bil'in

On our first full day in Palestine, we are already off to Bil'in, one of the best-known (although certainly not only) centers of unarmed resistance to the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank.

The villagers of Bil'in and their international and Israeli supporters have protested every Friday for the past five years against the wall (here a fence) that cuts them off from their land. Our driver exhibits nerves of steel as he manuevers the bus around rollercoaster hairpin turns through the West Bank's rocky hills.

Eyad Burnat of the Bil'in Popular Committee greets us at the door to his home. Bil'in is busy today--he is also expecting a crew of Belgian Palestine solidarity activists. While Eyad waits, his twelve-year-old son Majd hops on the bus and directs us out to "the battlefield," the gate that keeps Bil'in's residents from accessing their agricultural lands beyond the wall. Majd knows the way; he is at the protests every week.

The battlefield looks the part. The earth in front of the gate, and in many patches along the steep, narrow path, is scorched black from exploding tear gas canisters. Spent canisters dot the ground like weird fruit. The hill by the gate is also home to the grave of Bassem Abu Rahma, killed when an Israeli soldier fired a high-velocity tear gas canister at his chest. It's hard to miss how steep and rocky the path is--bad for running crowds, bad for quick evacuations of wounded.

Eyad arrives with the Belgian group. There are now about 30 of us hanging around right near the gate. Eventually an Israeli soldier emerges from the army fortifications above the gate. Then a second one. They watch us. "I am not supposed to be here; they've banned me from the demonstration site," Eyad says calmly. He makes no effort to hide from view, though, standing on a rock to address us and the Belgian Palestine solidarity group that has arrived.

Later, in Eyad's living room, we watch video of the weekly protests and of the punitive night raids into the village by the Israeli military. Ten times they have come to his house at night, Eyad says. He lassos one of his younger sons--he can't be more than ten--to tell us about how the soldiers roughed him up for trying to film a raid on a neighbor's house with a cell phone camera. Was he afraid? "No," he answers instantly with a smile.

Eyad tells us something remarkable. "Bil'in does not observe curfews." When the Israeli military declares a curfew, locking residents in their homes twenty-four hours a day, the village simply defies it en mass. When neighboring Ni'lin was under curfew for several days, the residents of Bil'in organized a march to bring them food. One video clip shows Israeli armored jeeps apparently retreating from the village under a hail of rocks.

For its resistance the village has paid a heavy price. Bil'in currently has 85 residents in prison, including 4 minors. Within a four-month period last year, 35 people were arrested, held for anywhere from four months to a year. In Ni'lin, five people have been killed and three members of the Popular Committee are currently in prison. But Eyad says without the presence of Israeli and international solidarity activists, it would be much worse.