Palestine-Israel, Bil'in and Abud - the Friday demonstrations against the separation fence 2-12-05

mashriq / arabia / iraq | imperialism / war | news report Saturday December 03, 2005 04:22 by Ilan Shalif Ilan at shalif dot com

The struggle continue and intencify

As usual in Bil'in for the last 10 months and Abud the last weeks, we did the parallel Friday demonstrations against the separation fence used to rob the lands of the villages and against the occupation. As usual, the efforts of the Israeli army to prevent the arrival of Israeli activists - whose participation prevent the army from using harsher measures to harass the participants and suppress the demonstrations, failed... they only succeeded to delay the arrival of ten activists from Jerusalem so they missed the first few minutes of the demonstration in Bil'in.

The theme of this Friday demonstration in Bil'in was the colonialist settlements built on the lands of Bil'in and neighboring villages' At the head of the demonstration we carried models with the names of these settlement and aseptically a big on with the name of the settler city Modi'in Elite.

As usual in Bil'in for the last 10 months and Abud the last weeks, we did the parallel Friday demonstrations against the separation fence used to rob the lands of the villages and against the occupation. As usual, the efforts of the Israeli army to prevent the arrival of Israeli activists - whose participation prevent the army from using harsher measures to harass the participants and suppress the demonstrations, failed... they only succeeded to delay the arrival of ten activists from Jerusalem so they missed the first few minutes of the demonstration in Bil'in.

The theme of this Friday demonstration in Bil'in was the colonialist settlements built on the lands of Bil'in and neighboring villages' At the head of the demonstration we carried models with the names of these settlement and aseptically a big on with the name of the settler city Modi'in Elite.

In addition to the models, few placard who were previously carried by activists from Bil'in at the of the week joint demonstration of solidarity with peace activists in the occupied Iraq done by the local popular comities of the region in the region city Ramalla.

In the demonstration that started at noon from the center of the Bil'in village participated only about 120 people.
35 Israelis of the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative and others (other 20 0f our activists were in the demo at Abud), 15 internationals, 10 students of the Palestinian university Bir-Zeit, and about 60 people of the village (only 10% of the adult males of the appropriate age).

During the demo that started at noon from the center of the village we chanted the usual replicas, in addition, there were new chants regarding the parallel demo at the not so far away village Abud.

Some time after we arrived at the point on the road near the route of the separation fence where the Israeli armed forces block our way, we started to try to get down from the road to the sides in order to reach the fence route itself. The state forces responded in rough pushes and due to our small numbers succeeded to block our way to the fence. However, after some confrontations, they got very angry, and under the pretext that youngsters not participating in the nonviolent demonstration are throwing stones declared they will force us to return to the village.

This Friday, the attrition confrontation between the Israeli state forces teargas and rubber bullets and the stone throwing youngsters in the near by olive orchards was less intense, and the youngsters did it far away from the nonviolent demo... and did not injure any of us like they do often when they try to hit near by state forces.

And they pushed and pushed, and they succeeded to push many of the participants (with many of us staying behind) the few hundreds meters to the village... and even took 2 Israelis and one Palestinian as prisoners.

This brought on them the rage of a contingent of ten female relatives of the Palestinian villager who were joined by the just pushed demonstrators who returned together with us who stayed behind to the previous point near the fence route while the tired border police could not block the new human wave.

There, there was a noisy confrontation between the women contingent and the state commanders we did not fail to join... and as result there was a bargain and a declaration of the state commander that if we retreat about hundred meters the Palestinian comrade will be released and the Israelis will be released as usual 10 minutes after the end of the demonstration.

So we retreated first 100 meters and when the Palestinian comrade was released we returned to the village. After a short talk we often do at end of demos, the released two Israelis arrived and we departed from the village activists and Israeli comrades with "see you in Bil'in next Friday".

And as usual, all afternoon the radio channels included in the news references to our twine demonstrations against the separation fence, and at least one TV news program included a short clip of a demo.