Palestine-Israel, Bil'in - Israeli state forced to scale back repression

mashriq / arabia / iraq | community struggles | news report Friday September 15, 2006 23:30 by Ilan Shalif - AATW Tel Aviv

nearly back to normal

This Friday demonstration was influenced very much by the exposing of the border police brutality in the Israeli media, and the return to the agenda of the failure of the application of the naked force by Israeli state. May be the 5 minute clip about the brutality suppression of the demonstrations in Bil'in in the second TV channel did the trick. Any way after a month of efforts to abolish the weekly demonstrations in Bil'in, this friday the Israeli forces did not declare it illegal and did not try to disperse us. As usual, we started at noon the march from the village center on the road leading to the route of the separation fence - Palestinians from Bil'in and from the region, internationals, Israelis from the anarchists against the wall and others. We marched chanting and some time even singing till we reached the last house of the village.

There, we encountered border police troupe who blocked the road and forbidden us from continue to the route of the fence. As we refused to yield without struggle, there started an attrition struggle of pushing mainly. We advanced few meters, and most of us were pushed back few meters - like in previous times, though they succeeded after a while to push most of us to the line of last house, few of us remained behind their line. Though some of them threatened us with their batons, during the pushing, they had strict order not to hit us too hard. Never the less they were not too gentle and few comrades were hurt and some even slightly injured.

This time, the agreement with the stone throwers was respected by them. They did not throw stones were we demonstrated - not before the demonstrated declared ended, and even later they did not throw it on the retreating demonstrators. To be on the safe side when we ended the demonstration we returned in a round about route so not to pass through the stone war zone.

In spite of the provocation of the border police who sent small groups to the orchards on the side of the road, they could not start the stone throwing too early.


When we were returning to the center of the village we could hear the confrontation of the border police and the stone throwers as the police shoot rubber coated bullets.