Abu Dis (East Jerusalem)- Behind the separation wall in the middle of the town of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, the movement of citizens continues to visit Abu Dis Medical Center, which is affiliated with Al-Maqasid Charitable Hospital, located on the Mount of Olives inside the city.
The main hospital and the medical center are separated by the cement wall that was built by the occupation force in that area in 2003, and they are also separated by the “Al-Zayyim” military checkpoint, at which the hearts of many patients stopped, and they died before arriving at Jerusalem hospitals coming from the center, which the residents of the area call “the center.” Emergency center.
Tel Aviv Tribune Net had a tour inside the corridors of the center, where dozens of patients were waiting for their turns in front of the women’s clinic, the pediatric clinic, and general medicine, but the physical pain of these patients and the deteriorating psychological state of most of them due to the war and its repercussions made them refuse to talk about their suffering, and the health situation in the areas of East Jerusalem, which one of them says The center’s doctors said it was bad and has now become miserable with the tightening of procedures for transporting and transferring patients.
Emergency
It was not easy to meet the director of the center, Doctor Daoud Ayyad, who had to leave in a hurry to accompany a pregnant woman to Al-Maqasid Hospital. She went into labor in the seventh month while carrying twins, each weighing no more than one kilogram.
As soon as Dr. Ayyad, a specialist in intensive care for premature infants, returned, other patients were also waiting for him, and this is the daily emergency under which the center’s staff works.
In his office, Tel Aviv Tribune Net received, with a smile that concealed many worries and responsibilities, the pediatrician and director of the center, Daoud Ayyad, who began his talk about the daily state of confusion that the staff experiences due to the difficulty of coordinating the exit of patients from the center towards Jerusalem hospitals.
“The woman came to us in an immediate premature birth, and the midwife and gynecologist could have helped her give birth to her newborns, but our capabilities at the center do not help us to deal with premature babies, and the woman had to be transferred to give birth to Al-Maqasid Hospital, which is separated from us by a military checkpoint, through which only Coordinated by the Civil Administration.”
The woman was lucky and the hospital was able to quickly coordinate her passage to the destinations, and the center director was forced to accompany her in the ambulance for fear that she would give birth on the way to Jerusalem and he would be forced to intervene medically with her two premature babies.
Heavy task
Similar incidents confront doctors daily at the center, which was established in 1965 as a health clinic established with the cooperation of the people of the town of Abu Dis, so that they would have an address to go to due to the difficulty of transportation in the 1960s.
The center’s medical responsibility falls on Al-Maqasid Hospital, and it serves – according to Ayyad – everyone who can reach it, starting with the people of the towns of East Jerusalem: Abu Dis, Al-Eizariya, Al-Sawahra Al-Sharqiya, Sheikh Saad, Al-Za’im, and some of the people of the town of Anata, in addition to the Bedouin Arab Jahalin communities extending between Al-Eizariya, the city and Jericho. .
Ayyad added, “The center is considered a mini-hospital, and most of us are employees of Al-Maqassed Hospital. We make the lives of patients easier here because we diagnose them, follow up with them, arrange their surgical operations in the hospital with different specialties, and follow them here and there.”
Regarding the most prominent challenges facing the work of this center, its director, Daoud Ayyad, said that the difficulties begin with the financial crisis, because Al-Maqasid Hospital is financially eroded, and this naturally applies to the center despite the administration’s efforts to develop it and overcome the crisis.
Although the center is geographically close to the city of Jerusalem and its hospitals, its administration faces many problems in transferring patients there due to the military checkpoint and the necessary procedures for patients to transfer them there, especially since they hold a Palestinian West Bank ID, which prevents them from entering Jerusalem except with special entry permits.
The center’s director continues, “We lost people’s lives due to our inability to reach Al-Maqasid Hospital in time, and these are daily dilemmas facing our work.”
Death at the checkpoints
As the director of the center concluded his speech, Dr. Abdullah Abu Hilal, who has been working there for 22 years, began by saying that the occupation’s measures in the second intifada in 2000 and then its commencement of building the separation wall around the town of Abu Dis in 2003 burdened the town’s institutions and made them think about expanding the center’s services. And develop it.
Abu Hilal says, “The center relied on the presence of a pharmacy, a general practitioner, and a gynecologist who did not have an ultrasound machine. Once the barriers were erected in areas of the West Bank, access to Jerusalem and its institutions became difficult, so the step began to develop the center, which now includes a laboratory and 4 emergency beds.” And doctors specializing in several fields, and it was opened in its new look in 2008.”
The number of patients received by general physician Abdullah Abu Hilal after the siege of Abu Dis by the separation wall ranged between 90 and 120 patients daily, and he witnessed the death of a number of them while obstructing their passage to Jerusalem, including a diabetic patient who tried to reach the destinations, but the occupation soldiers beat him and he fell on a stone. Which led to his martyrdom.
The center not only receives patients, but also receives the lion’s share of the wounded who are hit by occupation bullets with every incursion into the town and its surroundings, in addition to the injuries that result from the confrontations that break out between young men and soldiers stationed in the camp established on the town’s lands.
“Abu Dis is a constant area of friction due to the camp, and we receive many injuries, some of them serious. Many were martyred because of our inability to transport them in a timely manner to hospitals, especially in light of the disruption of the movement of ambulances and preventing them from leaving the area. Drivers are forced to take bumpy detours that prolong the arrival of the injured to the hospital.” Hospitals,” according to Abu Hilal.
Complications in the shadow of war
After its development, the center was equipped with 4 emergency beds, but they are not sufficient for the purpose in cases of incursions that require many hospitals and staff to deal with them. Abu Hilal pointed to the widespread incursions that were carried out in the town after the outbreak of the war on Gaza. He said that one of the raids last November resulted in 3 martyrs and 18 injured, and the center was forced at that time to send a call to doctors and nurses in the area to come to it for help.
After the war, the coordination process for transporting patients to Jerusalem hospitals was also complicated. Abu Hilal explained that the area was completely closed in the first month of the war, and more than 150,000 Palestinians now live in areas east of Jerusalem without a hospital, and the sick among them face death daily.
Abu Hilal adds, “We contacted the Red Cross, the United Nations, and several parliaments around the world to help us transport our patients. After a month, coordination returned at a low rate, but the passage of patients to Jerusalem became subject to the mood of the soldiers at the Al-Za’im checkpoint, and one of the women gave birth to her baby at the checkpoint because the female soldier refused to cross her.” .
Because coordination currently requires between 4 and 6 hours, the center now transfers critical cases to hospitals in the West Bank, not Jerusalem, so that patients do not lose their lives waiting for the Israelis to respond to the request to allow them to enter the city.
Abu Hilal concluded his speech to Tel Aviv Tribune Net by saying that there is no alternative to establishing a hospital that serves the areas east of the occupied city, and that the need for that is urgent now in light of the fear that the security situation in the West Bank will take a turn for the worse because “the escalation will increase our catastrophe and we will be besieged and left without any health shelter.”
