Some 25 Israelis, over 30 internationals, Palestinian supporters, a DFLP delegation and the Palestinian Minister of Culture joined Bil'in locals for the weekly demonstration against the wall. Demonstrators carried posters of Tristan Anderson, who was hit in his head a year ago by a gas canister in Ni'lin, and is still in critical condition.
This time the army decided to set a "honey trap" for the protesters. The gates in the fence were left open for them to charge through, while soldiers without protective gear (so they can run faster) hid on the Palestinian side of the fence, waiting to charge the protesters from behind and make arrests. The local shabab, however, quickly picked up the soldiers in hiding, and stormed forward despite the showers of gas canisters and rubber bullets that injured two youths. The soldiers retreated back behind the fence, and the shabab celebrated by charging to the fence. Soon enough, the organizers took over, restrained the local youth, and led some 30 protesters to the fence for a peaceful demonstration. As the wind was favorable and the soldiers slightly less trigger happy than usual, an Israeli recovered ex-soldier took advantage of the opportunity to preach to the soldiers, urging them to recognize their exploitation by Israeli politicians and contractors and to cross over and join the Palestinians demonstrating against occupation.
A smaller than usual weekly demonstration in Ma'asara, no more than fifty people strong (of different nationalities), was met after marching in the heavy heat through the village streets by a larger than usual combined army and border police force. Soldiers set up near the first houses of the village, deeper than ever before, and prevented the demonstration from proceeding towards the village lands.
Ma'asara
After giving speeches in Arabic, English and Hebrew, a small group of demonstrators went through the barbed wire set on the road, and was pushed by the soldiers who also threatened activists will be arrested as the area is a closed military zone. Demonstrators on both sides sat on the ground, beat drums, sang songs, and called upon the soldiers to abandon the oppression of the popular struggle and join it in stead. The soldiers, already with stun and tear gas grenades at hand, were somewhat taken aback faced with this act of non-violent resistance and the many cameras documenting all over the place. And so, with nobody arrested and no attack on the demonstrators, activists eventually decided to leave willingly and escape the burning sun, promising to return next week as well.
This week's demonstration at Nabi Saleh faced severe repression. Even before the march from the village started, some activists tried to talk soldiers out of waiting on one of the hills surrounding the village and serving an occupying army. The soldiers responded with violence, throwing stun grenades directly at activists' feet.
Around 80 Nabi Saleh residents, other Palestinians, Israelis and internationals participated in this week's demonstration against the crippling occupation and the Halamish settlement's annexation and destruction of a growing amount of land and resources from the village. The march from the village encountered immediate attack by the army, deep inside the village's main street, as the march was just forming. The army invaded the village and shot barrages of tear gas canisters from a cannon at the marching protesters and effectively almost the entire village population. It then continued the assault shooting rubber coated bullets indiscriminately at protesters. As the protesters gathered back, the army once again used its cannon to shot barrages of tear gas canisters on the entire village.
Eventually protesters did manage to take the demonstration to various directions, some of them outside the village's populated area. One group went on a hill top of one the village's springs, where settlers defiantly swam and stayed around. As a result of the approaching protesters, witnessing the scene from a safe distant, the army very kindly managed to convince the settlers to leave the area, and against those who refused - it persisted in verbal dispersing techniques. The settlers than moved to another spring, the one threatened by growing annexation of the settlement, but were again asked kindly to leave by the soldiers, who on the other hand shot some tear gas canisters at two of the witnessing protesters who descended closer down the hill. The group then proceeded to join other scenes of protest.
Up until sunset protesters refused to disperse and re-gathered again and again in protest, some of them throwing stones to push back the attacking army, others just standing peacefully against the armed-to-the-top soldiers, documenting, or taking care of more than a dozen of wounded from the army's aggression.
Ni'ilin demonstration
In Ni'ilin 100 demonstrators marched to the route of the wall from the village. The demonstration marked the anniversary of the shooting of Tristan Anderson, an American ISM activist that was critically injured March 13th, 2009 by an extended range tear gas canister that hit him in his forehead. Tristan suffered brain injuries, and is still recovering from the injury in an Israeli hospital. The demonstration reached a gate in the wall, and the demonstrators, including three donkeys, were denied access to the village lands. The soldiers started shooting tear gas and stun-grenades, and as most of the demonstrators fled from the gate – some soldiers crossed it and arrested two of those left behind – an Israeli camerawoman and one of the donkey's owners – separating him from his son who was left stunned on the donkey. Apparently causing such a trauma to the kid wasn't enough for them, and before other demonstrators arrived to pick the horrified child and without anyone throwing stones from that direction, they shot more tear gas at him.
Following this episode, clashes erupted as some of the village youth threw stones at the soldiers. It didn't take long before the soldiers invaded the fields from the gate, while another group of soldiers attacked the demonstrators from a new different direction in the fields. After the soldiers retreated, clashes again started in front of the wall, and again, many soldiers invaded the fields. After hours of such confrontations, the demonstration was declared over.
Around 200 protestors marched from Hamashbir square to Sheikh Jarrah later on Friday, without letting offensive and fascist remarks from passersby to interrupt them along the way. 50 others joined them when they got to the conflicted neighborhood. High presence of riot police in the area was noted. The protestors tried to make their way to the house of one of the evicted families, where they intended to hold a protest vigil. They were blocked by police-officers that decreed the protest illegal. After several minutes of negotiation, the officers, breaking supreme and district court rulings, started to forcefully shove the protestors to the other side of the road, arresting two of them in the process. Moving the demonstration to the garden didn't suffice to the police officers, and they maintained their violent attacks on the protestors.
Later on, small groups of demonstrators that made their way back to the family house were also brutally dispersed, and some arrested as well. In total, 11 activists were illegally arrested during the demonstration. After a few hours all of them were released after signing a restraining order for 15 days from the neighborhood, which is currently under discussion in the district court.
Sheikh Jarrah demonstration
Later that evening in Sheikh Jarrah, after the demonstration dispersed, settlers violently assaulted the Palestinian dwellers and Israeli activists that remained in place. The settlers threw stones at people and cars, some of which were damaged. Needless to say that none of them was detained or arrested.
Today, Monday, at 2AM, Bil'in was once again raided by the Israeli Army. A document was posted around the whole village of Bil'in. This document declared that Israeli and international activists were strictly prohibited from entering Bil'in between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm on every Friday, the day in which the weekly demonstration takes place. Every Israeli and international activist must leave the village during this time, or else he or she will be deported or arrested by Israeli soldiers. The head of the police, Benjamin, ordered that this action be taken. The permit declares Bil'in to be a closed military area until August 17th. This is an attempt to stop Israeli and international activists from supporting the popular struggle of Bil'in, and is therefore just another action to repress and destroy the village's resistance against the occupation and also against the annexation of it's land.
