the british nationals are currently en route out of Bil'in.
Full circumstances regarding the end of seige unknown.
(but it sounds like they're all ok)

The army imposed a curfew on Bil'in and forbade the weekly anti-Wall demonstration. Nevertheless, the protest took place with the help of 300 Israelis

"The army tries to make Bil'in into `counterbalance' of the Gaza pull-out"

"We are witnessing an attempt to make the village of Bil'in into a sort of `counterbalance' for the settlements evacuated in the Gaza Strip, and to use brutal force against the Palestinians here. We, Israeli peace activists, reject out of hand such a balancing act" say the organizers of the solidarity action which took place today in the village in spite of the army's effort to prevent it. The settlers in Gaza have taken by force land which did not belong to them, while violating international law. The people of Bil'in just want to preserve the land which they inherited and which is their only source of livelihood, land which the government of Israel tries to confiscate through the "Separation Fence" and pass it on to settlement extension.

Already last Friday the army invaded Bil'in and used considerable violence in an effort to prevent the weekly demonstration. At that time, the military commander demanded that the Bil'in Popular Committee not invite anymore Israeli activists to the weekly protest, a demand which was rejected.

This morning at five o'clock army and border police forces entered Bil'in, declared a curfew, prohibited the weekly demonstration and ordered the eight Israelis, who had stayed the night in Bil'in, to leave. When they refused they were all arrested. Meanwhile Bil'in inhabitants came out of their homes, thereby breaking the curfew, and started to drum on pots and pans in the village streets. Only when soldiers started to shoot rubber bullets, tear gas and concussion grenades, did part of the village youth start throwing stones.

Meanwhile, about three hundred Israeli activists, supporters of Gush Shalom, Ta'ayush and Anarchists against the Wall and others went on their way to Bil'in in a bus convoy from Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. The army sealed tightly all roads to Bil'in but the demonstrators arrived through the ultra-Orthodox settlement Modi'in Illit (Kiryat Sefer) which was created on the lands of Bil'in and its neighboring villages. Through the building site where a new settlement neighborhood is being added, the protestors gained access to the olive groves and canyons in Bil'in village lands which are earmarked for further extension of the settlement. An army officer who arrived on the spot called over the megaphone: "Stop! Stop! You are entering a closed military zone, but demonstrators ignored him and continued descending into the rocky canyon.

Walking several kilometers in difficult terrain during the hottest hour the demonstrator column succeeded in arriving at the Separation Fence site from the western ("Israeli") side. Military and police forces which waited there started shooting tear gas and tried to arrest them. Demonstrators divided into small groups and most of them succeeded to arrive at the Bil'in built-up area, with soldiers and police persuing them through the village back alleys. The Bil'in people received the Israelis with great enthusiasm, offering refuge in their homes - and cold water. Some 25 Israelis were arrested, among them Dr Anat Matar of the Tel-Aviv University, Philosophy Department, and veteran Meretz activist Latif Dori. Some of them were dragged into the police cars after passively resisting arrest.

About a hundred demonstrators succeeded to get through to the main square of Bil'in in front of the mosque, where they joined a large number of Palestinian curfew breakers. Also present were many international activists, most of them US citizens. A bit later there arrived more Israelis, who had fallen behind but not given up, among them former KM Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom who on this very day marks his 82nd birthday, Yakov Manor of Ta'ayush and Dorothy Naor of New Profile.

For about an hour, Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators stood facing the soldiers and Border Police, chanting "The Fence is Terror, the Refuser is the Hero!" and singing "Military prison is a swell place when you follow your conscience." Some called at the soldiers: Why don't you embrace us as you did with the settlers?" The Bil'in leaders invited Israelis and internationals to join them in dancing and clapping while singing "we will win, we will win, here in Bil'in, here in Bil'in, Christian Muslim hand in hand, Israeli movement with us will stand". Then the large prisoner truck passed through the square with the detained activists drumming from the inside and their fellows calling from the outside "soldiers go home! down with the occupation!" Two women prisoners who tried to jump out of the army van were dragged back in by soldiers.

After an hour, soldiers resumed shooting and the village square was soon covered with clouds of tear gas. Environmental activist Advocate Dov Chinin got a rubber bullet in his leg. The demonstrators found refuge in the backyard of a nearby home, in the company of sheep and goats. After a quarter of an hour more Bil'iners joined them and told that the army actually has left open the route to the Separation Fence site. It was decided to hold after all, and in spite of the army's opposition, the weekly march.

Along the route additional inhabitants came out of their homes and joined. They reached without difficulty the Fence building site to which the army had blocked them in the demonstrations of the past six months. Only a small military force was present, headed by the local military commander at the rank of lieutenant colonel. Soldiers tried to Palestinian demonstrators, accusing them of "curfew breaking" but Israelis barred the way for the soldiers, giving time to the Palestinians to run back home.

Demonstrators conducted a march along the fence site, chanting "after all the wall will fall" and returned to the village center. Shortly after the army and Border Guard forces left Bil'in followed by calls of derision from the protestors.

"The army tried to break the people of Bil'in and prevent by brutal force their right to protest. They especially wanted to prevent the arrival of Israeli supporters whose presence denies the army the freedom of rampage. The result was the total opposite. Today there came to Bil'in many more Israelis than on other Fridays. No only they did not prevent the march, but it got further than before," says Yonathan Pollak of Anarchists Against the Wall, a central organizer of the weekly Bil'in protests.

Shortly after the end of the demonstration most of the detainees were released. The army did however keep in detention Abdallah Abu Rahme - central activist of the Bil'in Popular Committee who had already been detained several times in the past months. The Coalition Against the Fence demands his immediate release: "He is a personality well-known in the wide region for his total devotion to the non-violent struggle. It's a scandal that such a man is again and again put into prison."

Palestinian sources said three gunmen abucted an Italian journalist in the Gaza Strip town of Dir al-Balah on Saturday.

Lorenzo Cremonesi is staying in the Gaza Strip to cover for the Italian newspaper Corrierre Della Sera the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Strip.

According to the sources Cremonzo was kidnapped while traveling with an interpreter and was driven to an unknown location

 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/623186.html

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a simple suggestion to all the foreign/internationals in Gaza....now that israel is leaving...your usefulness to the palestenains have now ended....time to get the he11 out of there...though you were useful as pawns against us israelis, we at least (and you may not like this comparison) have simaler values and govts...and that is what kept you alive. Well now that we're gone, the rules have changed, your now living in a violent "arab" society where you will still be used as a pawn.....but now there will be no international outcry, no websites, no protests if you get killed, be it by sniper fire, bulldozer, kidnapping, drive by shooting...and you probably wont even know who or why......

Okay, so an Italian journo got kidnapped. What does that have to do with ISM?

There is an issue here - what has the International community done for Palestinians? If more can be avhieved through kidnap than through diplomatic channels - then that is definitely a problem.

Now we move onto the fiction - Israel has seriouisly hampered the ability of Internationals to visit Gaza, and to decide for themselves, since 2003. So there isn't a large International community amongst those who are left stranded in Israel's unwanted real estate.

None of these things mean that what Israel is doing is okay, or morally justifiable.

Or that it is wrong to show solidarity with people whose already impovberished circumstances are going to be further attacked by the building of the wall.

"
Or that it is wrong to show solidarity with people whose already impovberished circumstances are going to be further attacked by the building of the wall."


Arafat looted billions. this is the real reason the palestinians are "impoverished".
In addition, the security fence is being built because israeli citizens have been murdered repeatedly. During the failed bloody intifada, no fewer than 30,000 attacks were made on Israeli citizens in less then 4 years. The security fence is a non-lethal, passive method of stopping crimes against humanity. It saves lives on both sides, both palestinian and israeli.
The average palestinian citizen is as much a victim of terrorism as the israelis are.

"Arafat looted billions. this is the real reason the palestinians are "impoverished"."

Not exactly a resonable start - so its nothing to do with closures, curfews, seige, and the widescale removal of access to agricultural land and the theft of agricultural land itself?

The hundreds of thousands of mature olice trees ripped up by the Israeli army and sold to rich Israelis as garden ornaments aren't what makes the families hungry? Its the fact that Arafat didn't give them cash - and presumably keep giving them cash during their long period of Israeli enforced economic inactivity?

"In addition, the security fence is being built because israeli citizens have been murdered repeatedly. During the failed bloody intifada, no fewer than 30,000 attacks were made on Israeli citizens in less then 4 years."

Even the somewhat conservative judiciary at the ICJ could see that building a wall on someone elses land completely undermined the "security" claims about the wall. It isn't rocket science to deduce that pushing an indigenous people out of the vast majority of their homeland, and keeping them under brutal military occupation in pockets of the remaining 22%, whilst destroying their economy and stealing yet more land for the illegal transfer of the occupiers civilian population will bring about armed resistance. The history of conolialism is littered with examples.

"The security fence is a non-lethal, passive method of stopping crimes against humanity. It saves lives on both sides, both palestinian and israeli."

So why isn't it on Israeli land - rather than being a key tool of cantonisation of the West Bank? This is just the type of zionist justification that the ICJ rejected.

And the initial article clearly illustrates that the construction of the wall is not at all "non violent"

"The average palestinian citizen is as much a victim of terrorism as the israelis are."

The average Israeli is as much a victim of occupation as the Palestinians are.

"Even the somewhat conservative judiciary at the ICJ could see that building a wall on someone elses land completely undermined the "security" claims about the wall. It isn't rocket science to deduce that pushing an indigenous people out of the vast majority of their homeland, and keeping them under brutal military occupation in pockets of the remaining 22%,"

Firstly, the vast majority of "palestinians" aren't indigenous to the region. Most arrived for jobs within Israel, and many settled during the Jordanian occupation, from the other 20 Arab nations.
Secondly the security fence isn't being built on "other people's land". It only becme "palestinian" land as a result of the ethnic cleansing of the Jews who had lived there for thousands of years. Hebron is a perfect example of this. It became an "Arab" city as a result of the murderous riots in the 1920s and 1930s.
The security fence is working. It saves lives on both sides. The Fence is a non-lethal method for keeping suicide bombers out of Israel. If the Palestinians really want a nation of their own, it's now time for them to act in a manner to show the world that they are serious.

"Firstly, the vast majority of "palestinians" aren't indigenous to the region"

Aah yes, silly me - many of the people "indigenous to the region" came from Europe and America. The Palestinans (who actually do exist) came from the "other 20 Arab states in (hee hee) the SAME REGION.

"Secondly the security fence isn't being built on "other people's land"."

That isn't what the ICJ says, is it?

Thirzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"Aah yes, silly me - many of the people "indigenous to the region" came from Europe and America. The Palestinans (who actually do exist) came from the "other 20 Arab states in (hee hee) the SAME REGION."

The majority of the Jews in srael are Sephardim. Mostly those who were ethnically cleansed from Arab nations from 1948 to 1980.

The Arabs in the Holy Land - Natives or Aliens?


Unknown to most of the world population, the origin of the "Palestinian" Arabs' claim to the Holy Land spans a period of a meager 30 years - a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of years of the region's rich history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were practically no Arabs in the Holy Land. By contrast, the Jews, despite 2000 years of persecution and forced conversions by various conquerors, have always been the majority population there. When General Alenby, the commander of the British military forces, conquered Palestine in 1917/1918, only about 5000 Arabs resided there. Other Muslims in the area either came from Turkey under the Ottoman Empire, or were the descendents of Jews and Christians who were forcefully converted to Islam by the Muslim conquerors. None of these other Muslims were of Arab origin.

The local inhabitants did not call themselves "Palestinians". The concept of a "Palestinian" to describe the local residents has not yet been invented; neither was there ever in history a "Palestinian Arab" nation. None of today's Arabs have any ancestral relationship to the original Biblical Philistines who are now extinct. Even Arab historians have admitted Palestine never existed.

In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: "There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us."

In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel."

Mark Twain - Samuel Clemens, the famous author of "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer", took a tour of the Holy Land in 1867. This is how he described that land: "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: "But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude.... Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter -- "the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants."

Here is a report that the Palestinian Royal Commission, created by the British, made. It quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913: "The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."

The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land have migrated to Palestine after 1918, from neighboring Arab countries, predominantly from areas now known as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. None of these countries existed as nations prior to 1913. They were nothing but a disorganized collection of tribes, constantly terrorizing each other, trying to seize land from their neighbors. Unfortunately, those Arab immigrants, imported into the Holy Land their age-old culture of terrorizing neighbors to seize land. Many of them were social outcasts and criminals who could not find jobs in their own countries so they searched for their luck elsewhere. Some of them were accepted by the British regime as a source of cheap labor and were allowed to settle on unoccupied Jewish land in Palestine. Even Yassir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, is not a native of the Holy Land. He was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956. He then moved to Saudi-Arabia and founded the Al-Fatah terror organization, the precursor to the PLO, in Kuwait in 1958, together with his Saudi-Arabian friends.

continued:
Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote about the Arabs in Palestine: "We found it inhabited by fellahin (Arab farmers) who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria... Large areas were uncultivated... The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the bedouin (Arab nomads)."

The governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to Palestine. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Holy Land, noted in 1939 that “far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied.”

The grandparents of the author's wife were born in the Holy Land in the 19th century. They saw with their own eyes how empty the land was at the time. They also lived through and experienced first-hand the British conquest and the Arab immigration that followed. This immigration ended in 1948 with the evacuation of the British from the land and the declaration of the state of Israel.

The real problem facing those Arabs today is not the lack of a homeland. The historical root-cause of their problem and frustration is the fact that the countries they came from have not agreed to accept them back in. This is why so many of them live, up until today, in refugee camps, in neighboring Arab countries, lacking fundamental civil rights. In their frustration they feel that the only hope and choice they have is to try and steal a country. Many of the vehicles and the agricultural equipment in the Palestinian Authority have been stolen from their Israeli neighbors. For a while, Israel suffered the highest rate of automobile thefts in the world! Most of these stolen vehicles were later found in towns and villages of the Palestinian Authority. If stealing vehicles is so easy, why not try and steal the country too?

In their propaganda, the Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" consistently demand that Israel and the world recognize their pre-1948 rights. That's about 54 years ago. Mysteriously, they are never willing to add another 54 years to their "historical" claims on the Holy Land. They know very well that doing so will send them back to where they came from - Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Years ago, during negotiations with the, so-called, Palestinians, someone in Israel proposed to revise a mention of their claim to pre-1948 rights and replace it with pre-1917. The "Palestinians" vehemently opposed. Now we know why.

The Muslim religion was invented by Muhammad in the 7th century AD, in Saudi Arabia. He never visited Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and did not consider it important enough to be mentioned in the Koran even once. By comparison, the land of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem was purchased by King David, for the Jewish people, approximately 850 years BCE, and the deed, the name of the previous owner, and the purchase price were recorded in the Bible (See Samuel II Ch. 24 and Chronicles I Ch. 21).

The best reference for understanding the Muslim-Arab mentality and politicaly-motivated distortion of history is Muhammad's own words in the Koran: "War is deception".

Some Arabs consider themselves the descendants of Abraham, the forefather of the Jewish nation. Ironically, if not for Muhammad's thorough study of the Bible, the Arabs would not have known of the existence of Abraham. Muhammad studied the Bible in order to be better equipped in his attempts to persuade the Jews to follow his newly invented religion. When the Jews refused, he wrote the Koran - the Muslim bible, and filled it with his own imaginary accounts of Biblical events. He even took the liberty to change the God-given day of rest, Saturday - the Sabbath. Since Sunday was already taken by the Christians, he picked Friday as the next-best Muslim day of rest.

Today the Muslim "Palestinians" claim to own Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem. They claim it is "their" holy site. Does anyone in the rest of the world know which way the Muslims in Jerusalem face when they pray? When the Muslims in Jerusalem pray in their mosques, even in the "Al Aktza" mosque built on the edge of Temple Mount, they actually stand with their back turned to Temple Mount. And, when they bow down in their prayers they show their behind to Temple Mount. How consistent is that with considering it a holy site? Visit any mosque in Jerusalem to see it for yourself. The fact is that Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran, while Mecca and Medina, the only two Muslim holy cities, are mentioned hundreds of times.

The Jewish Holy Temple stood on Temple Mount long before the Muslim religion, or any other current world religion was conceived. Even when the founders of the Christian religion walked around in the streets of ancient Jerusalem there were no mosques nor churches there - only the Jewish Holy Temple and nothing else.

Can any Muslim in the world produce any credible evidence for their connection to this holy site, other than in Muhammad's dream? Believe it or not, the one and only source for the Muslim's claim to Jerusalem and the site of the Holy Temple, is a mention in the Koran of a dream that Muhammad had about an unknown "place far away". Perhaps this "place far away" is the site of the White House in Washington DC?

There is only one possible solution to the "Palestinians" desire for a homeland. If helping them go back to where they lived 54 years ago is their own definition of justice, then helping them go back to where they lived 108 years ago is, by the same definition, a better justice - double the justice. Let's all help them get the better justice they deserve - let them go back to where they came from.

"The majority of the Jews in srael are Sephardim. Mostly those who were ethnically cleansed from Arab nations from 1948 to 1980."

"The 16th Knesset will look a lot like the previous Knesset - Ashkenazi, male, secular."

"Ethnicity - The 16th Knesset continues to have an Ashkenazi majority. The decrease in the number of Shas MKs is balanced by the increasing number of Mizrahis elected on the Likud list (at least 12). It is likely that Mizrahis will keep their former representation (39 Mizrahi MKs in the 15th Knesset), but it is doubtful that they will pass the 40+ mark. Mizrachi MKs only make for 1/3 of the total number of MKs."

Thats about 33% ...............................................

We've had the pleasure of reading how Palestinians don't exist before on Indymedia.

How much do the Ashkenazi pay you for your Hasbarah duties?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"Ethnicity - The 16th Knesset continues to have an Ashkenazi majority"

So what? Th British Parliament has a majority of white Christian males. So does the US Congress, and they're Republicans too! All Arab Parliaments are 100% Arab, and 99.9% Muslim. Perhaps that explains why Arab nations are Apartheid States. (besides, they're also either dictatorships, monarchies, or theocracies, therefore voting is just for show.)
The basic idea in a democracy, is to get out and vote. That's how things are changed.

Regarding payment by the boogey man Hasbara? Interesting racist qusestion. How much does the palestinian propaganda mill pay you?