Jenin, occupied West Bank, Palestine – On April 4 last year, Ahmad Nobane was trying to contact an injured person in the Jenin refugee camp to provide first aid.
He received messages on his cell phone informing him of the victim’s location and drove as far as he could through the city’s narrow, destroyed streets. He had to get out and walk the last 300 meters (1,000 feet) to reach the man lying on the ground.
Then he felt the shot.
Nobane, 22, was hit by an Israeli sniper in the right side of the chest.
Protecting himself, he pressed on the wound to stop the bleeding – as he had been trained to do with other people.
His colleagues managed to reach him and help him into an ambulance. But the vehicle was stopped by the Israeli military and soldiers fired warning shots at the ambulance.
When the ambulance was finally allowed to move, Nobane was taken to the Ibn Sina Specialized Hospital, a facility raided by undercover Israeli agents who attacked and killed three Palestinians inside in January. He stayed two days. It took six months of follow-up treatment to recover.
Nobane is one of 23 young men who were trained as volunteer first responders in Jenin, and this incident occurred a year and a half ago, before the war in Gaza began and Israeli forces intensified violent attacks on towns and cities in the occupied area. West Bank.
These days, the experience of being under attack is just a night’s work.
Using tuk-tuks as makeshift ambulances
Nobane was just a newborn when his father was killed during the second Intifada in 2002, fighting Israeli forces attacking his refugee camp in Jenin. Two years ago, he decided to join the camp’s volunteers who are dedicated to trying to save lives by training as first responders.
After recovering from his gunshot wound, he resumed his volunteer work as best he could.
“We try to find life from death,” Nobani told Al Jazeera.
In Jenin these days, it’s difficult to know exactly how many people might need help on any given night. Around 24,000 people are registered as living in this camp. But frequent attacks by Israeli forces have intensified since the war in Gaza began in October, destroying homes and forcing many to flee.
Since then, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 536 Palestinians, including 131 children, in the West Bank and injured more than 5,500, including 800 children – more than a third of them with live ammunition – according to the United Nations Office for Coordination. of Humanitarian Affairs (THE TEA).
In Jenin alone, at least 148 Palestinians have been killed, 320 injured and 540 detained by Israeli forces since October 7, according to local journalist Ali Samoudi, one of those trying to keep count amid the chaos.
Our Palestine is making a desperate attempt to keep these numbers low. The grassroots organization was born inside the camp and is led by Nidal Naghnaghiye, 52, a community leader who spent 17 years in Israeli prisons. It is the group responsible for organizing first aid volunteers.
Working closely with the international organization Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, the team of first aid volunteers is led by Salah Mansour, 29, a lawyer. He is one of 15 men and eight women who make up the group – all coming from different professions and backgrounds and now trained in first aid and ready to try to reach injured people wherever they are.
It’s important to keep volunteers equipped and trained, says Mansour, because “we don’t just work in the field. We also reach patients’ homes if necessary.”
“We often had to stay with a patient for more than two hours until safety conditions improved to transport him.”
Volunteers use tuk-tuks provided by MSF as makeshift ambulances to transport injured people, patients and rescuers.
They have one main goal: to keep patients alive for as long as it takes to get to a hospital, such as the Jenin Government Hospital, which is just a few meters from the Jenin camp but may well be many kilometers away due to the time it takes. to pass through Israeli military blockades. In December, MSF reported that Israeli forces shot dead an unarmed 17-year-old boy inside the hospital complex and were preventing ambulances from leaving it. Paramedics and ambulance drivers were stripped naked and forced to kneel on the ground, MSF said in a post on X.
With this kind of obstacle, it’s all a matter of managing within the Jenin field. First aid volunteers work in a large hall that was once used by a civil society organization, but now serves as a training center where volunteers receive instructions from MSF on how to stop bleeding, move and lift victims safely, and a range of other vital situations. rescue techniques. At the moment, all the training center contains are a few bandages and a few other medical supplies, while volunteer tradesmen work in the corners carrying out routine repairs.
‘You are saving your brothers’
Inside the training center, Nobani, who studies speech therapy at the Arab American State University of Jenin, has a welcoming smile and a calm voice.
Several scars mark his body. They are visible on the back, legs and arms. Behind the first aid vest there is a bullet embedded in his chest. This was due to his first injury as a volunteer paramedic in April last year.
Just three months later, another Israeli incursion took place in Jenin – one of the deadliest since the end of the second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising during the first half of the 2000s. The attack was launched with armored vehicles, ground forces and airstrikes in areas residential. Many houses in the camp were destroyed, as well as a health facility run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The aggression lasted two days. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including four children, and 100 were injured, 20 in critical condition. An estimated 4,000 people fled their homes.
During this attack, Nobani was injured for a second time. Shrapnel from a nearby airstrike hit the left side of his body as he and a colleague tried to reach a mother and daughter injured by a drone strike.
The impact of the deafening airstrike knocked them to the ground. He still has trouble hearing.
Why does he continue to put himself through this? Nobani responds without hesitation and with conviction: “You are saving your sister, your brother, your family, your friends, your people.”
‘If not us, who will do this work?’
With a lack of medical personnel on the ground, this group of volunteer rescuers has become critical in the Jenin refugee camp.
“If not us, who will do this work?” Nobani asks.
Since before the war in Gaza began – but even more so since then – attacks and raids in Jenin have targeted healthcare workers, medical facilities and ambulances, explains Nobani.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 480 attacks against Palestinian health professionals and facilities in the West Bank between October 7 and the end of May, leaving 16 dead and 95 injured. About 95 percent of these attacks focused on Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem.
During an Israeli attack in May, for example, Dr. Aseed Jabareen, 50, was killed near the Jenin Government Hospital on his way to work.
Then, after Dr. Jabareen’s death, there was an air raid on a medical stabilization room, a makeshift emergency room used to stabilize injured people with some beds and medical equipment, which had been set up in the camp in 2023 by volunteers with support from MSF.
Since that operation, volunteers have carried their first aid kits with them so they can treat victims on site rather than trying to get them to the stabilization room.
The murder of medical personnel and the destruction of facilities is not the only reason why Jenin residents are finding it increasingly difficult to access medical treatment. Attacks often destroy the area’s infrastructure. The devastated streets make it difficult – sometimes impossible – for ambulances to reach locations within the camp.
Patients themselves are also often unable to reach ambulances during operations, even if they are available.
Therefore, a main objective of Our Palestine, in addition to training volunteer paramedics, is to ensure that at least one person per family in the camp has first aid training.
With help from MSF, volunteers teach residents ways to stop bleeding and other primary trauma care, including a mental health component. This helps bring more capacity to the team.
‘You stop when the bleeding stops’
Nour*, 27, mother of two, is one of 11 female interns taking part in a “stop the bleeding” workshop in the camp. She wants to learn the skills needed to care for injured patients. Like others around her, she fears that a family member or neighbor will be injured in an Israeli attack and does not know what to do.
The women gather at midday, in scorching heat, in the makeshift training center, equipped only with a large, noisy fan to cool the room. They are here to learn first aid from an MSF instructor who communicates with them through a translator.
The trainer, Joshua Sim Ka Seng, emphasizes the importance of stopping bleeding as soon as an injury occurs and teaches techniques including how to apply tourniquets.
Having had many experiences seeing injured people, women have many questions. A woman asks how long it takes to apply pressure to a bleeding wound.
“You stop when the bleeding stops,” Sim responds.
After the three-hour session, Nour reflects on the importance of this training. “Israeli soldiers are not just targeting resistance fighters. They target civilians.
“I imagine that one day one of my relatives or neighbors will be injured or beaten by Israeli soldiers. It’s important to know what to do – at least the minimum.”
*Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
