- The Observer,
- Sunday April 7 2002
Al-Walaja on the West Bank is still under Israeli rather than Palestinian Authority control, so Khaled called the Israeli Magen David ambulance service. They told the couple to meet them at the army checkpoint at the entrance to their village.
'Halema was in a lot of pain,' Khaled said. 'I drove to the checkpoint. The soldiers would not let us through and insisted on searching the car and looking at our ID papers. I kept repeating that my wife needed to get to hospital urgently.
'They must have seen she was in labour, but kept on with the questions, even what business we had being here. It was like they were living in another world. We were held for an hour before they agreed to let us cross to the ambulance on the other side. It took us to the Bikur Holim Hospital in West Jerusalem [the Jewish part of the city]. We were held up again by the police at the gate and they insisted on searching the ambulance for weapons.
'They let Halema in, but I was detained while they made more checks. Eventually she was brought out. We don't have Israeli medical insurance and she had been told she needed to pay 7,000 shekels [£1,000] before they could deliver the baby. They wouldn't provide an ambulance to transfer her, so we had to call a taxi to take us to an Arab hospital in east Jerusalem. The doctors there told us that the baby, a little boy, was already dead in my wife's womb.'
