A-Infos (en) Palestine-Israel, Alt. Media, Anarchists and the villages – daily anti-Wall struggle

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The Tel Aviv-based Anarchists Against the Wall had a busy week.
The following account was provided by organizer Yonathan Polak.
“At Bila'in the bulldozers are working quite close to the village houses,
about four or five kilometers from the Green Line (pre-'67 border). Not
that this is the decisive factor for us, we would protest even if the Wall
was being built on the Green Line itself, since we oppose the whole idea of
erecting walls to separate people from each other.
Anyway, Bila'in and its neighbor Safa to the south are suffering very
much from settlement expansion. There is the big settlement-town of
Kiryat Sefer inhabited by ultra-Orthodox, and another settlement
called "Menora" which is supposed to be an extension of a third
settlement called "Mattityahu" - not that these names make much of a
difference to the Palestinians whose land is taken.

What matters is that this settlement complex is fast expanding and
swallowing more and more land. They build about 300 new housing
units per year, and now the Wall is being built according to the
settlement municipal boundary - that is, to enclose the territory which
is earmarked for further expansion.

There were some media reports of "violent clashes" where we had
been, especially at Bila'in. Actually it was not much more than what
we are used to in such struggles. There were some three hundred
villagers, joined by ourselves - about five Israelis and some
internationals - marching from the village center. When we came close
the soldiers formed a line to block us. When we went on walking, they
used tear gas and rubber bullets - no live ammunition on this occasion.
We were not able to really block the bulldozers - the last time we
succeeded in that was at Iskaka a few weeks ago, that was a great day.
(Iskaka is much deeper in, near the giant settlement of Ariel, work
there is now frozen by a court order but this week the army presented
confiscation orders at Marda which is in the same region).

Altogether, we had this week two demonstrations at Bila'in and one in
Safa. At one of those in Bila'in the army and police caught Einat
Podhorni, she did not run fast enough when they started chasing us.
She spent a night at the Russian Compound Detention Center in
Jerusalem, some of the fellows in Jerusalem organized a late-night
solidarity picket outside. On the morning she was set free on condition
that she does not come back in 21 days. Then, on Tuesday the Bila'in
villagers got a temporary injunction to stop the work until next week. I
am not sure of the legal details.

Yesterday (Friday, Feb 25.) we had a bigger Israeli presence at Raf'at
which is further to the north (not far from Mes'ha where the big
anti-Wall campaign started). At Raf'at there were some 15 of us and 15
of Ta'ayush, we joined up with the villagers and managed to walk quite
far. Only when we were quite close to the bulldozers the army
succeeded in stopping us, they had to bring up quite big forces to
prevent us from getting nearer.

Contact: Yonathan Polak <cat-A-squat.net>



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