Name: Palestinian victim of the Wall
Birthplace: Bil’in
DOB: Eternity
Date of Death: The day the Apartheid Wall is completed
Killer: The Occupation
Cause of Death: Construction of the Apartheid Wall
With these remarks inscribed on gravestones, residents of Bil’in, a village west of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, summarized their message to the world in their weekly nonviolent anti-wall protest on Friday.
Following the noon prayer, hundreds of villagers, joined by International and Israeli peace activists, marched to the agricultural land being bulldozed for construction of the local segment of the West Bank wall. The marchers carried gravestones bearing this message in some fifty languages, including Arabic, English and Hebrew.
Israeli troops in the area stopped the marchers before they were able to reach the construction site and gave them fifteen minutes to leave.
The protestors then lay down on the ground and laid the gravestones on their bodies, turning the whole area into a mock graveyard..
The soldiers and the police who were summoned to the site began violently removing the protestors and beating them.
Eyewitnesses reported that the soldiers and police used tear gas, concussion grenades and electric cattle-prods, with which they knocked several protestors out.
The eyewitnesses added that the troops used a new kind of a liquid plastic material that sticks to the body and causes painful tears in the skin if the victim attempts to remove it himself.
Mohammad Al-Khatib, one of the organizers of the protest, stated that at least 150 protestors were injured by the Israeli troops and police, in varying degrees of severity.
Israeli forces also arrested four International protestors and eight Palestinians, including one who was handicapped.
Al-Khatib reported that the demonstrators committed no acts of violence and that the soldiers charged the group while they were lying on the ground with their gravestones.
