Residents of the Palestinian village of Bil’in organized an anti-wall demonstration on Friday. After the noon prayer at the village mosque, at least 300 of the villagers marched at the construction site, which has become a line of almost daily confrontations.
Residents of the Palestinian village of Bil’in organized an anti-wall demonstration on Friday. After the noon prayer at the village mosque, at least 300 of the villagers marched at the construction site, which has become a line of almost daily confrontations.
What is unique in Friday’s protest is that the villagers carried ten white coffins in the demonstration. The coffins, which had alive people in them, carried the words Humanity, Freedom, Hope, Future, Economy, Independence, Land, State, Justice and life, all written in Arabic, English and Hebrew.
"The wall is killing all these words and their meanings" said one of the protestors. "We will continue to resist this Apartheid wall," he added.
The local villagers were also accompanied by Israeli and International peace activists who came to express support with the Palestinians.
"We are here to support the Palestinians in their nonviolent struggle against the Apartheid wall that is killing the daily life of many Palestinians and threatening chances for peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis," said one of the International supporters, of the International Solidarity Movement.
The Israeli military started constructing the wall in on the land of Bil’in village four months ago. The village has been frequently organizing protests against the construction of the wall, which will confiscate a wide area of the village’s land.
The residents of Bil’in sent a letter to the United States President George W. Bush in which they expressed their pain and agony resulted from the construction of the wall on their land.
The letter reads, "Dear Mr. President, Greetings mixed with pain and agony. Greetings that refuse oppression and discrimination. Greetings full of confidence in freedom. Greetings from the bottom of the sea of Palestinian blood. We send this letter to you, President of the Free World, and ask you to stand by our side in our nonviolent struggle for justice and freedom."
The letter goes on explaining in numbers and facts the damage caused by constructing the wall in the village.
"We send this letter from Bil’in, a small Palestinian village that is being killed by the Wall that the entire world condemns. Located 2 miles east of the Green Line, our 1,600 residents depend on our ability to farm and harvest our olive trees to sustain our livelihood. More than 575 acres of Bil’in’s 1,000 acres are being taken for the construction of Israel’s Wall in order for Israel to annex five settlements and another one that is under construction," the letter read.
The villagers also explain that the Israeli settlements near the village consume most of the village’s natural resources.
"The settlements surrounding Bil’in consume most of the available water in the area, leaving very little for Bil’in residents- barely one cubic meter per person per month."
At the end of the letter, the residents of Bil’in slam the U.S. biased stance and call Bush to support the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against injustice.
"Because this injustice is so grave, the Palestinian people have lost faith in the impartiality of the United States. We urge you, Mr. President, to look deeper into the human, social, and economic impacts of the Wall and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land," the villagers say in their letter.
Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, coordinator of the committee against the wall in the village, said, the residents decided to adopt the nonviolent approach to resist the wall. He said, "In the past weeks we had a march for children, and some villagers and International Peace Activists chained themselves to the olive trees so that the bulldozers do not uproot them, and others put themselves in barrels to stop the caterpillars from bulldozing the land."
