Israel suppressing popular Palestinian protests

Palestinians seek to re-energize non-violent resistance despite Israeli military crackdowns.

NABI SALEH, West Bank - The villagers prepared for battle, piling up rocks in the streets, erecting barricades out of rubbish bins, and wrapping their faces in trademark Palestinian checkered scarves.

But only a few dozen people gathered in front of a line of Israeli troops to chant against the takeover of nearby land by radical Jewish settlers, and they soon scattered before a deafening salvo of Israeli tear gas and sound grenades.

The Palestinian Authority has vowed to support the "popular struggle" by backing home-grown weekly protests in villages across the occupied West Bank.

But due the heightened Israeli efforts to suppress the gatherings, few are turning out for the demonstrations.

"It's become localized, rather than a sort of massive movement where Palestinians from all over the West Bank would go to one place or another," says Hanan Ashrawi, a veteran Palestinian activist who shot to prominence during the first intifada, or uprising, in 1987.

"You still need to re-energize the idea of popular non-violent resistance and give it support."

The protests are modeled on the weekly demonstrations held in recent years in the West Bank towns of Bilin and Nilin, where residents, along with foreign and Israeli peace activists, have tried to halt Israel's illegal seizure of land for its notorious separation barrier, also known as the 'Apartheid Wall'.

Palestinian youths hurl stones and Israeli troops fire tear gas and rubber bullets. In Nilin alone five Palestinians have been killed and scores wounded in the last two years.

Israel has also detained dozens of local activists, including several organizers, in late night raids, drawing criticism from rights groups who accuse it of seeking to stamp out pacifist protest.

"They are creating this sense that you are vulnerable, you can be arrested, and they are clamping down on non-violent resistance because they are afraid of it," Ashrawi says.

The military rejects the idea that the protests are non-violent and says that in the last two years more than 100 security forces have been wounded in what it refers to as "violent riots."

Israel has recently signaled it might crack down on foreign demonstrators as well. Last month the military partnered with a special immigration police force to seize a Czech activist who had overstayed her visa.

The night-time raid took place in the heart of the West Bank town of Ramallah. The woman was later deported.

On a recent Friday in Nabi Saleh, a hilltop village outside Ramallah set amid verdant olive groves, dozens of Palestinian youths swung stone-laden slingshots at Israeli border guards, retreating under a barrage of tear gas canisters before rushing to pick them up and throw them back.

"We are sending a message to the occupation," says Ahmed, a 20-year-old protester who was recently released from an Israeli jail after a five-year sentence. "The Palestinian people are strong. We can still resist."

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=37031.