Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Palestine-Israel, Celebration, Israeli Supreme Court verdict of today: the Route of the separation fence in Bil'in is Illegal 04 Sep 2007

This morning at 09:00 was expected the verdict of the Israeli Supreme court on the petition of the Bil'in village about the war crime of the building of the separation fence used to rob most of the lands of the village. The Supreme court that is used to give a "justice" rubber stamp to the occupation and the settler colonialist project can do it only if it is following some kind of logic. Using that kind of logic forced the supreme court to restrict the war crimes of Israel in the occupied territories. The joint struggle in Bil'in of the village popular comity together with the Israeli anarchists against the wall initiative, forced the highest court to intervene. After two and a half years of refusing to give a prompt verdict, it had to follow its own principles of justifying the separation fence, and ordered the settler colonialist establishment to retreat a bit.

In a verdict released today (Sept 4, 2007) in the petition of the village Bil'in against the separation barrier (HCJ 8414/05), by Judges Beinish, Prokachya and Rivlin, the Supreme Court ruled against the current route of the barrier and ordered the State to prepare within reasonable time a proposal for an alternative route, which will leave the agricultural lands of Bil'in on the "Palestinian" side of the barrier. The Court said that the current route was designed to allow the construction of the two stages of the Matityahu East neighborhood in the settlement Modi'in Illit - both the Western stage (where building took place) and the Eastern part (not yet built). The Judges ruled that the Eastern part is not a consideration to be taken while deciding about the route of the barrier. Exceptionally, the Judges also wondered about the security considerations guiding the planners of the wall - saying that the route of the barrier in Bil'in stretches in topographically inferior areas, in order to allow the construction of the full area of the Matityahu East neighborhood.

The Court decided that until the barrier is completed in the new route, the gate in the barrier is to remain open daily between 6:00 am and 20:00 pm.

The preparation which were done in order to face a negative verdict of the highest court were easily adapted to the positive verdict. The celebrations started with the party given late morning to the international and local media. Activists of the village and of the region involved with the struggle in Bil'in continued the celebration in the streets and in the municipality building. On the afternoon the main contingent of the anarchists against the wall arrived from the near by Israeli Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the celebration collected momentum. With music and dancing we converged first in the center of the village and then the hundreds of us Palestinian women, men, teenagers and kids, Israelis of the AATW continued the procession all along the road leading to the route of the separation fence. At the gate to the other side of the route, instead of the belligerent soldiers and border guards who attack us each Friday demonstration, there were few soldiers just guarding the gate.

After few sweet minutes of celebration there, we changed direction and did the dancing and singing all the way back to the center of the village.

After the evening prayer, few of the long time activists traveled to have a party at the near by city Ramalla.

All the TV channels reported in the evening main news program about the verdict and the celebration of the long struggle.

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