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November 10, 2009 at 8:09 am (Apartheid, Associate Post, Cartoons, Israel, Palestine)
Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff 
click on image to enlarge
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.
Palestinians symbolically dismantle sections of the wall
Multimedia report, The Electronic Intifada"Tear down this wall!" then US President Ronald Reagan told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, demanding he tear down the infamous Berlin wall. Two years later, on 9 November 1989, media around the world broadcast images of crowds of Germans from both the east and the west climbing atop the barrier and tearing down large sections of the wall. For many, the event was highly symbolic as it was perceived as the end of the Cold War and the start of a period when the world was headed in a more just and peaceful direction, free of walls keeping peoples apart.
However, two decades later, walls of separation still exist throughout the world. Israel's wall in the West Bank is much bigger than the Berlin wall ever was, as it encloses more than two million Palestinians inside the occupied West Bank. This wall separates Palestinians from their families, land, natural resources and communities.
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| (ActiveStills) |
In a symbolic action, the protestors in Nilin on 6 November were able to knock down a section of the wall before the Israeli army arrived and fired tear gas at the crowd.
Nilin media activists reported:
One protestor managed to climb on to the wall and he raised the Palestinian flag, hereby sending a message to Israel that the Palestinian flag will always go up on Nilin's land. Even if the land is cut off from the village now, the people of Nilin will never give up the right to their own land. Simultaneously, a group of youth threw bottles with red paint at the Israeli soldiers, the red paint representing the blood of the martyrs in Nilin that were killed by these soldiers.The video above, and images below, show the Nilin action that tore down -- albeit a small piece -- of the Israeli wall.
A small group of participants brought a jack that they placed under one of the concrete segments of the wall. After two hours, the concrete started coming off the ground, partially falling down. This was a strong message from Nilin, one protestor stated: "last Monday the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall was celebrated all over the world; now it's time for the apartheid wall to fall and this will start in Nilin. We in Nilin are most determined to get our land back, and we will break down this ugly wall."
(ActiveStills)
(ActiveStills)
(ActiveStills)
(Ahmed Mesleh)
(Ahmed Mesleh)
In a similar action on 9 November dubbed "We are going to Jerusalem," near the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinians along with dozens of internationals attached a rope to the wall as they used a truck to tear down one of the concrete slabs. As they demonstrated over the downed segment of the wall, Israeli soldiers arrived firing teargas and rubber bullets at the crowd. The below images show the action.
(Ahmed Mesleh)
(Ahmed Mesleh)
(Ahmed Mesleh)
(Ahmed Mesleh)
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Posted by JNOUBIYEH at 11:49 AM
Labels: Israeli Apartheid Wall
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