Another of the weekends demos

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Monday June 28, 2004 14:56 by publo

Solidarity in Palestine

Hi Folks,

As I mentioned in my last email, I was going to a demonstartion against the Apartheid Wall that is about to be built through the middle of A Ram, just outside jerusalem .. There's a map after the attached photos which will give you an idea of what is about to happen to this community in the coming weeks.Here's some brief info and then the story of the demo

Ar Ram will soon loose 6500 dunums (4 dunums = 1 acre approx) of its lands, which will be isolated behind the Wall, and stolen for planned settlement expansions.

The Wall through Ar Ram will pass along the middle of the main road, separating the two sides of the street, and cutting Palestinians off from each other - those on the Jerusalem side from the West Bank, and those on the West Bank side from Jerusalem. The Wall will also destroy a road which has historically been the main artery linking Jerusalem to northern Palestine, as well as to the rest of the Arab countries bordering Palestine to the north.

The Wall in Ar Ram will place sixty thousand people in a hanging ghetto, linked to Ramallah by either a bridge or a tunnel. With all of its lands confiscated or isolated, there will be no viable space left for any form of natural population growth in the area.

So there's a rough idea of what's going to happen.. Anyway the demonstration was organised as a joint Israeli and Palestinian move.. 5 coaches of israeli peaceniks came and the two groups marched towards each other from opposite sides of the village and when them met in the middle there was much hugging and crying .. it was a very moving and powerful moment..

So we all turned and marched to the site where the wall is about to be built and found a heavy presence of border police and army ... without provocation they began to fire teargas grenades into the crowd.. targeting the areas where most jewish demonstrators had gathered .. then came the stun grenades .. we were all shocked but especially the israelis.. some had brought dogs and kids and many were very elderly and no-one had expected the army to attack

Most of the israelis dispersed .. I was hiding in a shop after being badly gassed .. I came out and found myself with the remaining israelis .. a water cannon was brought in to disperse them and when some still remained the army came in to arrest them .. I saw 3 women being arrested and they had the worst beating i've seen .. and these are israelis being beaten by their own security forces .. unbelievably vicious

When the army attcked first and most of the israeli moved off then the youths (shebab) had started throwing stones from a distance ... but they were well out of range to hit the army .. but once the majority of israelis had been dispersed, gassed, beaten, arrested then the army charged in firing rubber coated stell bullets and live ammunition .. Journalists were also targetted .. a friend of mine from spanish tv had gas fired directly at his and was beaten and had his tv camera thrown to the ground and damaged

Medical personnel were also targeted .. tear gas was fired from virtually point blank range trough the rear window of an ambulance .. The end result was over 50 people injured by rubber coated steel bullets .. including religious leaders .. and several hundred people suffered from tear gas inhalation.. I was gassed twice and believe me it's not nice .. if you've ever rubbed your eyes after chopping chillies .. well magnify that pain by about 10 and imagine then not being able to breathe at the same time ..

The israeli peaceniks believe, as do I, that the demo was attacked precisely because israelis were demonstrating with palestinians, and the powers that be don't want any sort of co-operation between the peace movements on both sides .. there were undercover israeli forces in the crowd .. known as mustaribeen they disguise themselves as palestinians .. one is pictured in the attached photos .. we saw the boy with him on the ground and we thought this guy was helping him cos he'd been shot but when we ran to help myself and a swedish girl had a gun stuck in faces and told to piss off.. so we did .. very quickly

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5783