Palestine-Israel, Bil'in, Israeli state forces shoot again live ammunition on demonstrators 03 Nov 2006

This friday demonstration was a relatively successful one. At noon, about 100 of us - Palestinians, internationals and Israelis of the anarchists against the wall initiative, started the 21 months in a row Friday demo. (About 100 and more joint actions of the village popular comity and Israeli anarchists against the wall - with international activists of the ISM mainly. This Friday we had two large contingents from Belgium and France. We marched as usual with chanting along the road leading to the route of the separation fence. (With two regular fences fortified with barbed wire spools on the two sides of the route and the erectric fence in its middle.)

As we do from time to time we did not continue to the blocked gate of the route, but went through the olive groove to a breach in the first fence and started to enter through it to the route. Surprised state forces tried to detere us with tear gas canisters and shock grenades, but many of us succeeded to enter and approached gates to the other side of the fence.

There the state forces gave a fight and moved reinforcemen so few of us who succeeded to pass had to retreat. We had a long low attrition verbal and physical attrition confrontation with the soldiers who blocked our free march within the route along the fence. Sometimes comrades threw away tear gas canister so the gas will not harm us once even throwing back tear gas canister which sofocated the soldiers who then were more restraint in tear gas canister throwing.... At some point, the soldiers yielded a bit and let the demonstrators who could not enter the fence route due to tear gas attack on the breach in the fence join us through the main gate....

After a long confrontation we decided toreturn to the village and the soldiers even cut for us the barbed wire that blocked the main gate from the route to the village.

As happen often lately, the youth who confront with stones the state forces engaged the contingents of gendarmes and soldiers who are sent to the outskirt of the village to provoke them. This way they respect the fragile agreement not to mix with us and not to throw stones behind our backs that give the state forces excuse to assoult us nonviolent demonstrators.

When we approached the fringe of the village we found our way blocked by a battle field between the stone throwers and the state forces. We even were witnesses to a police car entrupted for a while in a small alley by stone throwers. A bit later reinforcement of the state forces arrived and harased some of the demonstrators who failed to pass around the battle ground through the hills...

One of the Israelis was detained there for a while till she was released from the gendarm's car. The hand of an international activist age 69 was shoot at with live ammunition and was taken with ambulance to hospital in Ramalla, three Palestinians were injured less seriously. Lot of us suffered from non voluntary inhaling of tear gas of the new and more pungent strain tested last few weeks in Bil'in.

(It is well known and was even often in the Israeli media that the Israeli state forces using the assoults on the Bil'in Friday demonstrations as a test ground for various "nonlethal" means for dispersing crowds.)

The Israeli public radio channel and the main internet portals reported about the injured oldee activist and even brought our protest about the use of live ammunition that was shoot at him.