Bil'in resists the cancer of settlements and noxious gas

mashriq / arabia / iraq | imperialism / war | non-anarchist press Wednesday March 04, 2009 19:23 by Kristen Ess - Palestina News

Pouring rain, high winds, flooding to the north in Tulkarem’s Qaffin, and the heavy presence of Israeli soldiers wielding machine guns did not stop the Bil’in nonviolent resistance this week or any other.

It has been four years, every Friday, that the western Ramallah town and its community of neighbors have taken to their lands attempting to stop Israeli forces from confiscation for the Wall and settlements.

With the M16s that fire gas bombs at will, along with hand held grenades lobbed by literally smirking soldiers, Bil’in came out yesterday to demonstrate on Friday, a week after they marked four years of resistance to the Wall.

A winding road encircles the town’s land on three sides. The gas was fired from all directions before residents even got close to the gate that is the only possible entrance to their lands.

Just 250 meters from the center of town, with another 250 to go, demonstrators were pelted with the gas that mixed with heavy rains and burned the skin. Elderly men were on the ground vomiting, children were ducking for cover behind boulders, but the soldiers were on all sides. The explosions were omnipresent and one had to jump and duck, do a hopscotch skip at times, to avoid being hit with the bombs that fired the burning noxious substance. This week was light on the warfare, with previous weeks witnessing rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition.

Iyad Burnat, the head of the Popular Committee against the Wall in Bil’in said, “This is a small demonstration this week,” yet there were still at least one hundred people at the outset carrying flags of all Palestinian political parties, along with the national flag. They chanted for justice, for an end to occupation. Many demonstrators ran, half doubled-over, to escape the gas that burns the eyes, the skin, the nerves. They also ran to escape the bullets that have come in other weeks.

But it seemed a game with soldiers standing behind the fence that acts as the Wall in this area of the West Bank. Some demonstrators danced and cheered in confrontation to occupation during a torrential downpour. Burnat's wife said, "They are stealing our land, they've already stolen most of it. There is no other way to spin it, this is our reality."
“It’s every day they incur into the town,” Burnat says while walking with a crowd of his fellow townspeople. “Every night they come into town, break into the houses, arrest people.”

He has been arrested eight times himself. “They target all of the leaders of the nonviolent resistance because they want to stop it.” Later in a car driving with friends he turns the radio dial, stopping on Um Kulthum. “You know why I love only her? Because that’s all we listened to for two years in prison.”

Back in town 26 year old Hamis Abu Rahma is doing remarkably well for having been shot in the head just three weeks ago. He wears a stocking cap to protect the slice across his scalp. From just 20 meters away an Israeli soldier shot him in the head and the arm. The third grenade, fired from a machine gun, missed him. He does not remember anything after the first shot as he went into a coma on the ground. For 15 minutes the soldiers would not allow anyone to aid the bleeding man. Ambulances were banned, but friends were able to take him in a car to Ramallah Hospital, a 20 minute drive. Abu Rahma was just meters from his home when shot, well within the residential part of the village, far enough from the lands of his family that the Israelis have confiscated.

His mother tears up talking about the near loss of her son, a clearly gentle young man, soft spoken while sitting on a makeshift hospital bed in the living room. His hand and arm still shake, but he says he is getting better every day.
All of her sons are back home after stays in prisons and hospitals. The family is no longer able to live off of their land since they are forbidden from reaching it. “We had olive trees, fruit, beans, vegetables.”

During this Friday’s demonstration Burnat said that 1,500 olive trees were stolen for the Israeli settlement encroaching not only on his land, but the other settlements that surround western Ramallah, growing as ominously as cancer.

Nearby Nal’een Village is active in the nonviolent resistance against the Wall and settlements that are also taking its lands, while Beit Ilo is another town that is surrounded by settlements on the hills around the Rayan home and their neighbors. In the evening the family says they stay in doors. “If we walk the streets we risk being shot,” Mohammad Rayan says. Travel from Ramallah to his home is severely impaired with their road re-routed by Israeli forces who took the easy route for the settlements.

Western Ramallah is a sight to behold: flowers, greenery, boulders, trees, hills; a pastoral image out of the impressionist period, but marred in the near distance by jeeps, soldiers, guns, settlements: the stuff of occupation.

“They break into our house or someone else’s in town every night,” the mother of Hamis Abu Rahma says while sitting in her living room.

Down the road in Burnat’s house his wife says the soldiers come often. Their four year old daughter Manar says she is frightened at night when they break in, particularly when they “come to take Daddy.” But her plans for the future? The tiny girl with bright, excited eyes who sports a faux gold “M” around her neck says, “I want to be a doctor to help all of the injured people and the people who get sick from the gas.”

Over in the Abu Rahma family home the mother says, “I know this is a different kind of gas they use. They experiment on us. I don’t know what the long-term effects are, but I will not be surprised if we develop cancer from this.”
After years of struggle she is teary, yet defiant. “No, we will not give up. But what the future holds, I don’t know.”