Death in Bilin

[Jefferson23]

The death of Bassem Abu Rahme – or How Israel kills at will and in total impunity while the world asks the Palestinians for non-violent resistance
04.21.2009 | Original (pdf, doc)

By Frank Barat

On April the 17th, like any Fridays afternoon for the last 4 years, the small village of Bil’in, north of Ramallah, was preparing for the usual demonstration against Israel’s annexation wall (some people call it apartheid wall or separation wall. The Israeli government refers to it as the security fence).

The village of Bil’in has, since the mid eighties, lost more than 60% of its land for the purpose of Israeli growing settlements the construction of the wall. The inhabitants of the village use to live mainly from agriculture and olive trees plantations but more and more, the people of Bil’in have to rely on the women to survive. Embroidering has become one of the main resource of the place, located a few kilometres away from Tel Aviv. (on a nice day, you can see the “inaccessible”-for the Palestinians- beach from the roof tops of Bil’in).

In January 2005, a village committee (led by Mohamed Khatib, Iyad Burnat and Abdullah Abu Rahme) was created and a month later non-violent demonstrations started, first taking part every day, then once a week, on Yum Al Juma’a (Friday, day of prayer).

The village won a huge battle in August 2008 <1> when the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that hat the new route of the barrier in Bil’in was in violation of the Court ruling released on September 2007 <2> (which ruled that the Wall path was prejudicial to Bil’in and must be altered)and ordered the State to present within 45 days a new route, which will uphold the principles of the ruling.

remainder here: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/death-in-bilin/