On Sunday February 8, two year old Mohammad Hersham Maraba became the first victim of the Israeli wall's obstruction of Palestinian access to medical services. Mohammad died after desperate attempts by his father to take him to hospital were thwarted by the Israeli Apartheid Wall.

Mohammad had developed a temperature during the night of Saturday 7, and seeming no better the following morning his parents took him to the local doctor in the next village of Habla. After assessing Mohammad the doctor explained that the child's situation was critical and an ambulance was called to take Mohammad to the hospital in Qalqiliya, 2.5 km to the north.

The construction of the wall around Habla, Ras Atiya and Izbet Jalud began in December 2002, prior to this the journey from the surrounding villages to Qalqiliya hospital was relatively straightforward, probably taking no longer than ten or fifteen minutes. However, on the day Mohammad's father went to take his son to the hospital the obstructions and delays created by the construction of the wall led to the death of his child.

The village of Ras Atieh where the Maraba family live is on the Palestinian side of the wall. Unlike many towns and villages in the northern Qalqilya district it is not isolated in an area now de facto annexed into Israel yet due to Israel's annexation of the Alfe Menashe settlement the wall has deviated considerably from the 1967 green line and circled back into Palestinian territory to catch the settlement. The only thing more blatant than Israel's illegal annexations is their determination to take the land without the people. The route of the wall can often be seen therefore to follow as close as possible to the edges of Palestinian built up areas while leaving their land on the Israeli side of the wall. This has been the case in Habla. Though Israel has annexed the land, incorporating the 5,300 population into Israel was not acceptable. The wall therefore breaks between Qalqiliya and Habla leaving a small gap for an Israeli bypass road, tunneling back into West Bank land before swelling out to engulf the Alfe Menashe settlement almost like a great lake.

The ramifications of this are that people from Habla, Ras Atiya and Izbet Jalud now have to circumvent this great lake to reach services their small communities cannot provide, such as emergency hospital care.

When the ambulance didn't arrive to take Mohammad to hospital his father rushed down to the Habla gate which could enable him to pass through the first wall and then on to the second and the gate to enter Qalqiliya. The gates however are renowned for their sporadic opening if not permanent closure. On reaching the Habla gate Maraba found it locked and un-manned. He was therefore forced to begin the long journey following the wall around the Alfe Menashe settlement. Forty minutes later he reached the town of Azzun - approximately half way to the Qalqiliya Hospital - where he met the waiting ambulance and medics pronounced his little boy dead.

According to Doctor Zouhir Ashour from Al Aqsa medical center in Qalqilya the boy had suffered fibril convulsions. There is a simple medicine to treat such cases but this can only be administered in a hospital. Dr Ashour said there is no doubt that the obstruction caused by the wall was responsible for the child's death. Had the boy come to the hospital directly he could have been treated immediately and would have stood a significantly higher chance of survival.