by the Palestine Center staff
It is difficult to imagine a situation more terrifying and bleak. Isolated and without any means to determine their own destiny, Palestinians will soon be forced to live their lives as prisoners in a cell. The jail keeper: Israel.
Read the rest at The Council for National Interest site
Hundreds of pro-settlement Israelis have flocked to the area around Jenin to protest the dismantling of four small settlements scheduled to be part of Israel’s disengagement plan for the northern part of the West Bank. Not exactly what you’d call a peaceful demonstration.
The group, numbering in the hundreds are flocking to settlements that have been mostly empty or home to small groups of people. Sanur, previous to this week, had a population of a little more than a dozen people. Now that it has been added to Sharon’s dismantlement list, there are reportedly about 450.
About 150 others have pitched tents to camp out near the small Palestinian village of Suweitat and have taken to throwing stones at villagers and stopping a family from holding a funeral at the village cemetery. At least one Palestinian has reportedly been kidnapped by the group. Israeli police were called in and after negotiating with the pro-settlement group for three hours, were able to free the Palestinian and get him back home.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan mostly focuses on settlements and the military presence in Gaza. However, four small settlements in the West Bank near Jenin (Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and Sanur) along with a nearby military camp are scheduled to be removed as well.
Long ignored by most, Israeli’s anger over Sharon’s plan has sent people in support of these often ghost town-like settlements scurrying out to the occupied territories in order to keep a foothold for what they see as an eventual expansion of “Greater Israel.”
“Masses of people will come,” pro-setttler spokesman Yossi Dagan said in in one report on the situation. “People are already familiar with the routes. When there will be tens of thousands of people here it would be impossible to deport them forcefully…. The prime minister will fail here. The Jewish people will come and prevent it.”
Meanwhile, roads in and out of Jenin have been shut by checkpoints, keeping many Palestinians there from being able to get to jobs, schools or to their family’s homes.
These four tiny settlements have as much legal standing as the ones in Gaza. However, Ariel settlement and all the others scattered around the West Bank also lack the legal standing to exist and are only in place because an Israeli military force keeps them there.
These token steps, taken in the West Bank are meant to distract from the massive land grab currently under way. While a few hundred supporters of “Greater Israel” work to keep in place what are essentially some squatter trailer parks, the thousands of Israelis living illegally on Palestinian land in the permanent colonial structures don’t seem to be in too much worry about having to pack their bags.
Villagers set fire to some of their own olive trees to send a message to settlers that even if they get the land, they won’t get the agriculture that Palestinian families have spent generations cultivating.
By Sarita
Friday, August 12
Over 500 villagers from Azzoun demonstrated Friday, August 12, to protest the second stage of the construction of the Apartheid Wall which will confiscate 1200 dunums (about 300 acres) of land on the eastern side of their village.
The demonstrators set fire to their own olive groves as a message to the settlers of Karmeh Shimron, situated on the hilltop directly above their lands, that the Israelis cannot take the trees even if they steal the land. The villagers of Azzoun have already lost 12,000 dunums of fertile land, once abundant with fruits and vegetables, to the Wall, already finished on the western side of the town. The Annexation Wall itself occupies 250 dumuns of land. Azzoun has 10,000 dunums left for the 8,500 people that remain in the village after the wars of 1948 and 1967.
Villagers stop to pray on their land as soliders shoot and launch tear gas canisters in the area. Nine people were injured in the demonstration.
The village has recently obtained a copy of the Israeli government maps which prove that the confiscation of land is for settlement expansion, exposing a plan to build a settler only by-pass which will link the nearby settlements of Itsofin and Ma’ale Shamoron. Additionally, the Israeli government plans to close the main road leading to Nablus, forcing villagers to travel a longer distance and to pay more money for transportation.
Soldiers take aim at civilian demonstrators who are trying to protect their land from the wall and settlement expansion.
Dozens of Israeli soldiers began shooting tear gas and rubber-coated
bullets, targeting the villagers’ at head level. Nine youth were shot, in
the head, neck and upper back. Sixteen year old Siad Sayel Ali Swedan
remains unconscious in a Nablus hospital. In a phone conversion between
the Mayor of Azzoun and the Military Commander Shannan, known throughout the region for his brutality, the commander said that his soldiers felt threatened by the youth. The Mayor then asked if any soldiers were hurt, since 9 Palestinians had been injured in the demonstration. The commander threatened that to impose curfew on Azzoun, and hung up. Soldiers took up a position on the hilltop near the settlement. Fifteen
ISM and IWPS internationals joined the demonstrators dispersed throughout the olive grove and moved towards the hilltop.
The constant shooting by the army pushed the demonstrators to the bottom of the hill, and the internationals found themselves surrounded. After demanding that the Israeli soldiers stop firing at the villagers, the internationals asked to speak with the General Command. The internationals spoke with Commander Shannan to request a ceasefire to allow for safe passage to return to the bottom of the hill to join the villagers. The shooting resumed quickly, and the villagers organized a mass prayer in the midst of the tear gas and smoke. After several hours of shooting, a fire truck came to extinguish the spreading flames.
ISM volunteers negotiatiate a five-minute ceasefire with soldiers to allow Palestinians time to leave before they continue to shoot at stone-throwing youths.
The villagers of Azzoun are prepared to fight for their land and freedom,
and are organizing more protest in the upcoming weeks to expose Israel’s “disengagement” policy for the fraud that it is.
A wall moves through Bil’in
A woman who showed up in her military uniform along with protesters in Bil’in was quickly arrested by soldiers and transferred to IDF investigators for questioning. About 100 or so peace activsits carried their own version of Israeli’s annexation wall that is being built through villages like Bil’in. Soldiers detained more than 30 Israeli and foreign demonstrators. Two Israelis were arrested.
The soldier was taken to IDF investigators to be questioned. Her identity is not known, but an Israeli activist who is friends with her said she had been drafted one month ago and had questions about Israeli’s tactics of enforcing the occupation. While the protest neared the area of the village which was blocked by soldiers, she approached them to talk about what they were doing there. She was quickly whisked away.
Friday is Bil’in’s day of peaceful but direct protest against Israel’s illegal wall, which is being built though the village, cutting off locals from 60 percent of their land.
Palestinians, Israeli and International activists filled the streets in this West Bank village. At the front of the procession was an effigy of a crucified Palestinian on a fence. The fence represented the Wall, and the form of the Palestinian hung on it represented the suffering of Palestinians because of the Wall. Signs posted on the fence said that the Wall is a tool of death, and another two signs that said you take our land, you take our lives.
When the demonstration reached the wall of soldiers it stopped. After about ten minutes of chanting everyone took a side road to reach the site of the wall construction. At this point, the Israeli soldiers were caught off guard. Tear gas was fired and sound grenades exploded. A group of Israeli activists were separated and detained.
Internationals formed a line, locked arms and sat down in classic nonviolence civil disobedience. The soldiers tore people away. In all, 10 internationals were detained and 24 Israelis, 2 of which were arrested. The protest meanwhile went on and escalated to rubber bullets aimed at children throwing stones. Eventually the detained activists were released.
The United Nations’ International Court of Justice issued a ruling, though a nonbinding one, in 2004 saying the annexation barrier which zigzags around the West Bank is illegal and should be torn down.
At the demonstration, Palestinian activists handed out a statement to reporters and photographers who had made the trip to Bil’in to see what the situation was:
Help keep our village from becoming a prison
Dear media representative,
First, thanks for coming to our village. We like it here, and we want you to see what it is we’re trying to defend. We hope you take a look around and get to know the place and people here, and see that there’s something here worth saving. We want as many people as possible to see what’s being done to our land with their own eyes, so they can make their own conclusions about what’s going on.
If Israel is allowed to continue building its illegal annexation barrier on our land, it will mean death of Palestinian identity, security and any chance for sovereignty. It will mean the slow painful demise of our village. That’s the message of our weekly demonstrations.
Today we wear black, because it is the color of mourning. We feel like we are on a funeral march for ourselves.
Bil’in is being strangled by the Wall. Our village sits two and a 1/2 miles east of the Green Line, yet Israel’s Wall and settlements will take more than 60 percent of our land. This land is also money to us. Bil’in’s 1,600 residents depend on farming and harvesting olive trees for our livelihood. The Wall will turn Bil’in into a prison. It will further curtail the limited freedoms we now have.
We are not asking you for much. Just give us a chance to get this side of the story out. If this wall is for security, why is it being built so far from internationally recognized borders? Why is Israel creating so much animosity if it really is seeking safety? The reality of the situation is that this is a land grab. And in the process, it is killing us. We rely on you to get our message to the outside world. Pretty soon we won’t be able to. Pretty soon, we’ll be in a prison.
— Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall
“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours … Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” — Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the Tsomet Party, November 15, 1998
Saed Bannoura
IMEMC & Agencies
Tuesday, 09 August 2005
Israeli and international leftist peace activists accused the Israeli army of using demonstrations against the Separation Wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in as a “test field” for its new weapons for dispersing protests.
The Israeli military industries have lately been testing new “non-lethal weapons,” apparently in preparation for their use against Israeli right-wing activists who appose the disengagement plan. The activists charge that these weapons have been tested on Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists who protest against the Wall in Bil’in.
“This is unbelievable,” a German peace activist said. “They are trying their new weapons against us in order to decide what’s suitable to use against the right wing pullout protestors”
The German activist, Eva, who regularly participates in protest against the Wall, said the army started using the new test weapons against the protestors on April 28, 2005.
“The weapons look like weapons in science-fiction movies,” Eva said. “They fired at us rounds we never saw before. I saw a soldier firing from his weapon, it looks like long rays of fire. They hit a guy, and we were sure he was killed, but he was hit by a sort of an electric shock – he stood up and left later on.”
The Israeli online daily Haaretz reported that a website called Act TV published a video of the protest showing the soldiers firing their new weapons.
“This is not something we haven’t seen before,” said Mahmoud Khateeb, one of the officials of the Popular Committee Against the Wall, while showing reporters wounds he sustained in his back.
The wounds in his back look like wounds of live rounds, but in fact they are soft red stigmas on his skin.
The ammunition used against the demonstrators differs in size and shape. Some types are rounded, some are covered with plastic, and others are covered with sponge pieces, but they all cause strong chemical smell.
The Israeli police refused to comment on the side effects of the new ammunition and weapons, its dangers, or its price, but they admitted they have used new weapons for experimental purposes over the last eighteen months.
