in one town and working in the other, but this commute has become impossible in the last three years.

We were on the road in the ambulance traveling through the beautiful, fertile plains for about two hours.  I remembered earlier times when it been relatively peaceful and I escaped from the stressful daily routine with my wife and children in order to admire the beauty of nature.  At that time, about ten years ago, Christa had painted her most beautiful nature pictures of a ‘peaceful Palestine.’  At that time there were only a few Israeli settlements which were built for strategic reasons on the tops of mountains and hills in order to control the Arab villages and towns below and to separate them one from another.

The driver had lit up a cigarette, his first of the morning.  He had been on the go since four o’clock and in his face I could see the marks of the stress which he had to contend with day in and day out. The bus station of an Israeli settlement appeared in front of us.  Four or five young Israeli girls of about 10 - 15 years of age were apparently waiting for their bus. All at once, quite suddenly, one of the girls jumped onto the street, gave us a one-finger salute and shouted something at us. We looked at each other and asked what was going on in the heads of these little girls which made them react in such a way on seeing an Arab ambulance.

The ambulance set me down in Ramallah at about three o’clock and I was told that I would have to go the rest of the way on foot through the fourth checkpoint at the Qalandia refugee camp. There the cars would then be waiting which first drive to Abu Dis, a suburb east of Jerusalem.

It took three hours for me to get from Bethlehem to Hebron.  In times of peace you can do this in 45 minutes.  At three checkpoints I had to wait, wait and wait, until all the Israeli cars with their yellow number plates had passed the intersection.  They always have the right of way.  Nearly every Palestinian town has a different color license plate.  It is blue, white or green, in fact prettier than yellow, but yellow always has the right of way.  I had driven along the same stretch of road for years.   That was from 1978 to 1981 when I was medical superintendent in Ramallah.  At that time Hebron didn’t have an ear, nose and throat department and so every morning I went to the same hospital in Hebron in which I am working now.  I decided on the cases which had to be transferred to Ramallah for an operation, and I would like to mention that at that time I was driving my 1975 Mercedes 200 which I had brought with me from Germany.  Early in the afternoon, when I would finish my work, I would buy the best grapes and tastiest apples for my family on the way back.  

At that time there were no settlers yet, and if there were any, they only occupied -  for strategic reasons - a few particular mountain tops.  Now and again there were flying Israeli checkpoints, but you didn’t need permission to get from one town to another. Today these former little settlements have become towns; some of them are almost cities. They have expelled the Arab inhabitants and seized their land, olive trees and wells.

In every settlement which you drive past - if you are allowed to drive past, because there are roads which Palestinians may not use and only cars with yellow number plates may use - there is a checkpoint or at least a policeman.  Actually he is supposed to control the flow of traffic but he controls it in such a way that the cars with the yellow number plates always have the right of way.

By way of several detours, I reached Al Khalil (Hebron).  The full name in Arabic is Al-Khalil Ar-Rahman, which means ‘the friend of God’

or ‘the favorite of God.’  This town is almost 6000 years old.  The original Arab inhabitants, the Canaanites, welcomed the prophet Ibrahim in years gone by.  According to the saga, Ibrahim chose this town because he believed Adam and Eve were buried here.  And so the town has an important significance for Arabs and Jews for here is the grave of Ibrahim and his family, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, their graves lie in Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi.

In Hebrew Ibrahim is Abraham, who had two sons, Isaac the father of the Jews and Ismail, the father of the Arabs.

Ibrahim K. Ladaa