Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Palestine-Israel, Update - on the daily struggle against the Apartheid wall: Budrus demo 28th September 04 (it) 29/09/04

About 20 comrades were arrested in a demo in Budrus initiated by the radical anti occupation people - including the Anarchists Against The Wall initiativePalestine-Israel, "We arrived at the village at around 12:30 and started marching at around 13:00. we were about 150 palestinians and 50 israelis and internationals. we stood on the hill, and didn't attempt to walk towards the soliders, for a bit more than an hour. We chanted and sang and the whole time people from the village stopped the Shabab from throwing a single stone. The village then decided the protest was over. We started walking back, I managed to see one shower of stones and then we started running from the sound grenades and tear gas. A bunch of us crowded between 2 buildings, and suddenly we were surrounded by Magav (border police) who were threatning the people in the house, and not letting anyone of us leave. The made us sit down and then told all the israelis to get up and that we were arrested.

We walked to where the protest was and were made to stand against a wall that was a sort of ramp where internationals were standing with magav. Suddenly the magav started hitting everyone and I saw a guy on the floor being kicked by at least 4 Magav, and a at least 3 internationals who were beaten over the head with sticks while soldiers were shouting in hebrew "lie down on the ground!". We couldn't do anything, it was horrible. The guy who was kicked was a palestinian they arrested with us.

They then took us to a shady hill near the village where we sat for about 3 hours. We were two internationals (one of whom is a reporter), 2 palestinians who were accused of throwing stones (the one who was beaten up, and another one who was grabbed from his house and apparently wasn't even in the protest- they obviously both never did such thing) and 16 israelis (including 3 minors under 18).only the second palestinian was handcuffed.

We were taken in a very crowded truck where we decided on jail solidarity with the internationals and palestinians.

We got to police station in Beit Aryeh where they let us sit on the grass outside for hours, which was very nice. The internationals were relaesed quite quickly, around 19:00, me and another guy were told not to enter Budrus for the next 14 days but werent given anything to sign and got our IDs back, and another woman needed to be at work the next day so she signed it at around 22:00.

The others waited on the grass till we knew what was happening with the palestinians. At the end the one who was beaten was released on the same condition as the israelis, and the other was taken to Ofer but was paid bail for in the same night. Everyone were realeased around 23:00.

we went home feeling tired but in high spirits and very much in solidarity with eachother.

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