Against The Wall in Bilin: 30 Marchers Wounded and an International Rounded Up
21/04/2007
Source : IPC
In anti-Apartheid wall peaceful demo in Bilin village, North West Rammallah city of the West Bank 30, demonstrators were wounded and an international peace activist when the Israeli occupation troops met the peaceful demonstrators among were Israeli and international peace activists in addition to Palestinians ministers and deputies, by firing rubber coasted steel bullets and stun grenades.
Nobel Peace Prize Mairead Corrigan has been injured during confrontations between IOF forces and demonstrators protesting the building of the apartheid wall near Bilin, activists said.
Corrigan, who won the prize in 1976 for her work in encouraging a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland dispute, was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet and was transferred to a hospital for treatment. She was also said to have inhaled large quantities of teargas.
Among other wounded Daoud Akila, Cameraman of Dubi TV, Mussad Teama, cameraman of British Channel (4), who was evacuated to Tazari Tezdik in Jerusalem, he have been in a comma, Shirn abu Akla, Qatar Based Al Jazeera’s reporter.
Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti and Deputy Prime Minister Assam al-Ahmad also took part in the protest.
"I salute the residents of Bilin for their peaceful struggle in a region that is so violent and I call on the Israeli public, whom I know nis for justice and peace, to support the residents’ struggle," Corrigan told Ynet.
"I want to say that this separation wall, contrary to what the Israeli say, will not prevent attacks and violence. What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, wants peace," Corrigan added.
Puerto Rican peace activist Tito Kayak climbed a tower on which the army had planted security cameras and hoisted a Palestinian flag.
"All I did was to express my identification with the villagers against the wall which is believed to evil and illegal by the whole world and many leaders like Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and the United Nations," Kayak said.
Kayak, who was arrested in 2000 for climbing to the top deck of the Statue of Liberty in New York, was apprehended along with six other activists by policemen.
Kayak was a key figure in the 1999 Navy-Vieques protests in Puerto Rico against the US Navy’s use of the Vieques Island for bombing exercises. The protests forced the US to end its activities on the Island.
In this connection, the Information Minister and cabinet’s spokesperson Mustafa Al Burhgouti called, in a press conference with Nobel Peace Prize Mairead Corrigan to support Bilin and confronting the land theft apartheid wall, to move the file of the Apartheid wall from International court of justice to the UN General assembly.
"The Hague court ruling is a n account for the Palestinian people that have to be used properly in particular that it deems building the wall as well as occupation and settlement and all Israeli acts in Jerusalem as illegal." He asserted that the Palestinian struggle against the wall will continue unwaveringly.
Al Burghouti decried the Israeli occupation troop’s attempts to disrupt the press conference and besieging it and announcing the area as a closed military zone, evidently proved the Israeli attempts to obliterate the truth and blackout preventing the journalists to convey the aggressive acts of Israel.
In July 2005 International Court of Justice (ICJ) at Hague ruled the illegality of the apartheid wall dipping deep inside the West bank and demanded Israel to destroy it as it has been being built on Palestinian lands and called for compensations for the Palestinians who were damaged by the wall but Israel rejected the ruling and continues to build the wall at the expense of the Palestinian owned lands.
