Latest News & Updates

Bi’lin - A Palestinian Village Fighting to Exist

15/06/08

Bi’lin is a small agricultural village, which, like the rest of occupied Palestine, is fighting for its very survival.

The Israeli Apartheid Wall and the colonisation of the land for illegal Zionist settlements are literally strangling the life out of Bi’lin.

The residents of Bi’lin traditionally rely on income generated through agriculture, raising cattle and harvesting their olive groves, but this is becoming impossible as their land is turned into a fortress to which they are forcibly denied access.

Three illegal Zionist settlements, Matityahu, Kiryat Sefer and Matityahu East, and the Apartheid Wall already annex over 60 per cent of the land in Bi’lin.

The villagers endure nightly incursions, attacks on their homes, and physical and psychological violence from the Israeli Offence Forces and the settlers in a systematic and sustained attempt to drive them from their houses and land.

The residents of Bi’lin actively participate in non-violent resistance against the illegal occupation. Every Friday, after mid-morning prayer, accompanied by some international activists, they march from the mosque in the village to the gate of the Apartheid Wall, to protest peacefully against the illegal occupation of their land, and every time they do, the occupation army responds with unprovoked violence.

Last month, while in the West Bank, I travelled to Bi’lin to participate in the weekly demonstration in solidarity with the villagers and witnessed at first hand the brute force exerted by the occupation army.

As we approached the gate of the Apartheid Wall we were immediately met by swarms of heavily armed Zionist soldiers, charging towards us from the settlement road.

Large numbers of Israeli army thugs spilled out of their Saracens and quickly took position in the fields and road facing us, dispersing countless canisters of CS gas and detonating several sound grenades. As the gas choked and the sound grenades disorientated, they showered rounds of rubber bullets aimlessly at the crowd of civilian men, women and children.

Across the settlement road beyond the wall, Zionist ‘intelligence officers’ took pictures of the demonstrators as Palestinians chanted slogans demanding the return of their land and threw stones. George Rishmawi, a Palestinian activist from Beit Sahour in the West Bank, explained that the villagers have nothing to protect themselves or their land with. He explained that demonstrations, marches, and throwing stones are all important forms of popular struggle. He explained that this activity has no potential whatsoever to seriously injure any member of the Israeli military apparatus, yet their response with rubber bullets causes serious injury time and time again.

Every week, the people of Bi’lin protest against the Wall and the illegal Zionist settlements and, just as frequently, another settlement is expanded or the wall is pushed further into what little remains of Bi’lin and the neighbouring villages.

Last week, Zionist settlers from Matityahu East, protected by the Israeli army, began construction work to illegally expand their settlement. Despite an Israeli court ruling in 2007 forbidding the settlers from expanding this settlement, a further six pre-fab style houses were erected.

One Palestinian man from the village of Bi’lin, Ashraf Abu Rahme, climbed one of the cranes holding a Palestinian flag and managed to halt construction work for six hours before being forced down and arrested.

Bi’lin is no different to any other village, town or camp in Palestine struggling to survive under the occupation, forced to live with checkpoints, road closures, the Apartheid Wall, home demolitions, land theft, night incursions, ferocious armed settlers, unjust blockades, and constant crippling fear for every woman, man and child. Despite international law and restriction, US backed Israel continues its colonization of Palestinian land and the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

Palestinians will continue to resist the occupation that rapes their country, but without international intervention and support from the international community, Palestine will continue to be further illegally colonized and will continue to suffer all these inhuman imperialist practices.

I would encourage anyone who has not yet travelled to the war zone of Palestine to do so, to see first hand the inhumanity of the Israeli regime, to see first hand the most important battle between right and wrong in the middle east, if not the world, and to wholeheartedly support the Palestinian cause for freedom.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” – Martin Luther King.

Nuala and the other representatives from Palestine’s Child will be sharing their experiences from the West Bank in an event in the Roddy McCorley Club, Belfast, on Saturday June 28 from 7pm.

Print-friendly version