'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Bil'in Friday

I decided to go down to Bil'in today, to the weekly anti-Wall demonstration that the villagers have been running there for more than a year now. I went with a great group of women from Ramallah, who included Neta Golan, an Israeli activist who is married to a Palestinian and lives in Ramallah with him and their two kids, and Anne X., a nAmerican woman of almost 70 years of age who also lives in Ramallah.

We had made the stunningly beautifully drive from Ramallah through the steep hills west to Bil'in in two cars, with some other people, so I didn't meet Anne till we got to the village. The moment I met her she handed me a keffiyeh and said, "Here, quick put it on, the tear-gas is coming our way." And it was.

We were a little late for the main event, which had been a procession from the village mosque down to the place where the line of Wall cuts right across an access road the villagers had always used to get to their lands that are now being taken from them by the line of the Wall. It was kind of hard to see what was happening, as the lines of Israeli soldiers and of demonstrators kept dissolving and reforming in different clumps. There were probably about 30-40 soldiers there, that I saw, and maybe 50-60 demonstrators. The demonstrators seemed to be, just over half of them, Palestinians, most of the rest Israeli peace activists, and a smattering of "internationals." There were quite a few press people there, too, and a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance.

I talked a little with Rateb Abu Rahmeh, a man from the village who teaches social work in the Al Quds Open University. He explained that he's a member of the village's Popular Committee which has been maintaining this action as a creative, nonviolent protest for all this time. (The villagers who are owners of some of the land cut off by the Wall here are also maintaining a challenge to its location in the Israeli courts. Akiva Eldar wrote about that in HaAretz earlier this week.)

Rateb told me that every week the Friday anti-Wall demonstration has a different theme. This week, they had made a large model of a graveyard, 30 meters by 10 meters, to commemorate the nine local people who have been killed in connection with anti-Wall protests. And they carried that to the Wall as their protest. "The Israelis broke up the model graveyard. They also broke my wrist," he said, showing me the bandaged hand he was shielding inside his jacket.

Rateb seemed like a very interesting person and I'd like to write more about him. But the only other thing I have time to note here is the very easy, friendly relations I saw between the Israeli anti-Wall protesters and their Palestinian colleagues. In fact, the Israeli protesters seemed great: very active and dedicated and committed to the discipline of nonviolence. Also, they played a special role in reproaching the young soldiers there in their own language.

Actually, many of the men in the village speak Hebrew. Bil'in is so close to the Green Line that until the latest intifada most of the village men would go to work in Israel-- and, one of them told me, some of them still do.

As the demonstration came to an end, everyone drifted back to the main part of the village. Some of the Israeli "Border" Guards came after the departing demonstrators, and there were a few skirmishes between them and some youngsters who started throwing stones as the soldiers approached. The soldiers lobbed few canisters of tear gas and we heard some much sharper bullet shots ring out, too. But the Israeli demonstrators-- most of whom were, it seemed, self-described anarchists-- seemed very at ease with the villagers, some of whom invited them into their homes for tea, and sat and chatted at length with them in Hebrew.