'She was haemorrhaging': In the West Bank, the checkpoint ordeal for pregnant women

On this road on the 27th of July, a six-month-pregnant Palestinian woman suffered a miscarriage. She was stopped at a checkpoint while heavily bleeding. Bashar Mahama was the paramedic who was transporting the young woman. When we arrived, here where you see the ambulances was closed. The soldiers are in this watchtower. Of course, the army only came down from the tower after quite a long time. When we came in here, this barrier was closed. They left us stuck between these barriers for half an hour. The fetus was already dead and came out in the amniotic sack. The woman was also hemorrhaging and she lost consciousness. We started treating her straight away, but the soldiers forced us to switch off the ambulance's engine. There's medical equipment here that runs on the ambulance's power supply. When we shut down the ambulance, they stopped working. No monitor, no oxygen, nothing. There was nothing we could do. The pregnant woman wishes to remain anonymous. She lives here. Five days after her miscarriage, she's still struggling to recover. Sabrine is the midwife who helped deliver the fetus at her home and then saved her life in the ambulance. Here, she recounts her interaction with the soldier at the checkpoint. I told the soldier that we had to help the mother so she wouldn't lose her life. He didn't listen to me. He pointed his gun at me and told me to go back to the car. I was scared and I went back to the ambulance. I did everything I could to keep the patient conscious. Half an hour later, they opened the barrier for us and we finally reached the hospital. She'd lost a lot of blood. On arrival at Refidia Hospital in Nablus, the young woman was treated for 24 hours by Dr. Rasha al-Hammouz. For the past three years, we have been suffering throughout the West Bank from the problem of checkpoints and roadblocks. Naturally, this has made it difficult for women and more generally patients to access hospitals and for medical teams to reach their destinations. All of this obviously had negative consequences for the running of the hospital, both from a medical and a nursing perspective. We contacted the Israeli army, who stated that the ambulance crew had not carried out the required prior coordination before arriving at the checkpoint. The army states that it has no intention of delaying medical treatment or medical evacuations.