Every Friday at 1pm the villagers from Ni’lin meet in the fields outside the village to pray. This Friday, more than 50 soldiers and
some jeeps were in the surrounding area during the ceremony.
Photos courtesy of Activestills
Once it finished, the army without provocation shot 36 tear gas canisters in a very short time, using a multiple-shot machine carried in one of the jeeps. They kept shooting tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets for more than half an hour from less than a hundred meters distance from the houses, so many of them got teargas inside as well.
After the people were dispersed from the site of the prayer, soldiers continued shooting massive amounts of gas into the village and in the olive groves between the village and the site of the apartheid wall. Seven people were injured by tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets, two of which has to be sent to the hospital in Ramallah for treatment. The clash between the soldiers and the villagers finished around 4 pm, when all the jeeps suddenly left after an Israeli filmmaker was seriously injured by a rubber-coated steel bullet.
Non-violent demonstrations have been taking place in Ni’lin several times a week for several months, after construction began of the apartheid wall which will annexe roughly fifty percent of the villages farmlands. The occupation forces have responded to the non-violent struggle by using increasingly extreme violence, resulting in the injury of hundreds of people. Two boys, 10 and 17, have been brutally murdered by the Israeli army, both shot in the head at close range.
