Palestine-Israel, The joint struggle against the occupation and separation fence - Bil'in, 443, Um Salmuna, Idna 10 Nov 2007

In Friday Israelis of the anarchists against the wall initiative joined grass roots Palestinian activists in three demonstrations. First the nearly legendary demonstration in Bil'in - the 142nd since February 2005. As usual, the Israeli state force prevented the nonviolent demonstrations from even reaching the gate to the West of the separation fence. As usual, the showered the people with tear gas when the first few persons crossed a line two hundreds meters from the gate. In parallel, a regional initiative of the people of the villages near the 443 apartheid road connection Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that cross the Palestinian lands but forbidden for them to use. We did there a third action. The state forces tried to block the roads in many places. There were road blocks that tried to prevent people from Bil'in, Beit Ur and Saffa to arrive at Tah'ta, but they only forced us to use round about paved and unpaved roads.

Then, when we start marching they tried to stop us from reaching the near by road block that prevent the travel from the village yo the 443 road. The few soldiers on the mission were pushed along about 100 meters till we arrived 5 meters from the road and blocked there by police and soldiers. The commander there announced a closed military zone and they tried to push us back detaining after two failures due to dearresting Mohamed Hatib.

When we challenge the commander to show the written declaration of closed zone, we found it was phrased in a way that authorized them only to prevent us to cross the few meters to the road itself. Thus, the pushing ended and we staid there and even Mohamed Hatib was released.

In parallel, few comrades tried to block the 443 with a chain, but failed because of bad logistics.

After about an hour the demonstration was finished. The Friday 9th road 443 demonstration on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLWb1LWqYn0

The third action was in Um Salmuna in the Bethlehem region. There, the state forces succeeded to block the way of the march from approaching the building site of the separation fence. A fourth demonstration at the near by Beit Jalla was canceled as the building site was deserted for a while - works stopped and equipment with machines removed - reason not known yet.

Saturday, was another day of action. Not the first time, activists of the anarchists against the wall joined Palestinian activist in the West of Hebron. Today, we joined People of the village Idna. There the completion of the separation fence two weeks ago was used as opportunity for the Israeli state forces to destroy the summer dwellings of the herders of the village in the wast lands - now behind the fence. The people and the herds were forced to transfer to the East of the separation fence.

In a symbolic act, we forced our way through the barbed wire spools that are bordering the route of the separation fence. We marched along the electronic fence and hung on it few placards. After police and army forces arrived and blocked us from continuing the march we returned to the village.