MAKE THE WALL FALL. FREE PALESTINE.

6AM, Wednesday, July 20th, 2005. ISM Internationals, Bil'in Residents and Israeli Peace Activists take action to block the road where the Apartheid Wall is being built.
by Sarita Ahooja
Bil’in is a small Palestinian village located 4 kilometers east of the Green Line, in the Ramallah district of the West Bank. The 1,600 residents depend on their farmlands to harvest their olive trees and sustain their livelihood. More than 2,300 dunams of 4,000 dunams of land are currently threathened by the construction of the illegal Wall that is to be built in order to join the 5 surrounding settlements. The settlers consume most of the water in the area, leaving barely 1 cubic meter per person per month. Bil'in has been demonstrating against the confiscation of their land every week for the last 5 months. The residents are continually attacked by the Israeli army, stationed at the construction site of the Wall. The night I arrived in Bil'in, 2 army vehicles raided the house next door looking for a family member of one of the leaders the Popular Committee Against the Wall at midnight. Approximately 13 Internationals and 3 Israelis followed the soldiers closely behind to witness the ensuing violations. After moving to another house, they found him and handed him a small piece of yellow paper. The message was written in Hebrew - which most Palestinians do not understand. He was summoned to the Ofer military base at 11am the following day for interrogation. The soldiers then returned to their jeep and hummer and drove up and down the street, threatening the Internationals and villagers keeping watch. The Internationals followed the army vehicles to the edge of the village and observed them as they disappeared over the hills, near the route of the wall.