Palestinian medics on the front line fighting to save lives

Niilin, occupied West Bank – Bassem Sadaqa points at a bullet hole lodged in the driver’s door of the ambulance he drives, tangible evidence of what he says is a regular occurrence of Palestinian medics being “regularly targeted” by Israeli forces.

Th The father of five lives in Niilin and has be been a paramedic with the Palestine Red C Crescent Society (PRCS) for 20 years. “At fir first I thought the ambulance had been hit by stones until I saw the hole. The shooting wasn’t an accident, the Israeli soldiers were ai aiming at the ambulance as I was standing ri right near it. And it also wasn’t the first time am ambulances I have driven have been targeted.” Sadaqa had been on the front lines with his fellow Palestinian medics on the day this happened, fighting to save lives and rushing wounded protesters to hospitals a halfhour’s drive away.

Palestinian villagers protesting against the illegal establishment of yet another Israeli outpost on their village land had been confronted by Israeli settlers, resulting in viol lence and d many injuries.

Niilin is an agricultural village of more than 6,000 people who mostly make their living from farming that lies 17km (10 miles) west of the main occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. The people there are fighting to keep what land the village has left from being expropriated by ever-encroaching illegal Israeli settlements and outposts – they are now surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlements of Nili and Na’ale in the northeast and Modi’in Illit to the south.