West Bank : Bil'in Against the Israeli Annexation Wall

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Saturday December 20, 2008 14:42 by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

Murderers! This is from Ahmad Mousa and Yousef Amira

Yesterday, in the relentless resistance against the construction of the Annexation Wall and the illegal Israeli colonising “settlements” of Kfar Rut, Shilta, Mattityahu, Makkabim, Hashmonaim, Lapid, Modi’in Illit (Qiryat Sefer) and Menora on the expropriated Palestinian lands of Bil’in and Saffa, villagers from Bil’in, their numbers augmented by Internationals and Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall marched, as they have done for the past four years after Friday prayers, in protest to the Wall.

In tune with the Wildean observation that the sincerest form of solidarity is imitation, à la the Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, shoes and boots were flung at the Wall and the safely out-of-reach Israeli Occupation Forces with one placard echoing the words he directed at Bush: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those you’ve killed in Palestine," another placard alluding to the recent IOF murders of two Palestinian youths from the nearby village of Nil’in stated: Murderers! This is from Ahmad Mousa and Yousef Amira – on 29th July 2008, after a demonstration against the Wall, whilst sitting under a tree, Ahmad was killed with a live bullet to the head http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1701.shtml Next day following his funeral, Yousef was murdered with two rubber coated bullets again fired into the head by an IOF soldier only a few meters away http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1703.shtml

Unfortunately, predictably, as is their wont the Israeli Occupation Forces enveloped the protestors at the front in a cloud of tear gas and wounded eight with so called rubber bullets - two of whom were journalists, one from Israel and the other, Issam Arrimawi, working for the Palestine News Agency, Wafa

All Israeli colonising settlements are illegal under international law. Yet, Israel's Supreme Court legalized the settlement of Mattiyahu East on Bil’in land, even though this settlement violated even Israeli law as it lacked an approved building permit. Moving the goal posts and attempting to shift the Apartheid Wall, on Sep 4th 2007, this court ruled that the Wall at Bil’in must be moved further west, returning 250 acres of farmland to Bil’in . On Dec 16th 2008, the same court ruled that the second proposed route of the Annexation Wall proposed by the Israeli military is illegal as it did not conform to the previous court ruling of Sep 2007. The Bil’iners,however, mindful of previous court decisions regarding stolen Palestinian land which were treated with contempt by the Israeli government reacted with extreme caution, adhering instead to the moral imperatives of the Court of Conscience, best summed up in the villagers letter to the IOF soldiers manning the Wall: "Had you come here as guests, we would show you the trees that our grandfathers planted here, and the vegetables that we grow... There will never be security for any of us until Israelis respect our rights to this land."