Date: Sat, 5 Sep 98 16:10:42 UT
Subject: Ha'aretz:  The dead babies of Hebron


Friday, September 4, 1998 
The dead babies of Hebron

Israeli soldiers did not let Fadwa and Shireen past the
checkpoints. Fadwa was about to give birth, and Shireen carried
her dying son in her arms. Na'ama the newborn and
three-month-old Qussai died last week. 

By Gideon Alon 

Here lie their dead: Na'ama, a newborn baby girl whom her parents
had planned to call Nasreen before she was born, was sent back
home in a cardboard box. And Qussai, a baby boy who lived a
hundred days, whose parents were not permitted by the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) to bury him in the cemetery. Their distraught
mothers were not allowed by IDF soldiers to pass through
roadblocks during the days of closure and curfew in Hebron last
week. Na'ama's mother had to give birth inside a car and to spend
another long hour on side roads until she somehow managed to reach
the hospital; Qussai's mother carried her dying son in her arms and
ran through vineyards until he breathed his last.

Signs of shock are still visible on the face of the bereft mother Fadwa
al Adem. Her mother and her mother-in-law have apparently come to
terms with the death of their granddaughter, who lived for only a few
hours in the jolting Peugeot station wagon that belongs to her brother
Azmi. But Fadwa has not come to terms. When the grandmothers
relate the story of that dreadful night, Fadwa looks down at the
ground. When she stands up, sent by her mother or her mother-in-law
to fetch something, the physical suffering she has gone through is also
evident. Beit Ulla is one of those remote villages in the West Bank,
between Hebron and the Green Line. The home of the al Adem family
is shabby, and so are the many children running around.

No one from the IDF or the Civil Administration has bothered to
come to this house to offer a work permit in Israel or condolences.
Jamil, Fadwa's husband, is not at home. He is working in Israel, no
one knows exactly where. But in this house, it is immediately obvious
that it is the grandmothers, especially Grandmother Liga, Jamil's
mother, who set the tone. Grandmother Liga went along on that
terrible day in the Peugeot with Grandmother Fawziyya and her two
sons, to rush her daughter-in-law to the Alia Hospital in Hebron after
her labor pains began. This week I measured the amount of time it
takes free human beings to cover the distance: under 20 minutes. For
them, it took an hour and a half. Azmi drove, Jamil sat next to him,
Fadwa groaned with pain in the arms of her mother Fawziya in the
middle seat and Liga sat in the back. This was early last Tuesday
evening. 

'Get out of here' 
With the experience of many births behind them, the members of the
family intended to take the shortest route to the big city, through Beit
Kahel, Tarqumiya and on to Alia in Hebron. However, near Beit
Kahel, there was an unexpected roadblock. Hebron had been closed
off. Azmi and Liga got out of the car to talk to the soldiers; Fadwa
remained in her mother's arms. Three soldiers manned the barricade.
Azmi told them that there was a woman in labor in the car who had to
get to the hospital urgently; the soldiers said that without a permit, no
one goes through. "Where am I going to get a permit now?" cried
Azmi. Liga began to plead: "For the sake of your religion, for God's
sake, let us through." She tried to appeal to the soldiers. The answer
was: "Yalla, brooh." Get out of here. 

Fadwa's contractions became more and more frequent, and more and
more painful. Her brother-in-law and her mother-in-law tried to plead
for her life. By the time they despaired of the soldiers, nearly an hour
had gone by. They have no idea whether the soldiers attempted to call
an officer with sufficient authority to grant a woman in labor
permission to go through the barricade. The soldiers, in any case, did
not allow it. The trip to the hospital went on and on. They decided to
circumvent Hebron from the west and try to slip into the city from the
south. A huge detour. They drove through Idna, and a number of
other villages to Dura in the hope they could get into Hebron from
there. 

But as they drove through the streets of Dura, Fadwa's screams
suddenly ripped through the silence in the car: a baby had come into
the world. Azmi decided to drive out of Dura; it is not proper to tend
a new mother in the middle of town. He stopped by the roadside and
got out of the car, to allow the women to deal with the mother and the
baby. Liga took off her head scarf to veil what was going on in the
car. The other grandmother, Fawziya, devoted herself to caring for
her daughter and her new granddaughter. She had nothing with which
to cut the umbilical cord, but she pressed her daughter's abdomen so
that the afterbirth would descend. They wrapped the baby and the
afterbirth in a blanket they had brought from home. Here is the
blanket. A ragged blue woolen blanket. Fadwa was in a faint.
Fawziya held the new bundle on her lap. They drove frantically
toward the hospital. 

At 9 P.M., about an hour and a half after they left home, they arrived
at Alia Hospital. Luckily, there were no barricades on the Dura side.
Grandmother Fawziya noticed that her daughter was having difficulty
breathing. The doctors rushed the infant to intensive care. An
investigator from the B'Tselem human rights organisation Najib
Abu-Rokaya, who rushed to the family's home and to the hospital,
has in his possession a letter from Dr. Ahmad Taraira stating that
when baby Na'ama arrived at the hospital, she was dying. That night,
the baby died. 

At about 11 the next morning the funeral cortege set out for the
village: the baby's body in a cardboard box, the shattered and
shocked mother and the rest of the family. Grandmother Liga decided
not to waste the name Nasreen, which she had decided to give to her
granddaughter, on a dead child, so in the death certificate they called
her Na'ama, in memory of her dead great-grandmother. They will call
the next girl born to them Nasreen. At one o'clock in the afternoon,
less than a day after she was born, they buried baby Na'ama, whose
mother the Israeli soldiers would not let through the checkpoint. It is
possible that she was fated to die in any case, and it is possible that it
was the soldiers who determined her fate, but what difference does it
make?

100 days of life 
Shireen Haddad does not let go of the cushion; she clutches it to her
chest. One can't help thinking that she is hugging this pillow instead of
Qussai, her dead son. She lives with Hani Tamimi, her husband, in a
well-tended house. Unfortunately for them, the house stands about
100 meters outside of the area of Hebron that is under the control of
the Palestinian Authority (PA), in Area 2H, which is under Israeli
control. This fact, apparently, is what determined the fate of little
Qussai, who lived for only 100 days and nights.

Shireen spent most of her life between Kuwait and Amman, where
her family immigrated. About three years ago, they returned to
Hebron, where her father opened a shop for electrical appliances and
Shireen got married. One year and nine months ago, Shireen gave
birth to her first son, Ziyad, and in May of this year she had triplets.
Luai, Narmeen and Qussai were born in good health in her seventh
month. Here is a picture of the triplets: three well-tended smiling
babies, lying side by side. Qussai is dressed in white. The three
developed well; each of them weighs more than 7 kilos. In a corner of
the room, Narmeen lies in a fancy baby carriage, a sweet baby with
little gold earrings, sleeping the sleep of the innocent. When she grows
up, maybe they will tell her about Qussai, her dead brother. 

Through the vineyards 
Two weeks ago Tuesday, Qussai fell ill. His fever was not especially
high, 38.4 degrees, a slight earache, a routine illness of infants. They
went to Dr. Nabil al Muhtassib who examined him and prescribed
Acamol, Augmentin 125 and other appropriate medications. He
asked the couple to bring the baby for a check-up in two days. On
Thursday, they went again. The baby's condition had not changed
much. The doctor was not at all worried, but he asked them to come
back if anything got worse. If he begins to vomit, take him to the
hospital, he said. 

On Friday afternoon, all four children were sleeping. Hani phoned
from his workplace in Bethlehem to find out how Qussai was doing.
Shireen went over to the baby to change his disposable diaper.
Qussai woke up for a moment, but immediately dozed off again, while
he was being changed. A few minutes later, Shireen wanted to make
him more comfortable, when he began to vomit. Dr. Nabil had said
that if this happened, they should take him to the hospital. Shireen
asked a neighbor to watch the three sleeping children and rushed out
to get the vomiting baby to the hospital. Two IDF jeeps were parked
in her street, one of them right near her door. A curfew had been
imposed on this part of town and the soldiers were stationed there to
see that it was observed.

The soldiers ordered her to go back into her house at once. Shireen
begged them to allow her to go to the hospital and burst into tears.
The argument continued, and at one stage, says Shireen, the soldiers
ordered her to stand by the jeep and not go home. Qussai's condition
was getting worse; his responses became more and more feeble.
Shireen says the soldiers spoke to her aggressively. She says she
cried, and her whole body shook. A group of youngsters walking
down the street attracted the soldiers' attention and they tried to block
their path. 

Shireen, with the baby in her arms, took advantage of this distraction
and disappeared into the vines at the roadside. She ran with the sick
baby among the vines until she came to a Palestinian roadblock.
Vomit was spewing out of the baby's mouth and nose. An hour and a
half after she left home, which is a 10-minute drive from the hospital,
she finally got into a car. Near city hall, a few hundred meters from
the hospital, Shireen sensed that Qussai had stopped breathing. In the
emergency room, Dr. Ziyad al Ash-hab had no choice but to declare
him dead on arrival. He only asked why it took her so long to arrive.
Qussai died of complications of severe pneumonia. 

Now Qussai had to be buried. They wanted to bury him in the family
plot in the Muslim cemetery in Hebron, near Shuhada Street.
However, the soldiers would not allow the family to go to the
graveyard. They buried the baby on a plot of private land, not far
from their house. This week, the Civil Administration offered them the
opportunity to transfer the body to the cemetery, but it was too late.

In his response, the IDF spokesman denied the circumstances of
Qussai's death, but said that "possibly this was an unfortunate case of
misunderstanding." In the spokesman's opinion, Na'ama's death was
caused by "misjudgement." People make mistakes. He confirms that
the driver told the soldiers there was a pregnant woman in his car, but
the soldiers "identified no signs of a medical emergency. 

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