Women have the right to feel safe during childbirth and to choose the place where
they want to give birth. This certainly has not been the case for Palestinian women
living under occupation in the past two years. The emergency situation has changed
the parameters of maternity care. In the previous decade, the trend had been toward a
decrease in home births, with ninety per cent of pregnant women in the West Bank
giving birth in maternity facilities in 1999. Recently, however, the frequent and severe
closures, the extended curfews, and the unpredictable emergency situation has led to a
considerable increase in childbirth at home or in doctors’ clinics. During these periods
of siege, midwives (both formally trained ones and the dayas or traditional birth
attendants), physicians, and even family members were called upon to be birth
attendants. Birthing women have shown strength and courage despite the atmosphere
of fear linked to the siege and the periodic inability to reach the hospital in case of
emergency. Midwives have calmed many anxious pregnant women, reassuring them
that they will accompany them throughout the birth and give them the necessary
encouragement and support that they need to give birth successfully, in spite of the
obstacles. Some health professionals, unaccustomed to birth outside of the hospital,
had to overcome their own anxieties in order to assist pregnant women and deal with
the complications in the community. Many of the births resulted in healthy babies.
However, some of the cases ended in tragedy with the death of the infant and in rare
cases with maternal death, when the laboring woman was delayed at the checkpoint.
In one incident, the husband was shot by the Israeli army when attempting to bring his
wife in labor to the hospital.