This Friday, June 17th, the villages of Bill’in (at 1pm) and Ramadin (at 11am) will continue their non-violent campaign against the Annexation Wall that is being built on their land, depriving them of their livelihoods and annexing their lands to Israel.
The village of Bil’in has been organizing non-violent demonstrations against the barrier being built on their land for many months now. The demonstrations have been organized by the local Popular Committee Against the Wall, whose members have been detained, arrested, beaten and threatened, and their families have been harassed in the middle of the night. The entire village has suffered at the hands of the Israeli army for their persistence in non-violent resistance. The army commander in the area, Lieutenant Colonel Tzachi Segev was recently quoted as saying: “The stronger the activity against the fence, the stronger our operations will be. We reserve the right to enter the village at any hour … sometimes there is no escaping collective punishment, even if it has a negative impact. Collective punishment is closure, prohibiting people from entering a certain village, blocking the Bilin-Safa road [referring to the neighboring village] as a lever of pressure if the village does not behave properly.” (Meron Rappaport – Gandhi Redux).
All forms of collective punishment are illegal under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The village of Ramadin, in the ultra-impoverished district of South Hebron, will once again demonstrate against the theft of the villagers land this Friday. The Annexation Barrier, if completed in this area, will cut the village off from their olive groves, throwing the community into further poverty. The village demonstrated twice last week, managing on one occasion to stop the work of the bulldozers. The response of the army was very violent.