Even while I have seen and experienced quite a bit of harassment in Hebron, nothing could have prepared me, for Bil´in.

At the demonstrations I have gone to at home, I never was close to the anarchist block, I never considered myself to be a radical. I have never experienced physical violence by the authorities. I never thought any authority would see me as enough of an enemy or a threat to use violence against me.
I'm just a middle-aged and rather short woman.
I never even was afraid of government violence, since as far as I know, in Germany, the most violent things the police uses is water and clubs.

But there in Palestine everything is different. Everybody who opposes injustice and oppression is a dangerous threat, Palestinians, Internationals, even progressive Israelis, women and children included. And how Israel deals with those threats you can see every Friday in Bil´in.

Bil´in is a village not far from Ramallah and Jerusalem. The wall Israel is building, which leads deep into the occupied territories, the wall, which has been declared illegal by an international court, has taken 60 % of the land from the villagers of Bil´in.
These villagers have been protesting every single week for more than 2 years against this wall. They have been protesting when the wall was started, when it was under construction and they still protest while it has been finished at Bil´in.

They are not giving up. Many of them have been arrested, many injured, some killed. But still they have not given up.

After being to one of their demonstrations, I got the feeling, that the people of Bil´in are some of the most courageous in the world.

Nowadays internationals and a few brave reporters also come to those demonstrations.

I was told beforehand what kind of weapons the soldiers use in Bil´in against the demonstrators, and I was scared even before I came. They use several kinds of sound-bombs, the newest kind can burn your trousers and legs when they land next to you.
They use tear-gas containers, some they throw into the crowd, some they shoot with cannons. Sometimes they don't shoot with their cannons in the air but shoot those cannisters, which are as big as bean cans directly at the people.
Then they use rubber bullets. Some are actually made of rubber, others are are just metal bullets with rubber coating.

The protest started with about a hundred people, most of them Palestinians, singing and chanting and holding hand-written placards going from the village into the direction of the wall.
In the very front was a man in an electric wheel-chair. He and a small group of Palestinians reached the line of soldiers first and were right away encircled by them.
Because I had heard that the soldiers would not use tear gas close to themselves, I was in the second group, standing opposite the soldiers when they showed us a paper written in Hebrew.

The people around me tried to talk to the soldiers.
But they started to pull out those orange tear-gas cans and pointed their guns at us.
I had the urge to run, but I knew I couldn't run fast in this uneven area, so after a few steps I just turned around and hoped that my backpack would protect me.

The soldiers had retreated a few steps also and the tear-gas landed very close to where I was standing. It was like the thickest fog on earth, it made me totally blind and it burned in my eyes, my nose and my throat. I tried to get away, but even if I'd known in what direction the wind was blowing, I had no sense of direction any more. Instead, I stumbled blindly around, and then I fell.
Somebody else fell down right behind me, he was screaming. When I could see again, I turned around and saw a Palestinian man lying directly behind me withering in pain.
I got up on my feet still stumbling and disoriented, within a few seconds a group of Palestinians came and looked at the injured man. They pulled down his trousers. He was bleeding from his thighs.

I later learned that he had been hit by 2 rubber bullets at once. He had been shot at a very close range and both bullets had penetrated his legs. He needed to be operated and he was in the hospital in bad condition for several days.

I stumbled away from the scene, but then a group of soldiers pressed by us in the direction of the village, a few friends decided to follow the soldiers to see, if they were attacking the village directly but after shooting more and more tear gas grenades, the soldiers turned around. Panic-stricken I asked my friends if they would shoot us now from both sides and a short time later we were hit by a second cloud of gas.

I could no longer keep up and for a short while stood alone, when another group of soldiers came in my direction. I only wanted to hide, behind a tree or a rock.

But I had been told: "Do not hide, if they see you, they believe you are dangerous."
I had already seen one soldier aiming with a gun, without the rubber bullet attachment. He seemed to shoot with live ammunition. So I stood there with raised hands scared to death, when they passed by.

When I reached my friends again a group of soldiers followed by armored cars came from behind. They pushed us aside. One of them, when he saw me trembling, said: "Don´t be afraid, we´re not gonna hurt you."
But for someone like me, it´s hard to not be afraid, when I´m shot at and pushed around with clubs and guns.
And shortly thereafter my friends and I were hit with tear-gas the third time.
When we finally could leave the scene over the fields I had had far more than enough, and I also had a deep admiration for the people of Bil´in, the people who had not given up against all odds.
10 people had been arrested that day, 4 had been injured and nobody had been killed...this time.

Posted in

• Bil'in
• demonstration
• Occupation
• Palestine
• wall

Submitted by erlenda on Wed, 2007-09-05 10:29.

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