Princeps said:
Yeah, and Israel stops people from reaching hospitals and seeing doctors because their papers don't match at the road blocks. Oh, and don't forget, without US support these fools would be long gone.
Last year I spent a week at a checkpoint in the West Bank near a settlement called Kdumim, and one of the guys at the post mentioned how when the fighting was real bad they'd been ordered to strip-search ambulances as well as regular vehicles and it made him feel bad about his mission. I thought and openly said to him that there's probably a reason for that, and he said that's what got to him - that our enemy is screwed up enough to use ambulances as a gun-running rig. I mentioned that they probably don't do that and it's just us being paranoid, and we left it at that.
Three days after I left the checkpoint, a suicide bomber blew up in the settlement, killing himself and three others. An IDF investigation revealed the belt was transferred from the town of Tul Kar to the city of Nablus via a Palestinian vehicle that wasn't searched at the checkpoint adjecent to our location and orders came to start searching
everything with two and four wheels without an Israeli license plate.
Turns out the only vehicles we didn't check at that particular point were ambulances, which means you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's the most likely way it got past us.
I have it under good authority IEDs and suicide-bomb belts have been smuggled in ambulances for years, and have killed at least three people. So screw the "local" population - until they stop running **** in their rigs, we should check ambulances too. They can either stop getting injured in ways which require ambulances or preferably build their own bloody infastructure where they can go blow themselves up to their hearts content.