Israel turns to chemical warfare
as wall construction continues at speed
June 11: "What the army used here yesterday was not tear gas. We know what tear gas is, what it feels like. That was something totally different." We are being briefed by A, a middle-aged villager speaking Hebrew in a calm and unemotional way, while standing under the scorching sun in the fields of Zawiya Village, on Friday morning. "When we were still a long way off from where the bulldozers were working, they started shooting things like this one", A says, holding up a dark green metal tube with the inscription "Hand and rifle grenade no.400" — in English. "Black smoke came out. Anyone who breathed it lost consciousness immediately, more than a hundred people. They remained unconscious for nearly 24 hours. One is still unconscious, at Rapidiya Hospital in Nablus. They had high fever and their muscles became rigid. Some needed urgent blood transfusion. "Now, is this a way of dispersing a demonstration, or is it chemical warfare?" "But if they think this will stop us, they should think again!", burst in a younger man standing behind F, one of the organisers of today's march. "Without our land, what are we? Seven thousand people with no livelihood. Five kilometres it is from here to the Green Line, five kilometres all our fields and olive groves. The fence will come right up the village houses, it will leave us nothing. What will we eat? Better to die on our land, we will not give up!" While we were talking, more and more villagers were arriving, from Zawiya itself and its neighbours Rafat and Dir Balut — the three of which are bound, once the Fence/Wall is complete, to become an almost completely enclosed enclave. There were also more Israelis and internationals arriving, several dozen in all — the anarchists who had already been here on the previous days, and also members of Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush and the ISM and the IWPS women (the latter, who are based in nearby Hares, had made the rest of us aware of the situation). Some had come all the way in their private cars, dodging the army and police road-blocks. Others had used the settler bus line from Tel-Aviv and then the yellow Palestinian taxis nimbly plying the labyrinth of blocked West Bank roads. Close to noon, the march set out. At the head an enormous Palestinian national flag was carried, and the youths burst out with "Long live Palestine" and "National Unity — Fatah, Hamas, Popular Front!". Israelis march with Palestinians Whatever their party affiliation, they were invariably kind and welcoming to the Israelis marching at their side. Boys were going around, offering icicles and firmly refusing payment. An elderly woman in traditional clothes, a megaphone in one hand and gas mask in the other, was directing the chanting. Behind her walked two young Icelanders, who had come from Reykjavik to work as volunteers for the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees. Many Palestinians had gas masks, as did the international TV crews accompanying the march. Those who did not have them made do with a kind of shallow carton cup with a string to keep them over mouth and nose, or with cloth tied over the face. Tension rose as the march wound through the fields, passing the broken olive trees destroyed in earlier days, and up to the point where yesterday's confrontation took place. And then a feeling of relief — the soldiers and bulldozers had gone away, during the hour before we got to the spot. There remained only a single jeep, observing from a distance. Finished for the weekend or avoiding another confrontation? Right on the spot from which the soldiers shot yesterday, strewn with empty cartridges, the Palestinian flag went upon the pole. A young man planted a green Islamic flag beside it, getting some frowns from members of other factions. Under the pole, speakers took up the megaphone and made fiery addresses: "Listen, Sharon! Listen, Bush! Zawiya is steadfast! We hold on to our land, to our olive trees!" Then the Friday prayers, thousands of villagers kneeling in unison in the direction of distant Mecca. The rally and prayer over, the column was about to set out back. But many of the youngsters were not yet done. They ran ahead, to the recently-carved track by which soldiers and bulldozers have come, and started piling rocks along it. Israelis and internationals joined them in shifting and rolling huge rocks, some needing the work of 12 people to move. "I know this will not stop the bulldozers by itself, but we will sure make life difficult for them every way we can", said a youth. Video footage of the protests of Thursday and Friday http://www.iwps-pal.org/ftpiwps/videos/azzawiya_6-10-11.wmv PS: Aside from Zawiya, a major confrontation is developing at A- Ram, the Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem where work on the Wall kicked off with the sudden destruction of a major artery, in complete disregard of the hundreds of thousands who use it every day. And the radio news announced that in the coming week work is to begin on the Wall section linking the settlement of Ariel to those of Kdumim and Karney Shomron — which would have the effect of both seizing the land of a dozen hitherto unaffected villages and of driving a wedge deep into the West Bank as a whole, so as to preclude creation of a viable Palestinian state.* * * Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc) http://www.gush-shalom.org