Amnesty International On-line, Israel and the Occupied Territories: The heavy price of Israeli incursions
The Israeli invasions of the past six weeks have seen an unprecedented attack on medical personnel. The IDF's consistent fire on ambulances travelling to the injured halted ambulances for days at a time. The IDF has also fired on civilians, including women, who ventured out to carry the injured. After two medical assistants travelling with ambulances were killed within the space of a few hours on 7 March, the ICRC told ambulances not to move and, during the whole of 8 March, while clashes were continuing in Tulkarem Refugee Camp and the wounded were lying in streets and homes, not a single ambulance was able to leave the station.

The ICRC tried to coordinate the movement of ambulances by contacting the Civil Administration (the Israeli military government in the Occupied Territories) and obtaining IDF authorization first. They were delayed and, even with this coordination, they were frequently shot at. Nor was the ICRC emblem any protection. In a public statement, the ICRC on 5 April 2002 stated that it was ''obliged to limit its movement in the West Bank to a strict minimum''. It continued:

''Over the past two days, ICRC staff in Bethlehem have been threatened at gun point, warning shots have been fired at ICRC vehicles in Nablus and Ramallah, two ICRC vehicles were damaged by IDF tanks in Tulkarem and the ICRC premises in Tulkarem were broken into. This behaviour is totally unacceptable, for it jeopardises not only the life-saving work of emergency medical services, but also the ICRC's humanitarian mission.''

Two doctors and four paramedics were killed by IDF fire between 4 and 12 March 2002. Amnesty International investigated the killings of Sa'id Shalayel, Kamal Salem and Ibrahim Jazmawi.

On 4 March 2002 Dr Khalil Suleiman, aged 58, was killed when the clearly marked PRCS ambulance he was travelling in was hit by gunfire from members of the IDF. Dr Khalil Suleiman was head of the PRCS Emergency Medical Service (EMS) in Jenin in the West Bank. Also injured were four Red Crescent paramedics and the driver who were travelling in the ambulance. An injured girl was being transported in the ambulance at the time.
On 7 March, the first day of the Israeli army's entry into Tulkarem, the use of ambulances was allowed only in coordination with the ICRC, accompanied by the ICRC ambulance. However, after 5pm the ICRC ambulance had to leave. As it grew dark a clearly-marked UNRWA ambulance on its way to collect three wounded people was attacked by a missile from an Apache helicopter. Kamel Salem, an UNRWA sanitation worker with medical training, sitting in the ambulance beside the driver, was killed. Another ambulance, with Ibrahim Muhammad Jazmawi as the medical assistant, had been at the scene, and his ambulance returned to the centre. Meanwhile more calls came to help the wounded, including three injured in a car accident. The PRCS tried to coordinate their movements with the IDF through the ICRC and waited nearly an hour before they eventually got agreement to send out ambulances. Two PRCS ambulances left to collect the three injured people. However, two minutes from the hospital in a main shopping street of Tulkarem they saw a tank facing them. The ambulance of Ibrahim Jazmawi reversed about a metre. The tank fired on both ambulances killing Ibrahim Jazmawi and damaging the second ambulance. The surviving ambulancemen escaped on foot. After half an hour a group of ambulancemen were able to return on foot to collect the body of Ibrahim Jazmawi. After that the ICRC told the ambulancemen not to move and they remained inactive for the whole of 8 March, despite continuing clashes and casualties in the camps.
Sa'id Yusuf Shalayel, from a Palestinian military medical ambulance, was killed during the night of 7-8 March; another medical assistant, Muhammad al-Hissu, from the PRCS survived with multiple injuries only because he was wearing a flak jacket (46 flak jackets were donated by the ICRC). Three ambulances were called north of Gaza where there had been an attack, apparently from an IDF gunship, on a small Force 17 post. The two assistant medical personnel started to go towards the wounded and were about 70 metres from the three ambulances, their top-lights flashing, when there was suddenly a large explosion, apparently from a shell. Sa'id Shalayel was killed and Muhammad al-Hissu injured. The head of the PRCS emergency services telephoned the ICRC who tried to coordinate with the IDF the entry of ambulances to attend the wounded. Meanwhile Muhammad al-Hissu had been able to use the mobile telephone of his dead companion to describe what had happened; that he was badly injured, and that the other ambulanceman and three others had been killed. The head of emergency services immediately put out a call for any ambulance to respond, without any coordination, and 10 ambulances turned up from different services all with lights flashing, but the attacks continued and the medical personnel could not go forward. By that time a fourth person in the area who had tried to reach the wounded had also been killed. It was only after a further 20-minute wait with flashing lights that ambulancemen were able to go in to retrieve the dead and wounded.
On 8 March the IDF killed Dr Ahmad Nu'man Sabih al-Khudari, the director of the small Yamama Hospital in al-Khader, as he drove to Deheisheh Refugee Camp, on the fringes of Bethlehem. The doctor had received assurances from an Israeli official the same day that his security would be respected.

As a result of the closures, PRCS ambulances in the Gaza Strip have had difficulty in responding to any urgent call outside Gaza and Jabaliya. The IDF cut the 45 kilometre-long Gaza Strip in three portions and the IDF operated in many areas; even for emergency cases unconnected with the intifada the PRCS had to contact the ICRC to seek coordination. The ICRC in turn had to coordinate through the Israeli Civil Administration (the military administration overseeing the Occupied Territories), which would then coordinate with the IDF. This would cause a delay of more than an hour even for the most urgent cases. On 13 March it took one and a half hours to get authorization for the entrance of a PRCS ambulance into a village south of Gaza to pick up a five-year-old boy who had swallowed insecticide. Notwithstanding an accord granted by the IDF, the ambulance was prevented from reaching the child's house because the road had been closed by the IDF by piles of sand. A curfew was in force and by the time the ambulance left it was dark. A tank blocked the road behind the blockade and the IDF there said they knew nothing of any coordination. Eventually the only solution was to telephone a neighbour to fetch the boy's parents and to give them instructions over the telephone about what to do.
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE150422002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED TERRITORIES