Face to Face with the Wall in Tulkarem
Palestine Monitor
21 June 2008

At 8 o’clock in the morning, Dr. Faraq Al-Taych and nurse Khadeje Aknaar are preparing themselves to leave their base at the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) clinic in Tulkarem, for a day providing residents of the small villages around the city with medical care through PMRS’ mobile clinic.
Founded in 1979 to fill the gap in health services left by the deliberate de-development of the health sector by Israeli Occupation Authorities, PMRS has been working in the Tulkarem district for over 20 years.
Since the Apartheid Wall was built in 2003 however, the stories the doctors tell about their work have changed significantly. While they continue to face the usual problems in their daily work – occupation-induced poverty and underdevelopment, and injuries, and the associated impacts on health – they now regularly face situations where the absurdity of the entire occupation unveils itself.
Six days a week, the mobile clinic travels through the surrounding areas, stopping in specific places each day. On Saturday, the team first unloads at a community health post in Falami, a village at the southern edge of Tulkarem district, where children, women and men suffering from colds, headaches, allergies, rheumatism or other ailments visit the doctor. The same procedure is repeated a few hours later in Kufr Aboush, the next village to which the team travels.
A usual day means ten patients per hour. But a usual also day means the inevitability of passing through several checkpoints, sometimes with difficulties and long waiting periods. These checkpoints are the main reason why mobile clinics are vital, because the same checkpoints prevent patients from accessing medical assistance.
In Jubara for example, a community close to Tulkarem, villagers find themselves completely surrounded by an electric fence, with one gate controlled by Israeli soldiers that is opened just 3 times a day, and which only allows entrance to local residents in a further effort to isolate the village from the surrounding areas.
Because of the gate’s limited opening times, Dr. Emad Barakah from PMRS’ permanent clinic in Tulkarem says that patients are forced to “manage their sickness within the little time they have in the morning from 7.40 to 8.00, in the afternoon from 14.00 to 14.15, or in the evening from 18.45 to 19.00.”
With no other health service provider in the village, residents are entirely dependent on PMRS’ mobile clinic. Yet the Israeli soldiers in charge of the gate frequently refuse to let the mobile clinic pass because its team members are not registered as residents of the village.
The paradox here is that since construction of the Wall, the Israeli military has prevented anyone from registering as a resident of the village. This includes all babies born since 2003. “The Israeli authorities are attempting not only to isolate Jubara, but to erase its very existences,” says Dr. Barakah.
In other villages like Nazlit Issa, the constructed Wall winds between buildings, severing what was formerly one community into two, and imprisoning a group of ten families between the Green Line and the Wall. Now, their former neighbours can no longer visit them because the Wall stands between their homes.

Aside from its devastating effects on social networks and kin relations, the Wall has had a more deadly impact on communities in Tulkarem. On 14 February 2008 for example, 66-year-old Fawziyeh a-Dark had a heart attack at her home in Deir al-Ghuson, which lies some 8 kilometres from Tulkarem. Not only did Israeli soldiers stationed at a checkpoint near Deir al-Ghuson prevent an ambulance from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society from reaching Mrs. A-Dark at her home, but they also prevented her husband, Mahmoud, from crossing the checkpoint in a taxi to reach the ambulance that was waiting on the other side. Mrs. A-Dark died in the back of the taxi. [1]
“Had she been able to reach the hospital, God willing, she could have lived,” said Dr. Azmi, Deir al-Ghuson’s local doctor.

Particularly during the Intifada, the team has experienced – as have all Palestinians - intense difficulties. During the curfew-filled days of the early Intifada, mobile clinic staff continued to operate at great risk to their own safety, distributing essential medicines and bringing milk and bread to those who remained trapped in their homes. Sometimes, the team would even use a donkey for transportation instead of the ambulance.
Due to both the ongoing deterioration of the economy and the intensification of military pressure on Palestinian society, Dr. Barakah does not consider the Intifada as finished, but as having become a “silent Intifada,” where existence and the struggle to survive are resistance.
“Continuing to provide health services in spite of Wall makes us feel like we can overcome the obstacles that the occupation has thrown into our lives,” says Dr. Barakah.
“Life can and must go on – despite living face to face with the wall.”