"I arrived at Hirbet Imnezil on Sunday, with few other from the Anarchist against the fence group. We joined the first demonstration there against the fence.
Being there the first activity of this kind was apparent. Especially the encounter with Israeli activists and the expressions of despair on the faces of the villagers - especially these of the oldest people.
Hirbet Imnezil located in the South Hebron mountain region. Near it the settlement Bit Yatir/Metsudat Yehuda. (The double names is a known trick of the settlers, in their efforts to cover up their presence behind the Green Line - the preoccupation border.)
The settlement is obviously built on lands of Hirbet Imnezil. Before the 1948 war, their lands were up to Tel Arad where now stands the Israeli new town Arad. The fence around the settlement surround a big part of the lands of the village. That fence is a "dynamic" one - during the last few years it is moved again and again towards the houses of the village and annex few more lands to the settlement.
This week arrived a new fence... the mother of all the fences. A kind of cage was erected especially for the bulldozers and the tractors made by Caterpilar company - the accomplice of the israeli occupation.
This week the works on the fence started by the leveling of the lands on the route the fence will be built along it. The original route [which was abolished following previous struggle and the verdict of the Israeli highest court of "justice"] would be annexing the village and including it on the Israeli side of the fence. The present route in this region is aproximally along the Green Line [the 1948 border], but the Israeli state did not give in regarding the Beit Yatir settlement. In order to include it in the Israeli side the fence is departing there from the green line and encyrcle it. In part of the activists organization the village is not even marked as it is a small place of only 150 families. Soon it will become even smaller as the fence annex to the Israeli side about 5000 Dunams (five square killometers). The orders of confiscation their lands arrived at March 2005. Few of the owners of the lands submitted their formal objections to the Israeli occupation administration. They attached to their appel documents of ownership. As a responce, they received an official letter - including in it the documents of ownership they previously attached to their appeal, with very short reply: "We can not relate to your objection-appeal as there were not attached to it documents of ownership". Big part of the lands of the village are not tilled - a fact that make the confiscation easier as according to an old law from the time of the Othman empire (dismantled 90 years ago) that said that lands not tilled for three years become public and can be confiscated by the government.
At the time we arrived there still were not works for flatening the route. (It is redundant to add that after we left, the works did start in ernest.) We started to march along the proposed route of the fence, stopping for a while at the well used to supply water for the school but will be on the other side of the intended fence. We continued towards the hangar of the Caterpilar equipment. There we mer the the army forces. They were not ready for the demonstration, and thus did not have the so called "means for dispersing demonstrations". They appeared as people just aroused from their deep sleep....
They did not have haterad in their eyes - just a deep gaze of contept. One of them asked me: "have you nothing to do in Tel Aviuve in such day ?" Another one complained he had to return earlier from his Saturday at home because of the demo. Their apathy depressed me even more than the gazes full of haterad seen on the eyes of the soldiers with the same role in other villages. The banality of evil... We marched around the encloser of the bulldozers, holding hands - inhabitants of the village amongst them boys and girls, Israelis, and internationals. At a certain point, we set down as an expression of protest in front of the heavy equipment.
Afterwards, we marched towards the fence of the Beit Yatir settlement for an expression of protest. This aroused a bit the soldiers. As they did not have regular means for dispersing demonstrations they become physical, pushing and felling demonstrators to the ground - including people with advanced ages... This did not stop the people from shouting: "No to the fence, no to the settlements", "No peace with the fence". At this point the demonstration ended and we walked towards the village center. The coming Friday there will be another demo at Imnezil - another village joining to the chain of non violent mass protest against the fence.
For further details:
Elki
photographs: https://israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3358/index.php
====================== Bil'in ==================
Photographs of the previous week demo of the children of Bil'in on the day that the village's fate was sealed in the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.
https://israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3283/index.php
============================================
The latest from Bil'in:
At 6:00 in the Wednesday morning today, June 22, ten people - villagers, as well as international and Israeli activists of the AATW initiative ... a sheep, locked themselves into a cage on the planned route of the annexation wall. Of course there followed arrests, but today the untiring advocate Peleg succeeded in getting all out...
-----------------------------
Electronic Media reported:
22/06/2005 - 6 demonstrators against the fence at the Bil'in village were detained including three internationals activists. Part of them locked themselves in a cage but the security authorities succeeded to "free" them after a short time.
=============================
TV main (late evening) news program reported on a new link the chain of demos of the Bel'in villagers and supporters and showed a short part of the struggle of the state forces with the caged people.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment