Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Israel-Palestine, The struggle is not only the Friday demonstrations in Bil'in..... 13 Feb 2007

Saturday, 10-02-07, anarchists and some other activists - about 30 people demonstrated near the fences of the military prison. It was a solidarity action with of Hadas Amit. She is serving the forth term of few weeks each for refusing to be conscripted to the mandatory service in the army. Sunday was a diferent kind of action. It was a mini project within the joint struggle of the Palestinian Bil'in village popular comity and the Israeli anarchists against the wall initiative people. About 30 activists with with digging tools and olive tree saplings. We converged at two of the Village fields enclosed within the already robed lands at the West of the separation fence. One aspect of the action was to work the land and replant there olive trees instead of the original groove destroyed by the collonial settler city building. This may be essential to prevent confiscation of these fields by the occupation administrative. Following is an article about the other aspect of the action - exposing the frauds of the settler colonialist building project in cooperation with the occupation administrative.

http://awalls.org - the web site of the anarchist against the wall initiative:

Uncovering the lies of the Civil Administration in the lands of Bil'in 11/02/2007

On February 11th 2007, the Civil Administration's Planning Board published an ad in Ha'aretz to notify the public that it decided to approve the new scheme for the Matityahu East neighborhood in the settlement Modi'in Illit, on the lands of Bil'in west of the wall. Under the Planning Law affective in the West Bank, the scheme will be valid 15 days after the publication of the ad.

On that very day, a group of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationalists decided to provide a solid proof that the Planning Board approved a scheme although the conditions that very board stipulated were not met yet. And such a proof was indeed provided.

An exposed sewage pipe, a meter and a half undergroundAn exposed sewage pipe, a meter and a half underground

One of the paragraphs in the new 210/8/1 scheme for Matityahu East says that a pre-condition for the very approval of the scheme is the restoration of enclaves owned, even according to the Civil Administration, by Palestinians from Bil'in. During the illegal construction activities in the compound, two of the enclaves were practically destroyed: on one of them, Green Park, one of the construction companies, built a house. On the second enclave, the companies paved the main road of the neighborhood, its width being 30 meters. Other enclaves were also damaged, but to a lesser extent, since they are located further away from the first-stage development area.

The scheme further demands that all building in the enclave should be destroyed, and that all ruins should be removed completely. This is also a pre-condition for the approval of the scheme itself.

On January 17th the Planning Board assembled to approve the scheme. Its members were presented with photographic evidence showing that the two enclaves were not properly restored. In both infrastructure remained buried underneath, making any future agricultural use of the land unlikely. In any case, the representative of Bil'in argued, the fact that infrastructure remained there contradicts the specific requirement to restore the enclaves, and since this pre-condition was not met, the Board should not approve the scheme.

But as can be expected from the highest planning institution of the occupation, the scheme was approved on that very day – with the vague excuse that it was not proven that building or building ruins remained in the enclaves.

An Israeli anarchist digging to uncover evidenceAn Israeli anarchist digging to uncover evidence

This conclusion was exactly what we went to contradict last Sunday. At around 11:00 am, we moved pass the fence of Matityahu East and into one of the enclaves. Later on we moved further to the most western enclave, not far away. On that western enclave we managed to uncover a concrete plate buried under the dirt, not before the security inspector of Modi'in Illit called the army and police and we were shortly chased away from there.

In the meantime some of us continued digging in the much larger first enclave. There we discovered many surprises: a complete telephone network box buried under the ground, leading telephone lines through the enclave and to the houses further east; a huge sewage pipe going from the houses through the enclave to the local sewage factory down the road; and a segment of the asphalt road and pavement which the construction companies left untouched buried under a thin layer of dirt.

All this hard-evidence will be put shortly into legal use in the upcoming new Court petition against the approval of the scheme. Our joint action proved once again that the Civil Administration's Planning Board is doing hand in hand with the settlers' construction companies to promote the settlements enterprise – even when the conditions this very Board stipulated are not met. See pictures at http://awalls.org/uncovering_the_lies_of_the_civil_administration_in_the_lands_of_bilin

See video clip shown in the first TV chanel main news program (in Hebrew) http://mishtara.org/blog/?p=152

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