Israelis and Palestinians unite in protest at barrier

It began as it has begun every week for the past two years. First flag waving, then chanting and marching along the high street of the West Bank village of Bil'in until the demonstrators, several hundred in number, reached the barrier on Feb. 23. There, facing a group of Israeli soldiers, they stood before the yellow metal gate and the barbed wire fences, and continued chanting their opposition to Israel's half-built 437-mile barrier that snakes through the West Bank and which the Bil'in villagers say has taken half their land. Beyond the barrier and over the hill is the beginning of the largest Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, Modi'in Illit. And, as happens every week, there was pushing and shoving, then a volley of stones thrown by boys some distance away from the demonstrators. The Israeli military fired stun grenades and dozens of rounds of tear gas, before eventually bringing out a water cannon to disperse the crowd. Sixteen people were injured, four of whom were taken to a hospital. The reason that Bil'in is an exception is that the demonstrators are Palestinians and Israelis, a rare mix of people who march and chant and espouse non-violence together. At a time of deadlock in peace negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the weekly protests at Bil'in, which had their second anniversary on Feb. 23, are the highest profile joint action between two, often bitterly divided sides. Near the front of the crowd was Uri Avnery, 83, a former Israeli member of parliament and one of the better known activists on the Israeli left. "This village is unique even in Palestine because it is the only village that has the guts to fight against the wall actively, every single week," he said. "Israeli public opinion does not know anything about it, they don't want to know anything about it. We want to compel them to take notice that this so-called security obstacle has nothing to do at all with security. This is a wall which is robbing the villagers of most of their land and giving this land to Israeli settlers on the other side." Standing near him in the crowd was Mustafa Barghouti, a moderate Palestinian member of parliament. "Bil'in has given the best example of non-violent struggle and resistance to the Israeli measures," he said. "It is a message that we will never accept this apartheid wall and enslavement." For Ofer Shorr, 39, a translator from Haifa, this was his first appearance at a protest. He stood in the crowd holding a banner that read "the wall must fall." "We are enclosing them in a sort of ghetto and in a sense this is encircling Israel too," he said. But it was hard to get the point across in Israeli society, where he said such views were discounted as irrelevant. "Israelis have become very defensive and guarded about the whole peace process." As clouds of tear gas flooded over the hillside at Bil'in, the crowd retreated, holding scarves to their faces or breathing through onion halves to overcome the noxious fumes. Groups of Palestinian boys used long slingshots to hurl stones over the fields at the soldiers. Gad Miron, an Israeli, stood looking down the hillside at the barrier with his wife, Sara, a math teacher, who said: "It really hurts us that we are still occupying the territories. But we have no leadership to change the situation. There is a deep fear that started with the Holocaust and this fear is behind the actions of the government. We cannot be delivered of this fear," she said. "But we are putting ourselves in danger with what we are doing."