Bil’in Popular Committee
18 September 2009
Dozens were suffocated with tear gas canisters at the weekly demonstration in Bil’in. As the people of Bil’in with international and Israeli peace activists participated in Bil’in’s weekly demonstration after Friday prayers today, although they have raised Palestinian flags and banners to mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila and they have raised other banners condemning the policy of incursions, arrests, land confiscation and settlement construction.
The demonstrators walked in the village streets, chanting slogans and calling for national unity and rejection of the occupation. When the demonstrators approached the closed gate in the barrier, they tried to open it and access to their land, but Israeli soldiers who were hiding behind concrete blocks, started throwing gas and sound bombs on them, causing tens of cases of suffocation.
On the other hand the popular committee condemned the Israeli soldiers’ raids to the village houses, and destroying its contents, as recently these raids, was against the Coordinator of the popular committee house Mr. Abdullah Abu Rahma. As the committee considered these raids, as a violation of human rights, and especially against children who watched the violence and brutality of the occupation soldiers who were masked screaming and beating anyone they find in their face. Although the popular committee has demanded human rights organizations to intervene immediately to stop this attack.