Bilin

Today was the most vicious demonstration that I've seen in Bilin with huge amounts of tear gas and sound bombs, bullets flying around. I was quite shocked by how easily the Israeli army gets scared and how it reacts.

The demonstration started as usual and as always was peaceful, approaching the checkpoint which the soldiers had already come through. Pretty quickly a large number of people crossed the barbed wire to the fence and the soldiers came through and started throwing sound bombs all over the place, even at people who were not trying to cross the barbed wire fence. Others who came up and those who were already there were pushed about a little bit. This is how it carried on for an hour, with no Palestinians being violent towards the soldiers. So far so good, the demonstration was as normal and eventually got called off.

However the reason for calling it off was the massive invasion of the IOF into the village, something that they normally do but today they took over a number of houses. The villagers supported by internationals and entered the houses and demanded the soldiers left. In one house the soldiers did but in another they called in reinforcements. These reinforcements attempted to arrest a Palestinian, fired off huge amounts of tear gas and sound bombs. They also beat a number of people close by and at least one person was hit badly by rubber bullets, causing damage. This person was sitting on the ground at the time. There was no justification for these actions - although the protesters were vocal they were never ever violent towards the soldiers. Why the soldiers reacted in the way they did? Fear probably, though there was absolutely nothing to fear, these demonstrations have been going on almost 2 years now and have never been violent. Except for times when the Israeli Army infiltrated them and were violent.

A huge amount of tear gas was thrown up and my eyes were streaming for ages afterwards. I couldn't believe the way the soldiers reacted.

Bilin demo

As I'm writing this there are clashes between various Palestinian groups, which has lead to a number of deaths and injuries. It is quite strange to think that literally a few streets away, where I went for dinner tonight there has been a gun battle.
Today also went from Ramallah to Bilin today for the demonstration that they have every Friday. As usual the march went up to the gate and a few Palestinians and internationals crossed the barbed wire and made a peaceful protest on the other side of the barbed wire by the fence, though others who tried to join them were pushed quite hard by Israeli soldiers as were those by the fence. Eventually we left the soldiers and walked back to the village where there was a 'running battle' for want of a better way of putting it between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths. We stayed away from it but got a very good view and again it was incredibly surreal to see people running, shouting, throwing things on the side. Some kind of futuristic wide screen movie. Then got hit by the tear gas, which is pretty nasty. Not too badly but it does really choke the back of your throat. Left quickly after that, the Palestinians are very keen to make sure that as few people get hurt as possible and those who organise the demonstration want to keep it peaceful as possible. As we were leaving one of the Palestinians told us there was now live fire. Am going to leave Ramallah but whilst I'm here I'm obviously not going to go into town. It seems a shame that despite a cease-fire killings go on. You would have thought that the Palestinians had seen enough bloodshed, without adding to it themselves - for instance the killing of three kids the other week. As I think I've said before I'm pro-peace and I think the violence happening at the moment in the West Bank and Gaza and attempts to shoot elected members is despicable, regardless of whether the bullets and bombs come from Israeli or Palestinians.