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Palestinian Village Inspires Popular Movement
Every Friday for five years, Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists protest the annexation of the lands of the Bil'in village by Israel's segregation wall. Their grassroots effort won them a major victory in Israeli courts in 2007. Now, at the fifth Bil'in conference, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and representatives of all the major political parties endorsed their struggle. Khaleda Jarrar of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine criticized the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority for its recent repression of Palestinian political activists as part of the security collaboration outlined in the Oslo agreements. Fatah's Nabil Shaath noted that negotiations haven't led far as this weekend U.S. envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to some concessions though they will most likely be rejected by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
4 Comments so far
Show Allsegregating wall? Isn't that what is more commonly referred to as the boundaries of a concentration camp?
Great report. Thank you for your work.
Sadly, the Israeli Army's policies in this instance are not unlike what happened at Kent State University 40 years ago, when our own National Guard shot into a large group of University students who were protesting our escalation of our war in Indo-China, killing four students and wounding or permanentl maiming several others.
Soweto (Southwest Township) in Apartheid South Africa is a better analogy to the Gaza Concentration Camp:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/16/newsid_2514000/2514467.stm
One year after the Soweto uprising South Africa's Prime Minister B.J Forster, a former Nazi who was a pariah everywhere else in the world, visited Israel and spoke of the common threat that his society shared with Israel:
They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/App/TalkBack/CdaViewOpenTalkBack/0,11382,L-3706003,00.html
Israel's leaders are well aware of the "demographic threat" to their racially pure society. As Prime Minister Ehud Barak candidly admitted recently:
If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7118937.stm