Twilight Zone / 'My wife will die in the car'

By Gideon Levy

"They wanted to spend their old age together. An elderly couple, Fauziyah al-Darek, 66, and her husband, Mahmoud Qab, 70. They wanted to continue to enjoy their only daughter and their three young grandchildren in their modest home in Dir al-Ghusun. But now Mahmoud, a widower, sits on a white plastic chair in the center of the guest room in his house, a kaffiyeh wrapped around his bony face, alone. On the table stands a picture of his granddaughter and on the wall hangs a photograph of his wife, adorned with a black ribbon, pictures of colorful flowers surrounding the mourning photo.

Fauziyah died because of the insensitivity of soldiers who would not allow her to be rushed to the hospital in Tul Karm after she suffered a serious heart attack. She lay in the back seat of a taxi (the army had not allowed an ambulance to pick her up at home), breathing with difficulty and moaning in pain, her husband pleading with the soldiers, trying to persuade them, trying to explain to them that his wife was about to die - all to no avail. "Get out of here, we don't care if your wife dies," one of them said......."