Thursday, August 11, 2005

Palestine-Israel, Bil'in, The joint struggle against occupation and the separation fence continue 11 Aug

This friday we had a bigger demonstration than usual. In addition to the usual Palestinians and Israelis we had about 100 internationals: ISM people and the participants of the Queeruption Tel-Aviv 2006. At noon, we started the march on the road toward the separation fence. The march theme was again the war in Lebanon. Lebanese flags were carried. Also was carried a big banner in Hebrew that call the soldiers to refuse service and thus not becoming war criminals - that was, carried in the anarchist block in Tel Aviv last Saturdays demonstrations. When we arrived near the last intersection in the village, we met there a block of Israeli border police, who declared the area as a military closed one and immediately started to shower us with shock grenades and fire of rubber coated bullets. Then, many of them started to advance towards us trying to force us back to the center of the village.

Few tens of us resisted stubbornly fro being pushed back and confronted the Israeli forces, They even prevented the advance of the armored car in pursuit of the retreating demonstrators. Most of the inexperienced demonstrators were pushed gradually with some resistance. When one of us was seriously injured by state force (one shot at his head and one at his neck) - they state force started to retreat to the armored cars, taking with them the injured demonstrators in the way to hospital.

Just as the state forces started to retreat, the organized stone throwers who were restrained till that moment, started to throw stones - mostly on the demonstrator. When demanded to stop throwing on demonstrators one of them said that all the Jews are the same.

Afterwards, the demonstration was declared as ended and the participants returned to the center for a meeting about the specific demonstration and the struggle of Bil'in.

Outside of the meeting, a short nonformal discussion was held between some Israelis about the stone throwers and about our role in the struggle. Some claimed the Israelis are only guests and have no "right" to say any thing about the stone throwers that disrupt the demonstration and do not respect the self determination of the village comity to carry a non violent struggle. Some said that we - the activists of the anarchists against the wall are invited by the village comity to be partners to a joint struggle and expressing our opinions are part of it.

In addition to the comrade who was seriously wounded, few others were injured too by the rubber coated bullets.

When five of us left the village on the way to visit the injured comrade who was taken to hospital, some one throw on us a fire bomb which luckily missed us and exploded on the side of the road.

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