Palestine-Israel, The joint struggle against the separation fence and occupation - Friday 14-4-06 in Bilin and Beit Sira

The weekend activity started Thursday night. The army was in Bil'in at night. At 2:00 AM of Friday pre down morning the army that arrested two persons was still there. However, the state forces seemed on the de-escalation mode in Bil'in: it was in the last three months or so gradually diminishing level of belligerence. It was expressed to day in the absence of efforts to block the way of Israelis on their way to the demos in Bil'in (and Beit Sira) and more so along the demo.
The theme of this Friday demo in Bil'in was the intensifying of the strangulating "closures" around the various Palestinian regions turning them more and more like big scale prisons. The center of the creative theme was a circular structure with the blue and white colors of Israel activists were yoked into with their heads.

In addition lot of placards in the three "official" languages: Arabic, Hebrew and English. People also attached to their breasts the pictures of Bush, Bleir, Kofi-Anan, and Olmert - the ones who are responsible for the continuation and intensifying of the closures.

At noon, we started the march from the center of village on the road to the separation fence. We were about 150 people: about 100 Bil'inians, 30 internationals, and 20 Israelis of the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative. When we arrived there we were surprised to find that only few border police persons were allocated to the blocking of our way. They were standing on two armored cars which were blocking the road to the west of the fence, who were shielded by concertinas of barbed wire intended to prevent any physical contact with the demonstrators.

When demonstrators tried during the noisy confrontation to pass the barbed wire - they just threaten them with their batons.

After a while we started to walk along the route of the fence trying to find a point to pass the barbed wire and enter the route, but additional soldiers rushed and prevent our crossing. During the low intensity confrontation four Israeli activist were detained at the fence route and released when the demo was ended.

The low intensity was expressed also in the restricted responses of the state forces to the stone throwers (who started their activity really late). Few of them were seen trying in vain to draw response from the soldiers when these remained in their armored cars.

Later, when they threw stones on the soldiers who stood guard to prevent climbing to the route fence, they used minimal amount of tear gas - without any effort to pursue the stone throwers.

Beit Sira demo was even quieter than that of the previous Friday. About 70 of the villagers - the rest refrained from coming as the Israeli state secret services threatened to cancel their work permit in Israel most of them have. About 10 Israelis of the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative and few internationals participated too. The theme of this demo was the big prisons all the Palestinians live in and was expressed in the prison shirts the participants wore.

During the demo and even after it, the villagers participating in the demo succeeded to restrain the village youngsters who refrained as result from stone throwing this Friday.