Palestine-Israel, Bil'in, Friday 5-5-06, the joint struggle continue with partial nonviolence

In the late morning hours thirty Israelis arrived tin the Anarchists Against The Wall convoy. Ten international activists arrived too. and also some media teams. At the meeting place the comers met each other and activists of the village local comity for the struggle against the separation fence and robbing of most of the lands of the Bil'in villagers. Also was there the structure of this Friday demo theme. The main structure was a circular fence of barbed wire which symbolize the concentration camps the closures and encirclements of small regions of the Palestinian areas are subject to. The two hours preceding the demo were used as usual for socializing, for coordination of the various aspects of the joint struggle, for "education" of people this was their first participation in a demo in bil'in, and for debriefing reporters of various media channels - Israeli, Palestinian, and international, who came to cover our demo.

At noon, we started as usual the march from the village center on the road leading to the route of the separation fence. At the head of the march was carried the barbed wire structure and within it marched a young person with clothes of the color of the Palestinian flag, holding such a flag in his hands - symbolizing the palestinian nation jailed in the plethora of villages and regions encircle each by its own closer, road blocks getos.

After the usual march and chanting we arrived to the entrance to the route of the fence, where we found the Israeli state forces blocking the pass to the other side of the route or to route itself. Like in the two previous Friday demos, in order to restrict the physical confrontation between the state forces and the demonstrators, the blocking was done with barbered wire and two armored cars on which stood soldiers and border police.

As usual, the confrontation started with low intensity, but soon, the verbal mode expanded to egg and water throwing on the state force, who responded soon with shock grenades. This was taken as a sign by the stone throwing youth. Not like in the two previous Friday, both the intensity of stone throwing and the state force responses were a bit milder. There were wave in which stone were thrown more frequently. There were waves of shock grenades mainly and some shooting, but some demonstrators persisted and stayed near the route all the time.

At some point few officers and soldiers entered the demonstrators area near the fence route, may be to neutralize stone throwers. However, the nonviolent demonstrators encircled them and with verbal and physical pressure forced to retreat. As alternative measure - instead of intensive shooting and other radical means which are causing bad PR to the state forces when shown in the TV (like in last Friday main news program) - the armored cars which previously blocked the entrance of the fence were advanced few meters, to be used as a shield between the stone throwers and the state forces standing at the entrance to the rout.

This step decreased the amount and effects of the stone throwing that nearly stopped. It also enabled the village comity to declare the end of the demo and secure passage to the village for the demonstrators.