Palestine-Israel Bil'in, The struggle still continues - Friday demonstration 28 Oct

This Friday demo has as background the three army night invasion for arresting people who participate in the weekly Fridays demonstrations. At the first night invasion they arrested nine villagers for the bogus claim that they damaged the fence. On the second night invasion they arrested additional three. On the third invasion, people went out of their hoses to confront the army unit, and the three persons they came to arrest were not found. As response to that harassment, the theme of the demo was that all of us are potential candidates to be arrested. many participants handcuffed ourselves with plastic imitation of the real thing. Placard was wit the content that all the rest of the 1600 inhabitants - including children, are to be arrested next if the struggle is to be stooped.

We marched along the road leading to the separation fence chanting - about 150 people, including 20 internationals, 50 Israelis who defied the closure intended to block us from arriving to the joint struggle, and about 100 people from Bil'in (as the last Fridays demos were not repressed harshly some even brought their young kids).

The Israeli state forces blocked our way about 100 meters from the fence route - there we stood for a while chanting. after a while, a 20 persons contingent of Bir Zeit university joined us and short time later we tried to get of the blocked road and come through the olive orchard nearer to the fence route. The state forces objected to this act pushed us forcefully back to the road again and again, injured by that two Israelis whose injuries were dressed by the medics of the Palestinian ambulance which is present in each demo, and two israelis even where detained for a while.

In spite of the state force pushing and pulling many of demonstrators succeeded to arrive to about few meters from the fence. There, Mohamad Hatib gave a speech, with explanations to people who participated in the demo for the first time. Then, the nonviolent demonstration was declared finished and we returned to the village - and the internationals and Israelis said good by to the village activists and added see you next Friday in Bil'in.

In parallel to the passage of the nonviolent demonstrators effort to come nearer to the fence route, youth of the village started the usual attrition war of stones versus tear gas and rubber bullets shots of the army which continued for a while even after the main demo was ended.

In a place were no demonstrators or stone throwing youth were near, a group of soldiers were seen as throwing stones on an army car which was on the fence route - probably for video taking by the army for false accusation of the demonstrators.