Sunday, November 4, 2007

Palestine-Israel, Long weekend of activities of the Anarchists against the wall (AAtW) initiative 04 Nov 2007

It started as usual with the 142th joint demonstration in Bil'in. There, it it was as usual in the last few months you can find a lot of details in the various web pages like ainfos.ca, anarkismo.net, infoshop.org, israel.indymedia.org. The only unique to this demonstration was the France contingent and the refraining of the state force from sending team to intrude into the woods of the olive trees located between the fence and the village - to provoke intensive stone throwing by the village youth.

The other actions of Friday we participated in were in Tel Aviv. The first was the big demonstration of the asylum applicant from Darfur mainly, who are usually treated as bad as you can expect a racist state like Israel. Activist of the (AAtW) were busy the last two months in organization and giving help to the Darfur asylum seekers from Darfur and other places, with Israelis involved with them.

A comrade who was involved with this demonstration contributed the following text: "Today they are around 3000 asylum seekers and refugees in Israel most of them are African but there are also few from Burma, Iraq and other countries. The state of Israel has no official policy or a law how to deal with them, (though it is bound by some international regulations it try as hard as it dare to evade). Most of them are under the threat of deportation back to there they came from which means death for many of them.

On Sunday morning a proposal will be raised by enlightened Knesset members at the Knesset which suppose to settle the status of refugees and asylums seekers in Israel.
On Friday November the 2nd around 1000 people marched through the main boulevard of Tel Aviv - Rothschild boulevard. Israelis, Eritreans, Sudanese, Burmese, Congolese, Liberians and may other marched against the deportation of refugees from Israel and to legalize the issue and status of refugees in israel. during the march many Israelis joined and it ended at the front of the cinamteque where music played by the refugees and Israeli bands.

The second action was too at the Rothschild boulevard.

In the name of the front for liberation of the public space

Autonomous activists today (Fri. 2.11) removed one of the globes from Rothschild Ave. and returned it to the Stock Exchange in protest against abuse of public space. Last few years the globalization and the neo-liberal capitalist new order found its way into Rothschild boulevard. Various objects pretended to be "art artifacts" were posited along the Rothschild boulevard serving the public relations for big concerns. This time big globuses were distributed along the boulevard.

his Friday, in a direct action, one of the globuses was removed from its place and returned to the near by offices of the share exchange establishment.

The activists warned that if the Tel Aviv Municipality will allow the big concerns to take over the public space and put there advertisement sculptures pretending to be artifacts of art, these will be removed too.

Saturday The joint action of the AAtW with the Palestinian activists against the separation fence and occupation in the Bethlehem region have a bit different quality than the most known one in Bil'in.
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This Saturday, as in few other ocations, the target was road blocks preventing travel of cars within the occupied territories between villages and between roads which Palestinians do travel on with cars. (Internal blocks) as they are usually called.
The target was a road block that cut the traffic from Beit Umar and other villages through the Gabah intersection.

We traveled together - Palestinians, internationals and activists of the AAtW along the villages roads between highway 60 the nearly highway that pass near Gabah. We arrived in the intersection and started to remove the road block. First we moved the concrete slabs to the sides. than we started to move the rocks that where as second line of block.

While we were at it, an armored car with three soldiers pass along the road and intercepted us. They ordered us to stop dismantling the road block... but we just laughed at them, as the only mean that they could force us with was shooting of live ammunition they are not allowed to use when Israelis are among the Palestinians.

When we nearly finished to open a passage through the road block, a military reinforcement had arrived, we decided not to develop a physical confrontation, and mounted our cars to return were we came from. The state force who are instructed to keep in the area a low profile when dealing with road block dismantlers did not even try to arrest any of us. ---------------------------------- Sunday was again a day of action against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian space. Like two weeks ago the action was near the tunnel under the settlers road 443 the Palestinians of the region are prevented from its use. All the entrances of the Palestinian roads intersected with the 443 road were blocked. Fences were put along nearly all the two sides of the part of the road that pass in the occupied territories - forcing the people to use round about second rate roads between the villages and between them and the regional city Ramalla.

This time there was lot of public advertisement for a demonstration near the tunnel under the 443 the Palestinian can use... This brought lot of participants from the neighboring villages, but also lot of Israeli state forces. These, tried to prevent the AAtW activists from joining the demonstration. Our people were detained in two road blocks. Armored cars guard other entrances to the area so we will not be able to go there by foot.

In spite of the Israeli state forces efforts, activists of the AAtW succeeded to arrive at the demonstration place very late though.

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