- Al Jazeera Monday, November 09 2009.
- Photo: ActiveStills Palestinians in Nil’in break Israeli wall.
Palestinians and foreign activists have torn down segments of Israel’s separation wall in a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the town of Qalandiya in the occupied West Bank, a group of masked activists using a lorry pulled down a two-metre cement block before Israeli security forces confronted them with tear gas grenades.
Several of the estimated 50 demonstrators passed through the hole they had made, hoisting a Palestinian flag and setting ablaze tyres on the other side.
Protesters were wearing shirts with the text “Jerusalem we are coming”, which was the slogan for the protest.
Abdullah Abu Rahma, leader of the People’s Campaign to Fight the Wall, said: “Today we commemorate 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“This is the beginning of the activities, which we do, to express our hold on our land, and our refusal to this wall – the wall of torture, the wall of humiliation.”
Activists have vowed to hold a week of protests in the Palestinian territories and around the world, including a campaign calling for the release of all anti-wall activists currently imprisoned.
Last Friday, Palestinian youths almost toppled a segment of wall using a hydraulic car-jack in the West Bank village of Nilin.
Regular protests
Protests against the wall have become a regular event in Nilin and in the nearby village of Bilin, where Palestinian, international and Israeli activists are commonly confronted by tear gas and rubber bullets fired by Israeli troops.
Israel began building its barrier, consisting of fences and walls, in 2002, citing security reasons.
The wall is up to 8m high in places, twice the height of the former Berlin wall. Palestinian sources anticipate that it may be more than 750km-long when construction is finished, more than four times the length of the Berlin wall.
Palestinians say the route of the wall has been set in such a way that it grabs land that could have been included in a future Palestinian state.
The International Court of Justice, in a non-binding decision in 2004, said the Israeli-built barrier was illegal and should be taken down because it crossed into occupied territory.
A report by Stop the Wall, a Palestinian coalition of NGOs opposed to the wall, said that in 2007 alone, Israel demolished more than 160 houses and appropriated more than 3sq km of land in the Palestinian West Bank in its construction of the wall.
As difficult as it may be to accept the truth, the wall in Israel has nothing in common with the Berlin wall, which was erected to virtually imprison German citizens who just might have preferred to live in freedom.
تعليق dprosenthal — 15 novembre 2009 @ 13:10The wall in israel was erected in an attempt to protect Isreali citizen from terrorists and suicide bombers, not in an attempt to grab more land. Yes, it certainly does cause hardships for the Palestinians, but it has also been quite effective in saving Jewish lives.
Were the United States being continually attacked from across the Mexican or Canadian border, I dare say we would do a lot more than just build an inconvenient wall – at least I hope so.
Israel wall in Palestine annexes large sections of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, agricultural villages in the West Bank such as Bil’in or Nil’in have lost large sections of their farming lands to the Israeli wall. In addition the International Court of Justice issued a ruiling in 2004 condeming the Israeli wall as illegal, a ruling that lead to a majority decision at the U.N. general assembly that called on the Isralei government to immeditaly dismantel the wall…
* BBC: UN rules against Israeli barrier
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3879057.stm
It is a wall that propels Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory, it has little to do with security. Many detailed maps outlining this reality are linked below…
* Maps from the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
http://www.stopthewall.org/news/maps.shtml
Concerning security the best step that Israel could take to ensure peace and security for everyone, both Israeli and Palestinians, would be to immediately end the ongoing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the longest running military occupation in the world which the U.N. has systematically condemned as a violation of international law, a reality that is increasingly being understood as apartheid…
* Desmond Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land
تعليق Stefan Christoff — 15 novembre 2009 @ 18:02http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/29/comment