Deir Ballut's roadblocks serve no purpose other than to detour villagers an extra mile or so on unpaved road before they arrive at the same spot. In other words, instead of securing Israel, the blocks are simply part of a steady policy to disable Palestinian life. Similarly, the checkpoint patrolling the main road out of Deir Ballut village ensures that villagers face a series of obstacles in getting to work, school, or even the hospital. The checkpoint is open from 7am to 7pm, so anyone with a personal or health emergency between 7pm and 7am is simply out of luck. In late 2003, a villager named Lamis Qasim, who was 7 months pregnant with twins, began to go into labor in the middle of the night. Soldiers prevented her and her husband from driving past the checkpoint to the nearest hospital in Ramallah. They even prevented her from walking across the checkpoint into an ambulance that could shuttle her to safety. The soldiers insisted that they were only following orders not to let anyone through at night. When she was finally let through, her premature babies were born alive in the ambulance, but died subsequently because they couldn't get medical attention on time.
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