Friday, July 4, 2008

Bil’in

Bil’in is a small village at the very edge of Ramallah on the western side, towards Israel and the so-called security barrier (http://www.bilin-village.org). For more than three years there have been demonstrations every Friday against the building of the Wall. At Bil’in, the Wall takes the form of a hi-tech fence. The fence cuts through the agricultural land of the village which means that the village has lost half of its land. To illustrate how short the distances are in Palestine/ Israel: Bil’in is only 25 km from Tel Aviv and so every meter counts when it comes to the struggle over land. This is why the Israelis drew the fence by Bil’in three km from the Green Line (the ceasefire line of 1948), and thus inside the West Bank, in order to expand the land mass in connection to the settlement Modi’in Illit and the other settlements in the area. The Israelis claim that it’s a matter of security, but even the Israeli High Court has ruled against the fence around Bil’in. The International Court in the Hague had already ruled in 2004 that 80% of the Wall that ran through the West Bank was illegal, a ruling which unsurprisingly is ignored by the government in Jerusalem. So far the ruling of the Israeli High Court has not been recognised either.

Together with Lucia, a friend from Copenhagen who’d arrived in Ramallah on Wednesday, we decided to go to Bil’in to take part in the protests. Lucia and I have been to quite a few demonstrations in Copenhagen over the last few years so it was natural for us, if possible, to try and contribute in a practical way to the struggle for the Palestinian cause. Many of my friends here in Ramallah smiled a bit when I asked them about the demonstrations near Bil’in; they said that it had become quite a ritualised protest. In this way they were also implying that the demonstrations didn’t do much to change anything. Anyhow, we wanted to go to see with our own eyes — both the demonstration as well as the conditions around the fence.

The demonstration was organised by a local committee in Bil’in but is also supported by an Israeli organisation called Anarchists against the Wall (http://www.awalls.org) as well as several international organisations. That’s why it was a funny blend of local Palestinians, Israeli anarchists and international solidarity people who had gathered outside the local community centre when we arrived. We had to take a taxi to get out here and on the way the Palestinian taxi driver attempted to teach me several Arabic words and names of local villages. Arabic is spoken from a very different part of the mouth than Danish but at least the crash course produced a lot of laughter.

We were amongst a group of people who were at the demonstration for the first time and a kind of interim briefing, led by one of the Israeli activists, was organised. Amongst the first timers was a group of young Americans, apparently ‘liberation theologists’, and various other young people from the West. We were told about tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets but were told that we should just stay at the back if we didn’t feel safe. Stun grenades are small grenades that create a very loud bang.

The protest started, as usual, after the Friday prayers and a large group of Palestinians emerged from the mosque and the demonstration was quickly formed with flags, songs and slogans. Although we were only about 150 people, one has to say that the Bil’in people could really get a demonstration going. People of all ages took part and the atmosphere was good and energetic with the protesters singing and dancing. We walked for about ten minutes, leaving the village and could then see the fence snaking through the landscape. Going through an olive grove we soon got all the way up to the fence. There were several layers of barbed wire and fencing but a breach had been made in the barbed wire beforehand so that we could get all the way to the first fence. As ‘the internationals’ are considered peace guards, the Palestinians started shouting ‘internationals’ and called the mixed group of liberation theologists, young students and uneasy Danes to the front of the fence. The idea was that the Israeli soldiers would probably hesitate before shooting at a European. I thought that moving into the space between the barbed wire and the high fence seemed a bit like going into a trap and so I stayed back for a bit with the core of Palestinian demonstrators. A group of Israeli soldiers in full riot gear arrived at the other side and positioned themselves coolly a few meters from the opposite side of the fence. The international demonstrators shouted straight at the soldiers and tried to ask them the question as to what they were there for. Then the stones started flying from the back from small local kids who were using their David slings to shoot stones over the fence at the Israeli soldiers. Everything then went crazy with stun grenades going off and tear gas spreading. Many of the ‘internationals’ got caught in large clouds of tear gas between the fence and the barbed wire. After most of them had got away from the fence and the gas, a longer battle continued with the local kids and a few internationals who continued to pelt the Israeli soldiers with stones. This resulted in more tear gas and more grenades. Tear gas is never a pleasant thing and people were sitting spread around under the trees mending themselves with various remedies: onion, vinegar, etc. Lucia and I had bought a bottle of lemon juice that helped quite a lot. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos during the exchange because of the gas and also because my battery had ran out.



On the way home we discussed whether there was any point to those kinds of demonstrations. Although today’s demonstration had had, as Lucia described it, a bit of Ghandi-style to it when we collectively approached the Israeli army in order to get beaten without really being able to defend ourselves, these kinds of disturbances nonetheless have an effect. On the one hand, the media were present, and on the other it might help by exhausting the Israeli soldiers in the long run. Perhaps there just needs to be more of these kinds of protests all along the Wall around the West Bank. The fence by Bil’in isn’t legal according to either Israeli or international law, so something has to be done. Otherwise the village of Bil’in will die along with a whole row of other village communities whose livelihoods have been indiscriminately hit by the Wall.

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