Healthcare within the seam zones is restricted to the basic medical clinics allowed to exist there, which are only capable of treating minor ailments. For all other health problems, Palestinian residents must seek health services in other parts of the West Bank. Ambulances from Israel will not attend to cases within the seam zones, forcing Palestinians to seek assistance from West Bank ambulances which must cross through checkpoints, sometimes resulting in fatal delays.250 These delays have caused pregnant women to often relocate to the West Bank a month before their due date in case of birth complications.251 The unlawful denial of services illustrated here has been strategically employed by Israel to create a situation of enduring privation for Palestinians in seam zones. It should therefore be recognized as part of a systematic pattern of discrimination by the occupying power which seeks to make life so difficult for these Palestinians that they are left with little option but to relocate to other parts of the West Bank. “Life in the town depends on sharing; it depends on you sharing what you have with your neighbor. The financial situation in the town is really bad; most of the people are really poor. The infrastructure in Nabi Samuel is almost nonexistent. Each family has created a cesspool just outside their homes and this creates a lot of problems. If someone uses the water a little bit more than usual, the house floods with sewage and waste water and the cesspool outside floods. In the past, there were no clinics at all, now there is one clinic, run by an international non-government organization. They come maybe every week or two. They were here last Saturday but they only called for people who were over 50 years old to come to the clinic. Many people were sick and needed some medical care but they weren’t allowed to come to the clinic because it was only for the elderly people. The clinic doesn’t do a lot of things. They just did some tests; mainly blood pressure and diabetes tests. They don’t even bring the needed medications, so people still have to leave the town and buy them from outside. Ambulances never come into the town, only in cases of death to carry out the body, but nothing else. I mean, I remember two cases where ambulances came to the town, one for a man who fell down and the other for a man who was run over by a tractor. Israeli ambulances do not come to Nabi Samuel, 250 BADIL, Seam Zones, 8, supra note 238. 251 OCHA oPt, The Impact of Barrier on Health, Special Focus, July 2010, 7, available at: https://www. ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_special_focus_july_2010_english.pdf 70

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