Anarchists against the wall active in Israel/Palestine

by via ainfos Wed May 04, 2005 22:17

On 1st of May there was another demonstration in Bil'in... does any one know the count? At the end of the day it it summed: lot of tear gas, rubber bullets, shock grenades, 12 wounded by rubber coated metal bullets, and a seriously wounded person rushed to hospital after a tear gas canister was shot to his head. Just as it was done there three weeks ago to another demonstrator*. About 100 demonstrators could not hinder the army showering of the village with huge amounts of tear gas and rubber bullets after they failed to obtain the decree of "closed military zone" needed to remove us from the vicinity of the work site of the apartheid wall.

For sure we were in some distance of the working machinery, but who care. At the end of the day they declared curfew on the village for a while, you know, just to finish the day with the taste of more....

The two people arrested at the Thursday** demonstration are still detained at the Ofer military compound and wait to be court-martialed. All those who were in that demo is invited to help in their release.

by via ainfos Wed May 04, 2005 22:21

In addition to the nearly daily demonstrations of the villagers of Bil'in together with Israeli Anarchist Against The Wall, for the last two months, a grand demonstration was initiated. The villagers comity against the fence recruited enforcement from the neighboring villages and the city Ramalla. The anarchists recruited the radical organization of Israel under the umbrella of "the coalition against the fence". After a week of preparations, we converged to the region Bil'in is part of with busses and private cars few hundred activists from Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. We were prepared with various tactics to go around the blocks the Israeli state would put on our way - as they usually do, but they did not.

We discovered later why they did not even tried in a symbolic way to hinder our convergence to Bil'in.

We arrived to the region through the modern wide roads used by the Israeli settlers, and crossed the unguarded debris blocking the traffic to and from the much less convenient network of roads for use of the Palestinians. We last part of the travel to Bil'in we did by cabs who can maneuver in the narrow roads.

On arrival to the Bil'in village, we were warmly greeted and socialized with people in the center of the village. On the pavement, the locals organized an Exhibition: On its two sides were large letters that read NO TO THE SEPARATION WALL. Between them there were collections of the enemy ammunition: used tear gas canisters, remnants of shock grenades, teargas grenades, and some "graphity written with rubber coated bullets and other used ammunition.

After all the participants arrived, (and the media workers included Al-Jazera, and the Israelis) we started the march towards the route of the fence where the heavy machinery work on the lands confiscation from the Bil'in village. On the route, the speaker of the village comity called the anarchists and the internationals to relocate to the head of the march - which we did.

So we marched accompanied by the bit of a drum and slogans, many of us in the shade of a huge Palestinian flag of 50X6 meters till about one kilometer from the building site. Here started the confrontation. The soldiers tried to block our way a chain of theirs with not so gentle way, but still without batons or real vicious behavior.

About hundred of us broke the first line of the soldiers - mainly going around them through the fields and among the olive trees. The rest of the demonstrators were blocked more efficiently using in addition to tear gas shots, for the first time, plastic bullets (less lethal they say than the usual rubber coated metal bullets).

Our group - Palestinians, Israelis (mostly anarchists) Internationals, and even dignitaries (Israeli Palestinian members of parliament and members of the Palestinian parliament, was blocked about 50 meter from the work site - still mainly by physical power only.

During this engagement, the "secret weapon" of the Israeli state was exposed: prison riot suppression unit persons disguised as demonstrators tried to provoke a violent clash with the Israeli army and police to justify a harsh suppression of the demonstration... However, the demonstration was highly organized, and they were immediately approached by village activist to enforce the nonviolence program... This exposed them to be outsider provocateurs. When reposed, they put their masks of and arrested two Palestinians.

The group of the 100 or so demonstrators and the soldiers were in a kind of non friendly draw. All the time the army succeeded to prevent reinforcement to us from the main body of the demonstration, but refraining from brutally dispersing us.

After more than an hour it was clear that we will not be able to break the block and stop the work of the heavy machinery. A negotiation started in order to get the release of the two arrested Palestinians in return for our retreat to the one kilometer distance.

During the negotiations, two Israelis got themselves arrested to be in solidarity with the two Palestinians.

At one point, a high officer promised that if we retreat, after 15 minutes the 4 arrested will be released. So we retreated not counting too much on him keeping the promise.... And he did not.

A second wave of advance towards the building site failed due to diminished energy of the demonstrators and an intensive use of tear gas. So we regrouped to the one kilometer point. Bout 11 of the demonstrators decided to increase the number of arrested in a solidarity protest. They defied tear gas shots and reached the soldiers standing near the work site... and failed. The army agreed to arrest only two of them. Too many Israeli arrested is not good for public relations... So, after 3 hours from beginning of the demonstration we started the long way to the village and than home.

Along the demonstration, and later - including the main news programs of the Israeli radio and TV, the demonstration was reported - with lot of video clips taken in the demo.

The media reported on 300 Israelis and 700 participants. It also reported on the experiments done in the suppression of the demo. They also gave a false explanation to justify the failed provocation of the undercover agent provocateurs who tried to incite by their stone throwing.

They gave the ridiculous lie that they had to throw stones to keep them from being exposed.... (Which was of course the opposite - throwing the stones when no real demonstrators did it exposed them.

22:40 - last update: The 4 arrested Israelis were released. the two Palestinians were detained in the Ofer military compound. Israeli activist are now in the middle of formal complain in the police station against the undercover agents provocateurs and testifying about the bogus accusations against the two palestinians. Ilan

by Anna Wed May 04, 2005 22:25

The following is the first of two articles describing the events of april 21, 2005. it's one of many texts i've written available at www.annainthemiddleeast.com along with pictures. my updates are intended for a largely american-jewish audience that i send them out to. while hannah was preparing for the wonderful alternative passover seder that we just hosted, i went down to saffa alone, where the village council had invited internationals and israelis* to take part in an action against the wall. from saffa across the valley where the bulldozers are working is the village of bil'ain, where there have been a recent series of demonstrations against the wall, very big and very persistent. repeated demonstrations have been effective in several places where the wall's path was later changed (slightly) in the courts, but not before many people in the village were arrested or injured because of their determined resistance. last time i was here it was budrus. this time it's bil'ain.

the villagers of bil'ain were marching down to the bulldozers several times a week until the army decided to nip things in the bud with an almost constant military presence in the village itself. many people have been wounded with rubber bullets and by now many of the older demonstrators are too scared to protest the appropriation of their land, leaving only the shebab (young boys) with their stones and cheers. saffa is in a similar situation, and consequently the demonstration coordinator decided to cancel yesterday's eventâ??to avoid any young people being hurt or arrestedâ??and just take the israelis and international (me) activists on a tour of the recent destruction in the area.

the small group of us walked the short way from the village to the bulldozers, and then along the path, commenting on the irony of our privilege to get near the uprooting of trees whose owners would risk being shot or arrested if they got so close. we stopped to rest in an olive grove along our hike and three soldiers approached us to ask what we were doing. actually, they wanted to know what the two palestinians with us were doing, and demanded seeing their id's. they wrote down the id numbers. i asked if our friends would be punished for going to their land; the soldier ignored me.

our group walked solemnly back to the village where we found a standoff between the shebab throwing stones and the army shooting rubber bullets and tear gas into the village. we didn't know how it had started, but it was clear that neither side wanted to back down. the young boys wanted the soldiers out of their village, and the soldiers wanted the boys to stop throwing stones towards the army. it wasn't a zero-sum scenarioâ??i.e. both sides could have had their immediate wants satisfiedâ??nonetheless, it went on forever. i understood the shebab's dilemma: if they were the first to back down, the army could continue stunting nonviolent demonstrations by blocking roads and declaring closed military zonesâ??something that is very commonâ??without having to worry about their own safety. i found it harder to understand the soldiers who kept yelling at me and my israeli friends to get out of the way so they could shoot one of the boys. to me it felt like more of a macho thing: they weren't about to let a bunch of kids kick them out... they would show them who was boss. obviously, if they wanted to kids to stop throwing stones, they would just go back down to where the bulldozers were working. this wasn't a demonstration; these were kids who ran out of their houses when they saw the soldiers coming.

things started to get very heated and two israelis stepped out into the path of crossfire to deter the soldiers from shooting. the young soldiers were noticeably annoyed. the young boys stopped throwing stones so that the two israelis would not be hurt. after a brief conversation with the activists, the soldiers turned to leave and the village youth let out a great cheer. they felt they had won (there's quite a bit of macho in them too). several young boys began to throw stones as the soldiers left, until they were out of sight... but they never got out of sight. they got mad. the soldiers ran back towards the village and started shooting. i instinctively ran into the area of crossfire and began waving my hands in the air and screaming as loud as i could, "don't shoot!" a bullet flew over my head and hit a branch above me. several leaves fell on my head. my heart skipped a beat and i choked back a sob.

the shebab were all running away as the soldiers approached, except a brave few who continued to throw stones. one waited too long and a soldier jumped in from the side and grabbed him around his neck, pulling him away. his face turned bright red and i was afraid he would choke. the soldiers then left quickly with the boy, having gotten what they wanted; now they had won.

as soon as the shebab realized what had happened the started to scream, running after the soldiers en masse. a woman who had been watching from her house ran out onto the balcony and began to wail. it was her nephew. she, her sister, and all the young men ran after the boy until another group of soldiers stopped them from going any further. the group watched horrified as their friend stumbled to keep up with the soldier holding him around his neck, until he was behind the trees and out of sight.

the crying women would not be held back. they pushed their way past the soldiers (who are in general far more tolerant of aggressive women than confrontational men) and i followed. we ran down a steep path and slid off a steep drop until we landed on the path of the wall, where the boy was being held on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. his name was mohammed. the women ran to him, and began prying the soldiers hands off of him, trying to free him from their grip. the main soldier told the women to leave, and one woman responded by kissing his hand and begging him to let mohammed go. mohammed yelled at his aunt to leave. i didn't know why until he turned his head and i saw that he could not bear to hear her cry. his strong face had broken into tears at the sight of her.

i asked the soldiers what they were doing and they announced that mohammed was being arrested. i asked why, and they said "for throwing stones." i saw one more sensitive-looking soldier and pulled him away. "look, i know this boy was throwing stones, and i know that's difficult for you, but you have to understand that you are invaders in his village, protecting the people stealing his land. how would you react if someone came into your house with a gun and started carrying out your tv... and then your stereo... and then your bed... wouldn't you throw a lamp at him or something?"

the soldier listened to me and i appreciated that. but then another soldier told him to stop talking to me and to take mohammed into the jeep. i stood in front of the jeep doors, holding on to them to physically prevent the soldier and boy from entering. i continued speaking: "please think about what you're doing. you have the power to let him go or to ruin his life forever. do you really think imprisoning him is going to prevent the boys from throwing stones in the future? what are you trying to accomplish?" the more aggressive soldier came from the side and yanked me out of the way, and the soldier and mohammed got into the jeep.

i went around to the side to keep talking and i saw mohammed's face. he was covered in sweat, miserable, hopeless. i asked him what his name was, and wrote it down. then i asked him if he wanted me to deliver any message to his parents, and he just looked down. i felt like a jerk. just for being there, for witnessing his humiliation and despair.

several more israeli activists began to approach and i asked one of them to translate for me because now two of the soldiers claimed they didn't speak any english. the activist said it wasn't any use, but i insisted, perhaps more for my sake than anyone else's. i turned to the man in the passenger's seat: "do you think this young man is a threat to israeli security?" he nodded.

"so you think that imprisoning this young man will secure israel?" he said yes again.

i pointed towards his family sitting and crying: "how do you think this will affect them? do you think his brothers and cousins will grow up to be suicide bombers or peace-makers?" he got my point, but he didn't want to hear it or respond. as he shut the door in my face, i hurried, "you've got one guy, but you're making 1,000 more enemiesâ??." the driver started the engine of the jeep and my friend and i ran in front of it, refusing to move. i gave my card of digital photographs from that day to another friend in case i was arrested. we agreed we weren't moving until he was released. the driver stopped the engine, annoyed, and got out. i could see the mohammed's family watching. i could see the sensitive soldier thinking. several soldiers were discussing something.

then suddenly kobi called me over away from the army and we turned around to watch together. the soldiers were opening the back door and out came the mohammed. a soldier untied his hands and handed him back his i.d. the women watching behind me stood up with joy and dismay. mohammed walked quickly and calmly back to his family who smothered him with kisses. on the way he looked over to me and mouthed the word, "toda," meaning "thank you" in hebrewâ??he thought i was israeli. we both smiled.

mohammed walked up to the village ahead of us and before long i heard an incredible cheer erupt in the village. he was home. i allowed myself a moment of happiness at the drop of victory amidst the ocean of defeats; but i was sobered up soon enough. after a cup of tea courtesy of ahmed we were on the way to a demonstration in nearby bil'ain, where 8 people had already been shot by rubber bullets (real bullets with a thin coat of rubber around themâ??easily capable of killing someone, despite their name), including 1 israeli and 1 journalist. nobody was seriously injured, but the protest was still young.

the demonstration had started out as a children's parade, with young girls and boys marching with banners conveying the damage being inflicted upon their families and futures by the wall. by the time we arrived the young children had gone, and several shebab were throwing stones. we were informed that the army had run out of the tear gas (i thought this was good news until i remembered that rubber bullets were the next step up), but within a half hour the tear gas was flying again. my eyes began to sting and i had to squat down covering my eyes to recover. a palestinian man yelled at me not to touch my eyes with my fingers, that i was only pushing it in further. he was more experienced than i in being gassed. i guess most palestinians are. he was right, and i soon felt better. i was beat. i was ready to go home.

then suddenly a jeep raced by, halted to a stop, and let out two soldiers who ran into the forest where the shebab had regrouped. within seconds, the soldiers re-emerged from the forest pulling another young man, this one bigger and more resistant than the first. i rushed towards them and he began to tell me that he didn't know what was happening. he asked me to help him. i recognized the soldiers from saffa and suspected this was another attempt at "winning" the game (if it had been a "wanted" man, they wouldn't be hunting him during a stone-throwing standoff.

filled with a sense of purpose and perhaps invincibility from the earlier near-arrest, i threw my body between the man and the soldier who was holding him by his neck. i tried to position myself in such an awkward way that the soldier would have to stop walking or it would hurt me. it worked. kobi came next to me and began to use his body to separate the man from the standing soldiers, meanwhile talking to them in hebrew. the soldiers tugged to hold on, and the man's face turned redder as the grip around his neck tightened. he yelled out and in a burst of energy somehow ripped himself away, freed for a few seconds. this was his chance.

a soldier was about to lunge for him so i grabbed the soldier's arm and screamed, "run!!" i don't know what came over me. but he ran. the soldier shook me loose after a few moments and began to run after the man, who had small head-start. he ran like crazy... so crazy that he didn't see where he was going. in his path lay a cliff several meters high, separating one terrace of olive trees from another. in his frenzy, the man didn't realize the depth of the cliff and ran off it, knocking his head against a sharp branch that pushed him to land back-first on a huge rock. everyone froze.

the man began to release an almost inhuman moan. i ran to the cliff's edge and looked over to find him lying spread eagle with blood all over his face. i turned around and scaled down the cliff, something i would normally be scared to do but somehow now it didn't matter. i kneeled in front of the man and heard his friend say everything was going to be ok. i repeated the encouragement, although i was not so optimistic. i asked the injured man his name, and he responded, "****" i sat with him until a medical team arrived shortly after and took him away on a stretcher with the help of several villagers and israeli activists. when he was gone i realized that the army was gone too. one look at him over the cliff's edge and they were gone in an instant, as stunned as the rest of us.

i was sure **** would be paralyzed, if not worse. i looked down at my hand that he had grabbed in desperation to avoid spending his life (or part of it) in interrogation or prison. now would he spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair? i tried to remember the feeling of joy i had experienced just a few hours before, but it was gone. i needed to see ****, to make sure he was alright. i hitched a ride with ****'s cousin, the first car i saw driving to the hospital in ramallah. 30 minutes later we were rushing into the emergency room, where we found **** all bandaged up, but conscious and standing with help. he smiled when he saw me come in. i asked how he was and he closed his eyes, "alhamdullah."

i asked his father standing near his bedside what the doctors had said, and he repeated, "alhamdullah." **** was pretty banged up but he was going to be ok. i asked where it hurt and he pointed to his leg, probably broken. i asked about his back and head, and he pointed to a scar on the latter where he said a bullet had grazed the bridge between his eyebrows. in the chaos had i missed a gun shot? imagine the chances of a bullet missing his head by that close! my answer was the same either way, "alhamdullah": "thank god." he smiled again and i knew it was time to finally go home.
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by Adar Wed May 04, 2005 22:28

Seven demonstrators (six Palestinians and one Israeli) and a news agency photographer were injured by rubber coated bullets, the Israeli soldiers repeatedly shoot at the demonstration in Bil'in against the robbery of the village lands for the expansion of near by [Israeli] settlements and for the building of the apartheid fence. Another step of escalation in the violence of the army against the village. How you can summarize a demonstration of 6 hours net (not including traveling time) which all along it there was not any full 5 minutes period without the shooting of a salvo of rubber coated bullets? May be you have simply to start from the beginning. But, do not expect that this pattern of beginning, middle and end will dictate by itself a logical sequence of the evolving of the happenings.

The opposite will be truer. So, never the less, we will start from the beginning that was quite optimistic. We went out of the village about 70 demonstrators. Palestinians, Israelis from the Anarchists Against The Fence group, and Internationals. We advances in the path that lead to the route of the fence and discovered to our surprise that only three soldiers are waiting for us.

The policy decided on by the comity was to refrain from stones throwing and to try to advance towards the fence building site. The tear gas grenades thrown on us by the soldiers did not deter us. "this is a nonviolent demonstration and we will not move from here. You can throw as much gas as you wish. We will not run away."

We said and we did so. The forces of the border police joined very soon the three lone soldiers. We continued singing and shout against the fence. The commander of the border police said to us: " it is your right to demonstrate. Only with out stones... And indeed, no stone was thrown and the demo continued. While we were at it, additional jeeps of the border police arrived with a closed military zone order. And just from no where a soldier appeared to be aiming his riffle towards a young demonstrator who stood about 200 meters away. Two other soldiers told him "let it go, do not shoot" but he insisted and said: "I have to teach him a lesson". And he shoot rubber bullets - a retaliation for nothing. This was the match that ignited the fire...

The teenagers of the village responded with stone throwing... and so it went on. From that act and on, continued a 5 hours saga of shooting of salvos of rubber coated bullets with short pauses in between that let us to have a a short rest... and to balance these, from time to time they gave us a "commercial" amounts of tear gas. Along the prolonged confrontation, 7 were injured from rubber bullets - five Palestinian villagers, one Israeli, and also a Palestinian photographer of a French news agency. The injured were treated at the site by teams of the red crescent ambulances. The Israeli army mouthpiece denied for unknown reason that any Israeli was injured in the demonstration. The pictures: https://israel.indymedia.org/feature/display/3028/index.php tell a different story.

Along the confrontation, the army used a group of Palestinian workers returning from their day work who passed there as a human shield from the stones. They detained the workers for a long time ordering them to stay between them and the demonstration - cynic mode of exploitation as addition to the daily mode of exploitation of the occupation.

While the shooting continued, the army advanced its invasion into the village from various directions. At one stage the Jeeps entered deep into the village in pursuit after demonstrators with no obvious criteria. The took hold of a villager named Fadi Mustafa about 22 of age treated him roughly - pushing and hitting. Israeli demonstrators tried to stand between him and the raging soldiers but were pushed violently away.

Fadi was very distressed and said repeatedly he did nothing. The soldiers did not let him go and continued kicking him and the Israelis that stood near him. While hi tried to escape from the soldiers he fell down to a deep ravine, was injured in his head and back and was rushed to the hospital in Ramalla. His condition seemed serious at the beginning but later it was reported he was improving. After that incident or probably because of it, the army retreated from the village. Up to 01:30 - the time this report was written, the army have not returned to the village.

The answer to the first question, that was to remind you: "how you summarize for a report a demonstration of such scale", is: "you do not summarize". You write a whole page and making the readers of the indymedia tired.

The more important question is how we continue (first of all the Palestinians but also us the Israelis) with the nonviolent popular struggle against the fence, without loosing moral along the bumpy road the occupation forces of the state of Israel force on us.

Following Is the answer I extracted from the late poet David Avidan:
"What justify more than all
the dream, the huge despair
the knowledge that there is no justification
and the search every minute a new
the excitement and the distress
is the simple fact that they* have nowhere to go"

* In the original it was "us", but as I am Israeli I changed it to "them"... not any intention to diminish the solidarity with them.

by AAtW - via ainfos Mon May 09, 2005 22:48

Holocaust Day is not normally chosen as a day for protest demonstrations by the Israeli peace movement, though sensivity is eroding by the crude instrumentalization of the memorial events. But the timing of today's protest was none of our choosing.

In the bus on the way to the Defence Ministry, the voice of Prime Minister Sharon, radio broadcast from Poland: "From the Auschwitz Extermination Camp, I tell you: now we Jews can defend ourselves!". Maybe, the shooting down of two unarmed Palestinian boys at the village of Beit Likia last night was also part of "Jews defending themselves"?

As it gradually came out, in the late afternoon yesterday Beit Likia boys had been playing soccer at an empty field a bit outside their village. They suddenly got the urge to stage a protest at another field nearby, where the army habitually parks the bulldozers for the night - the fearsome machines which daily tear up the village fields, much of which stand to be forever alienated once the fence is set tup. The boys went to the bulldozer park, with no Israelis or internationals or even adult Palestinians present. Two of them, aged 14 and 15, did not survive the encounter with the bulldozers' guardian soldiers. (To those not familiar with the geography: Beit Likia is a few kilometres south of Bil'in, where last week's clash with the army took place).

Shortly before midnight last night the news spread fast by phone, even before the media published it. The Anarchists Against Fences who are in close daily contact with the villagers of this region got the news and immediately spread it to the other groups and suggested an emergency joint protest at the Ministry of Defence. The others - ourselves of Gush Shalom, Courage to Refuse, Yesh Gvul, Ta'ayush, Women for Peace - immediately accepted and hardly drawing breath started to spread the alarm by phone and email.

And so, there were between three and four hundred streaming to the Defence Ministry gates. The small parking lot where we often used to rally on this location has now been obliterated by urban renovators and building contractors, leaving only a very narrow strip of pavement in along which a long long picket line could spread and face the traffic with their upraised placards and banners:"Who is breaking the cease-fire?" "Who has blood on his hands?" "Sharon is no partner!" "The Occupation is killing us all". Some exchanges with passing motorists: "But they were throwing stones!" "Does that carry a capital punishment?" "Yes, if they are not settlers"...

After an hour, a shift. A large part of the crowd takes to the street, banners waving, with the repeated chant: "Mofaz, hey hey, how many kids did you kill today?" They walk over street after street, across the town, encountering not unfriendly crowds on the bustling Ibn Gvirol Street and on until the Likud Party Headquarters on King George Street. There, the seemingly inevitable conclusion: riot police charging, breaking up the lines, dragging six protesters into the waiting patrol cars to the din of "Police State!" and "Down with the occupation!" from dozens of young throats.

On TV, minor politicians still mouth clinches about the Holocaust. The dozens of protesters who intend to spend this night in solidarity outside the Harakevet Street Police Station might have learned some more essential lessons.

=========== MEDIA REPORT ON THE DEMO ===========

Hundreds rally in TA against IDF killing of 2 Palestinian teens By Tamar Traubman, Yoav Stern and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service

Hundreds of left-wing protesters demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening against the Israel Defense Forces' killing Wednesday of two Palestinian youths in the West Bank.

The two teenagers were shot dead near the village of Beit Likia, west of Ramallah, during a protest against the construction of the separation fence in the area.

Thursday's protest started opposite the Defense Ministry's Kirya compound in Tel Aviv and from there demonstrators walked to Likud Party headquarters on King George Street. Some 200-300 people attended the rally.

Once the protest left the Kirya compound, the police announced that it was illegal and begin arresting protesters. At least six people were taken in by police. Police said they were arrested for blocking roads.

MK Mohammed Barakeh addressed the rally and told them that "on the day of [remembrance for] the big Holocaust, we must make sure that there is no 'little holocaust' of Palestinians." He also said that the relatively large number of participants, given the short notice of the rally, proves that the "radical left is waking up."

Earliers Thursday, IDF Central Command chief Yair Naveh suspended a senior Combat Engineering Corps officer who commanded the force that shot dead the two Palestinians.

Naveh said the conduct of the deputy company commander was defined as "unreasonable."

Oudai A'asi, 14, and his 15-year-old cousin Kamal A'asi, both from the West Bank village of Beit Lakia, were shot dead while throwing stones together with dozens of other protestors at a separation fence work site next to a village north of Highway 443.

Around 6 P.M., some 200 youths arrived on the scene and began throwing rocks at bulldozers and at the five soldiers who arrived on the scene in a jeep.

Palestinians on the scene said the soldiers initially opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas grenades and at a certain point began firing live ammunition in the air.

Palestinian sources said the cousins were hit by live ammunition.

Ramallah hospital officials said Uday was hit in the hip and thighs and Kamel was hit in the chest.

One IDF soldier was lightly wounded by Palestinian stone-throwers.

Nineteen-year-old Karem Yusuf, who was near the two casualties, described the scene.

"I saw two soldiers but it is possible there were more," he said. "Near the soldiers was a group of 10 youths and around them were some 200 more. The distance from the first group to the soldiers was about 20 meters. Kamel and Uday were next to me when they were shot. A soldier fired several shots and I saw that Kamel was wounded in his chest."

============================== And another demo==========

This Friday, 6.5, there will be another demonstration in the village of Bilin, against the fence and the settlements that are being built on the villages lands. Today, wendsday, the bulldozers started the uprooting of more than 100 olive trees in order to make way for a new section of the apartheid wall.

We will also protest the arrest of the two Palestinians - Riad Mohamad Yassin and Alian Ibrahim Ahmad Abu Rachme, that were attacked and arrested by 'mistaarvim' in the big demonstration last week, and are still being held in ofer detention camp.

You are all welcome to join the struggle of bilin against it's daily oppression.

The demonstaration will start at 13:00. We will go there by public transportation from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem at about 10:30