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 continued

See a report of today here. A few kids in hospital, which hasn't happened in a while

sound bombed

Went to Bilin demo as most internationals do pretty much every Friday. It was slightly more aggressive than usual recently, the soldiers had already come over the fence in order to take on the Palestinians who arrived and started pushing them around straight away and even a few internationals were pushed and shoved.

The Palestinians made their protest, a few people who threw rocks were quickly told that this was a peaceful demonstration and that they should stop immediately. The Palestinians then attempted to cross the barbed wire fence in order to get right up to the 'security' fence which they managed in one or two locations. The soldiers were quick to come and soon the Palestinians were spread out along the wall.

I went with one or two in order to make sure they were OK with one or two Israelis and as the barbed wire was being pulled a sound grenade was thrown and exploded quite close to me as I was moving away. However its pretty pathetic and didn't create much noise and my ears rang for a bit but that was all. One Palestinian actually managed to get trough the fence which caused the soldiers to get really annoyed and started to push and attack various people who were not involved with that. At this point the demonstration was called off and we returned around the village with tear gas and rubber bullets being exchanged with stones in the village.

All in all this was the most aggressive demonstration I've been on. You were never expecting the soldiers to do anything too stupid though a few people have cuts and bruises but you never feel completely safe.

There are some South African activists here at the moment who say that Apartheid in South Africa is child's play to the scenes the witness today. This is interesting as people often say that calling the wall an apartheid wall does a disservice to the South Africans who lived through the apartheid there.

On our journey back to Tel Rumeida an Arab who was sharing our taxi - he had tried to go to Jerusalem with his wife and children and they had all been allowed through but he had not been. When we got to his destination he jumped out of the car and returned with about 20 oranges for us, for no reason whatsoever!

Hanukkah tomorrow in Tel Rumeida, likely to be very quiet or very rowdy. I'll take this chance to wish a happy Hanukkah to any Jews who may be reading this!

؛PS a sound bomb is a grenade that on impact makes a large noise and releases some smoke, its designed for crowd dispersal

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.