SNIFFING TEAR GAS ON FRIDAY
Bil'in's dilemma & the army's escalation
February 20, 2009 -- the day when the villagers of Bil'in and their Palestinian, Israeli
and international guests marked the fourth anniversary of the struggle against the Separation
Fence/Wall. Incidentally, it was also the day on which Binyamin Netanyahu was entrusted with
forming Israel's new government. Israeli activists, huddling under an olive tree, heard the
rather unexciting news on a transistor radio while watching out for further salvos of tear
gas from the armed forces of their country.
As on every single Friday since the struggle began -- summer and winter, under scorching
sun or driving rain -- there was a march to the Fence, beyond which could be seen the olive
groves. The sole source of livelihood of more than one Bil'in family, slated to be torn down
and make place for "Mattityahu East" -- yet another "neighborhood" of the ever-expanding,
giant Israeli settlement called Modi'in Illit. And again, what started as a quiet orderly
march with banners and laughing youths and some funny gimmicks was met with salvos of tear
gas and fast and confused running and shouting and flying stones and more shooting and tear
gas.
In these years of struggle, many villagers -- and quite a few activists who came to
support them -- were wounded, beaten up and detained. Still, in the years of Bil'in's
struggle until then, no one got killed. That was about to change.
In theory, these weekly demonstrations and confrontations should have come to their end
long ago. After all, already in mid-2007 the Supreme Court in Jerusalem ruled the route of
the Fence at Bil'in to be illegal.
It was not a legitimate "security consideration" to include land earmarked for a planned
settlement, not yet constructed, and the state was ordered to move the Fence to a new route
and return to Bil'in the portion that had not yet been built on.
However, settlers -- and the generals and officials backing them -- are notoriously
reluctant to give back land that had been seized from Palestinians. And in this case, there
was also the matter of a very lucrative real estate deal, involving the construction of a
thousand settler housing units and their sale for hundreds of millions.
And the rub was that the judges did not define the new route themselves -- simply
instructed the authorities to present a new map. The army procrastinated as long as it could.
After nine months they came up with a new route all but identical to the old one -- still
allowing the settlers to build more on Bil'in lands.
Adv. Michael Sfard, acting for Bil'in, told the judges that this was tantamount to
contempt of court. The judges agreed -- rejecting the state's proposal and ordering it to
come up with a new route "without further delay." However, the months passed and there was no
sign of such a new proposal -- and on the ground, the Fence stayed exactly where it had
been...
The snail-paced proceedings at the august halls of the court in Jerusalem did not do
much for its credibility among Palestinian villagers. The court and its judges receded into
the background, the foreground being taken up by the grim struggle -- of Bil'in, of its
neighbor and partner in struggle Ni'ilin, and of quite a few other villages, such as
Ma'asara, Al-Khader, Tuwani and Beit Ummar (sharing the same kind of problem -- though not
always having Bil'in's fame).
The Gaza War and the subsequent formation of the new government coincided with a
toughening at all the "hot spots" along the route. First, there was an intensification of the
nightly raids and detentions -- the police and army preferring not to arrest "troublemakers"
and "ringleaders" during the demonstrations themselves, but surprise them at their homes in
the late night and early morning hours.
Then, somebody in the army of Border Police came up with a brilliant means of
escalation. (Or was it just stupidity?) Tear gas is classed as "a non-lethal crowd control
weapon" and therefore approved for use against unarmed demonstrators. However, when a tear
gas canister is shot directly at a person's head or chest, it can act as a very lethal
projectile -- especially since a new type, having a much higher velocity than the old, has
recently been introduced into this battleground.
Tristan Anderson -- victim of canister abuse
It was on March 13 at Ni'ilin -- located some kilometers north of Bil'in -- that members
of the Border Guard put the new toy into use.
The new kind of tear gas canister does not make noise when shot, nor does it leave a
train of smoke as do the earlier types. The first that demonstrators knew about it was when
they saw one of their number fall down unconscious, blood gushing from mouth and nose, and a
frightful large hole in the right part of his forehead. It was the 38-years old Californian
Tristan Anderson, a veteran of many political and environmental protest actions in his native
US and other countries.
As later told by Gabrielle Silverman, Tristan's girlfriend: "Palestinian medics
immediately attempted to place him onto a stretcher. But even then, the army continued
shooting tear gas directly at us, again and again and again. Finally the ambulance arrived --
but at the checkpoint we were held up for fifteen minutes. They would not allow the
Palestinian ambulance through and we had to wait for an Israeli ambulance. He was bleeding
terribly everywhere from the head. We had to just sit and wait until eventually an Israeli
ambulance showed up."
Once at the hospital, Anderson immediately underwent surgery. Surgeons removed a portion
of the right frontal lobe of his brain and used a tendon from his leg to seal up the area to
help prevent leakage. They also "tried to put his face back together", Silverman said. The
heavy impact from the tear gas canister shot directly at him, from about 60 meters, also
caused severe damage to his right eye.
Kept for many days in the Intensive Care Unit and having to undergo multiple life-saving
surgeries, the Government of Israel took up the bill for all expenses incurred at the Tel
Hashomer Hospital near Tel Aviv, clearly embarrassed at this severe wounding of an American
citizen.
For their part, Israeli activists undertook to give moral support to Silverman and to
Anderson's parents, soon arrived from the US to be at his bedside for what would clearly be a
prolonged period.
In the following weeks, bulletins on the ups and downs in his medical situation were
constantly sent out by email and posted on various websites around the world.
"He's making small incremental improvements day by day but it's still a very scary
situation here. And it's still unclear to what extent there will be permanent damage to his
brain.
"We are here with him and we support him and love him. We spend a lot of time with him,
his mother holding one hand, I hold his other hand and we talk to him. People are in the
hospital gathering here all the time, bringing food and best wishes and we're making it
through day by day."
"When the doctor asked him to put up two fingers he did so. Tristan recognizes Gaby and
can squeeze her fingers in answer to different questions. He's started moving his toes and
his torso around a bit. This is welcome and wonderful news! We understand things can go up
and down, however we are deeply hopeful that Tristan will recover."
But whatever attention was given to the Tristan Anderson case, it unfortunately did not
translate into a prohibition on the deadly canisters.
Death in Bil'in -- Basem Abu Rahmeh
Once again, there were no warning signs that something special was going to happen. The
April 17 procession, demonstration and confrontation with the army at Bil'in followed the
routine established over the past years -- until that awful and very different
moment.
Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh was a 30 year-old Bil'in resident. Active in organizing the
weekly demonstrations, firm in his uncompromising defence of the village lands -- and also in
his belief that peace with Israel is ultimately possible, once the occupation is ended, and
in his warm contact with Israelis arriving at the village. Gush Shalom members remember him
for taking up the Gush Two-Flag T-shirt and often wearing it on subsequent occasions.
As it happened, the Tel Avivian artist/activist David Reeb had his video camera directed
at Basem exactly at the fatal moment -- providing more of a clear and incontrovertible
evidence than is often available.
He had been standing on a hill alongside several journalists, a bit removed from the
main body of the demonstration, and shouting at the soldiers to stop shooting -- when he was
hit in the chest by one of the special, "extended range" teargas projectiles, fired from a
distance of not more than 40 meters. The shot came from troops positioned behind concrete
blocks on the other side of the Separation Fence, who could in no manner claim to have been
threatened.
According to eyewitnesses, the impact from the projectile knocked Basem over and left a
gaping hole in his chest. As there was no ambulance at the scene, he was driven to a Ramallah
hospital in a private car, but died less than halfway there from the injury, blood flooding
his lungs. News of his death reached the village just as the last of the demonstrators were
leaving the site of the protest.
His funeral took place on Saturday afternoon, after his body was carried on a cloth
stretcher all the way from a Ramallah hospital to his village of Bil'in, accompanied by
hundreds of mourners. The funeral itself was attended by over a thousand people, including
Palestinians from neighboring villages as well as international and Israeli friends and
activists.
The Israelis who took part in the funeral drove from there directly to Tel Aviv, to take
part in the evening's protest march.
Some 400 protesters took to the streets, with signs reading "Murderers in Uniform" and
"Basem's blood is crying out from the earth." Protesters gathered at the central Ben-Tzion
Boulevard and marched toward about a kilometer to the Defence Ministry in the Kirya
(Government Compound), where a short rally was held in memory of Basem Abu Rahmeh and all the
victims of military violence.
Hadash Knesset Members Dov Kheinin and Afo Agbariya pointed to Defence Minister Barak,
who insists upon keeping his position in whatever government. "He bears full responsibility
for the acts of the soldiers." Rather to the participants' surprise, the rally ended without
the tensions boiling into an all-out clash with the police.
A few days after the death of Basem, Bil'in hosted the Fourth Annual Conference on Non-
Violent Resistance to the Separation Wall and Settlements. There were hundreds of
participants -- Palestinians, internationals and Israelis -- including such VIP's as Nobel
Laureate Mairead Maguire, Luisa Morgantini of the European Parliament, Palestinian PM Salam
Fayyad and prominent parliamentarian Mustafa Barghouthi.
All were faced with banners, posters and stickers bearing Basem's picture, to the design
of his Israeli co-activist and personal friend Yonathan Pollak.
Two weeks later, Yehoshua Lemberger of the State Prosecution admitted that it had been
wrong to shoot tear gas projectiles directly at demonstrators and that the proper way to use
them was to let the gas disperse in the air. Unnamed military sources said that such shooting
"has always been against military regulations" (Jerusalem Post, May 5).
Lemberger also acknowledged that Basem Abu Rahmeh's death and Tristan Anderson's severe
wounding might have been avoided, had the police carried out orders to investigate previous
incidents in which anti-Wall protesters were less severely hurt by such canisters. A
Palestinian protester in September 2008. An Israeli activist and a Spanish journalist in
January this year.
A victory of sorts & a dilemma
Directly after Basem Abu Rahmeh's death, the Bil'in villagers' attorney Michael Sfard
sent a letter to Avi Licht of the State Attorney's Office, warning that he would file another
contempt of court petition unless the state submitted a new proposal for the route of the
Fence within two days.
And it worked! The state came up with the offer of a substantial change to the existing
route and (more or less) complying with the original ruling of 2007. According to Sfard, the
new route would give back 700 of the 1,700 dunams (170 hectares) that were originally set to
be located on the "Israeli side" of the barrier. On this land, the settlers had intended to
erect about a thousand housing units.
The Bil'in villagers are now faced with a dilemma: accepting this deal, with its direct
immediate benefit -- and thereby effectively acquiescing in the irrevocable loss of the other
1000 dunams -- or hold out and continue struggling for a better deal, with the price that the
Fence remain where it now is for the indefinite future. (In effect, a dilemma reflecting in
miniature what is faced by the Palestinians as a whole in their overall relations with
Israel).
On May 17, Mohammad Khatib of the Bil'in Popular Committee was detained by Israeli
forces as he was on his way to confer with Sfard. No explanation was given for this act. Anarachists against the Wall
