A-Infos (en) Palestine-Israel, Bil'in, 16-12-03, 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: <a name of one of the villagers his piece of olive
orchard was robbed>.

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.
_______________________________________________
A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en