Israel vecht al langer buiten zijn grenzen

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Groet / Cees

January 29, 2010
Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/world/middleeast/29palestine.html
By ISABEL KERSHNER

NILIN, West Bank — For more than a year, this village has been a focus
of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts
through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an
intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.

Apparently concerned that the protests could spread, the Israeli Army
and security forces have recently begun clamping down, arresting scores
of local organizers and activists here and conducting nighttime raids on
the homes of others.

Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular
committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was
raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked
his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his
sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.

He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”

Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated
against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign
volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often
posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.

Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to
prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians
oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the
West Bank.

While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they
usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security
forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not
sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter
Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which
controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”

Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the
protests “could slip out of control.”

The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which
became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the
Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to
take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to
move the barrier will start next month.

Like a creeping, part-time intifada, the Friday protests have been
gaining ground. Nabi Saleh, another village near Ramallah, has become
the newest focus of clashes, after Jewish settlers took over a natural
spring on village land.

One recent Friday, a group of older villagers marched toward the spring.
They were met with tear gas and stun grenades, and scuffled with
soldiers on the road. Other villagers spilled down the hillsides
swinging slingshots and pelted the Israelis with stones.

“Israel recognizes the threat of the popular movement and its potential
for expanding,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anarchist and spokesman
of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which is based in
Ramallah. “I think the goal is to quash it before it gets out of hand.”

In recent months the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and
other leaders of the mainstream Fatah Party have adopted Bilin as a
model of legitimate resistance.

The movement has also begun to attract international support. The
Popular Struggle Coordination Committee receives financing from a
Spanish governmental agency, according to the committee’s coordinator,
Mohammed Khatib of Bilin.

“Bilin is no longer about the struggle for Bilin,” said Mr. Khatib, who
was arrested in August and has been awaiting trial on an incitement
charge. “This is part of a national struggle,” he said, adding that
ending the Israeli occupation was the ultimate goal. Before dawn on
Thursday soldiers came to Mr. Khatib’s home in Bilin and took him away
again.

Israel security officials vehemently deny that they are acting to
suppress civil disobedience, saying that security is their only concern.
Among other things, they argue that the popular committees encourage
demonstrators to sabotage the barrier, which Israel sees as a vital
security tool.

The Israeli authorities have also turned their attention to the foreign
activists, deporting those who have overstayed visas or violated their
terms. In one case soldiers conducted a raid in the center of Ramallah,
where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters, to remove a Czech
woman who had been working for the International Solidarity Movement, a
pro-Palestinian group.

Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Yesh Din have long
complained of harsh measures used to quell the protests, including
rubber bullets and .22-caliber live ammunition. The Israeli authorities
say the live fire is meant to be used only in dangerous situations, and
not for crowd control. But the human rights groups say that weapons are
sometimes misused, apparently with impunity, with members of the
security forces rarely held to account.

About a hundred soldiers and border police officers have been wounded in
the clashes since 2008, according to the military. But the protesters
are unarmed, their advocates argue, while the Israelis sometimes respond
with potentially lethal force.

Tristan Anderson, 38, an American activist from Oakland, Calif., was
severely wounded when he was struck in the forehead by a high-velocity
tear-gas canister during a confrontation in Nilin last March.

After months in an Israeli hospital, Mr. Anderson has regained some
movement on one side, and has started to talk. But he has serious brain
damage, according to his mother, Nancy, and the prognosis is unclear.

The Andersons’ Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, is convinced that the
tear-gas projectile was fired directly at the protesters, contrary to
regulations. Yet the Israeli authorities who investigated the episode
recently decided to close the case without filing charges.

The investigation found that the Israeli security forces had acted in
line with regulations, according to Israeli officials. But witnesses
insist the projectile was fired from a rise only about 60 yards from
where Mr. Anderson stood. If it had been fired properly, in an arc, they
contend, it would have flown hundreds of yards. Nineteen Palestinians
have been killed in confrontations over the barrier since 2004. A month
after Mr. Anderson was wounded, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a well-known Bilin
activist, was killed when a similar type of tear-gas projectile struck
him in the chest.

Aqel Srur, of Nilin, one of three Palestinians who gave testimony to the
Israeli police in the Anderson case, was killed by a .22-caliber bullet
in June.

So far, the activists seem undeterred. Salah Muhammad Khawajeh, a Nilin
popular committee member and another local witness in the Anderson case,
related that when he was summoned for questioning two months ago, he was
warned that he could end up like Mr. Srur.

Mr. Khawajeh’s son, 9, was wounded in the back of the head by a rubber
bullet at a protest this month.

But as Mr. Khawajeh put it, “We still come.”

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