Inside The Palestinian Hospital in Beit Jala

The Israeli Armed Forces do not allow supplies into the hospital, they do not facilitate the access of civilians to the hospitals and they do not allow the free circulation of ambulances.

Beit Jala Hospital. Paslestinian. Desperate. Director Peter Qumri confirms that no supplies have reached the hospital since the Israeli armed incursion into the Palestinian territories. He is cut off from his superior, the Palestine Authority health minister in Ramallah. He describes the situation in his hospital as a “catastrophe”.

“We are nearing a catastrophe. We have chronic patients for whom we cannot prescribe medicines because we do not have any more. For the cancer patients and those needing blood products, we have absolutely nothing. The stock for diabetics finishes today and for cardiac patients, 70% has gone”.

He says the wounded are not a problem because they never reach the hospital. The Israeli armed forces do not let the ambulances reach them, not even those of the Red Crescent. The Red Cross, he declares, is nowhere to be seen.

Lying writhing on a bed, Kate Edwards, from Manchester, England. International Peace Activist, on a pacifist march with the International Solidarity Movement. Shot in the stomach Israeli troops, she has to have an operation on her abdomen. Despite her wounds, she says that she “came here to be with the oppressed people of Palestine”.

“The situation is not good for Israel,” she adds, “nor for the Palestinians. Nobody wins. And it infuriates me that George Bush appears on TV talking about terrorism when the money used to finance the Israeli army comes from America”.

She declares that despite her physical condition, she is determined to “do something. It seems to me to be the most important thing to do right now”.

Full of praise for the hospital of Beit Jala. And the heroic work of its doctors, working without supplies. Because the Israeli Armed Forces do not let them through. Because the Israeli Armed Forces do not the ambulances bring wounded civilians in.

To a hospital.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru