Israel’s roadblocks are choking emergency care in the West Bank
An Israeli soldier stands next to an ambulance after the army curfew was lifted for three hours, in the southern neighborhoods of Hebron (Al-Khalil), 21 January 2026
Shatha Yaish reports in +972 on 13 August 2026:
“This woman is dying!” a man screamed again and again, as the ambulance carrying 30-year-old Sujoud Fuqaha sat stuck at an Israeli-controlled gate on its way to a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Fuqaha had suffered cardiac arrest and needed urgent medical care. An ambulance quickly arrived at her home in Sinjil, about 16 kilometers northeast of Ramallah; from there, “It should have taken 10 minutes to get [to the hospital], but the gate was closed,” her husband Majed explained.
For more than half an hour, the ambulance was held up as Fuqaha’s condition deteriorated, according to an audio recording of the July 17 incident shared by the village’s local council. The recording captures those at the scene pleading for the ambulance to be allowed through.
Islam Karakrah, the paramedic who drove the ambulance, told +972 that the crew tried to resuscitate her on the way. “You usually have around 40 minutes after a cardiac arrest,” he said. By the time they reached the hospital, Fuqaha, a mother of two young children, was pronounced dead. (An Israeli army spokesperson denied reports of the delay, stating that “the time it took to open the gate was shorter than claimed and did not exceed normal.”)