30 July 2009
On Wednesday night, July 29, one hundred villagers of Bil’in along with their International and Israeli supporters conducted a Protest March against the IDF’s nightly raids and detaining of Palestinian villagers.
The protest march began in the village of Bil’in, but buoyed by peace songs, chants, and flashlight-lit containers with peace messages written on them in over a dozen languages, the enthusiastic marchers walked down to the Separation Fence and where a 15-minute rally was held.
The lights and chanting attracted several Israeli military vehicles who launched several night flares (inducing exuberant cheering and vigorous waving of the Palestinian flags carried by several members) as the landscape brightened. It was reported that one tear gas canister was fired in the vicinity of the demonstrators, but no one was injured, fortunately.
Bil’in has been conducting regular protest marches against the illegal wall’s incursion into its farmland every Friday noon since 2005. Wednesday’s protest was the second weekly nighttime demonstration created by the Bil’in Popular Committee members. Their common purpose is to ‘take the message to the perpetrators’… that the wall’s location is illegal, that Israeli’s occupation of Palestine is wrong and harmful to the Palestinian people, and that the IDF’s night-time incursions into Bil’in’s peaceful village (arresting its youth and leadership) will be resisted with a wide variety of peaceful methods until justice is done.