Friday, December 16, 2005

Palestine-Israel, Bil'in, 16-12-05, Joint struggle against the robbery of lands using the separation fence

The armed forces of the state of Israel tried on Thursday evening to prevent the meeting of the Anarchists Against The Wall activists with the village activists of the comity for nonviolent struggle against the separation fence... but in vain. All that they achieved was to cause some of us to use round about roads, and to detain two young teenagers for 3 hours and causing them to arrive only the next day. In the meeting - like others we do from time to time, we discussed the joint struggle against the separation fence in Bil'in which serves as means to rob lands for the building of the settler town of Modi'in Elit, as part of the general struggle against the separation fence and occupation. The back ground to this meeting was the entrance of the struggle in Bil'in to the main media channels - including the mentioning the fact that the route of the fence was chosen, in order to enable large expansion of the settler town and enrich the construction companies. In addition, there is a hearing of the case of Bil'in in the Israeli supreme court in six weeks time....

Next day, the theme of the Friday demo was the robbery of the lands of Bil'in people for the enlargement of the settlement town Modi'in Elit. We prepared few scores of signs - each in the three "official" languages of the Friday demos - Arabic, Hebrew and English. On each sign was written: "This land belongs to: .

At noon, we started the usual march from the center of the village on the road leading to the separation fence and the olive orchards located behind it. We were about 150 people - mainly Bil'in citizens, but also Palestinians from neighboring villages and from the Bir-Zeit university, about 20 international activists, and of course activists of the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative and other Israelis.

Many of the participant carried signs in with their names were printed or names of one of their family members. And as usual, along the road we chanted and sang.. with sporadic dancing too. When we neared the route of the fence in construction, we turned from the road to a near by section of the route, through the olive orchards. The unprepared state forces tried in vain to block our way to the route and prevent us from crossing it to the near by robbed olive orchard. However, they succeeded to block our way to the other olive orchards, and we could not put there the rest of the signs.

The frustrated state forces could not shower on us tear gas canisters as they did the previous week in their failed efforts to block us from approaching the fence route due to very bad media exposure of that during the week. They refrained from mass arrest of Israelis as they not long ago, for entering a closed military zone, as that was criticized in both media and courts they brought us too. They were not in the position of arresting Bil'in villagers too, as similar cases in the last times brought criticism even in the military courts they brought them to...
They could not even justify any shooting of gas and shock grenades or rubber bullets as the village youth refrained this week from stone throwing... So they just try to frighten us by threats of arrests or by weaving their batons... they just had to use rough pushing with their hands or with the batons.

Due to their rough pushing, few of us were injured and treated by the medics of the ambulance and two were taken to the hospital to the near by Ramallah hospital for treatment.

During the demonstration the armed forces tried to arrest various demonstrators. Few of them we succeeded to unarrest. Two Palestinians they succeeded to arrest, but had to release during the demonstration as they had nothing to blame them that would stick. Three of the Israelis were taken to a near by police station to be released at late evening on sighing a bail and commitment of two weeks out of Bil'in demos.

After the demo, we held a meeting with the village comity for summing the action to the first time participants.

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