Israeli supreme court ruled yesterday that wall must be re-routed around Bilin.

A rare victory to be sure but a victory nonetheless. The success was the result of non-violent resistance of years of joint struggle led by Palestinians who were supported by Israeli and international activists. There have been roughly three such victories out of 120 cases brought to Israeli courts by Palestinians fighting the path of the wall.

The court decision dictates that the military are obliged to plan and implement a new route for the wall. It has been ordered that the new path will allow for all Palestinian agricultural land to be on the Palestinian side. Furthermore, the court has ordered that the state should not take into consideration the area earmarked for Stage B of the planned expansion of Matityahu East.
The most important decision however was made by the International court in 2004 when it ruled that the wall was illegal in it’s planned route thru the West Bank and that it should be removed. The international community ignored the decision.

Palestinians Celebrate.
Dubai TV via Mosaic on LINK TV

The Guardian

Yesterday, trucks and vans carried dozens of singing villagers out to the barrier again where they waved flags and rattled sticks on the metal fence in front of the Israeli soldiers. One villager shouted to the crowd through a loudspeaker: “Your steadfastness brought you here.”

“Because of our protests the world knew about us and that’s why we won,” said Abdul Latif Yassin, 50, a school teacher. “But we still have more land beyond the barrier than has been given back to us today.”

CNN International

At the same time things get more difficult for Palestinians in other areas like the agriculture village of Jayyous. Jayous also pursued a strategy of non-viloent demostrations and lawsuits.

Haaretz

The number of Jayyous residents who engage in agriculture has decreased for a simple reason: the separation fence. In this area it was completed three years ago and it cuts off the residents of Jayyous from their lands. To reach their farm land, they require a permit from the Civil Administration, and these are given out less and less often. Only 90 of the 4,000 residents of Jayyous are today permitted to work their lands. For three years, Abu Azzam was one of the lucky ones who received a permit. On June 23, he was informed that the permit would no longer be renewed, “because of opposition on the part of security elements.”

The primary coverage of this story in the US, came only from Democracy Now

Why isn’t this news??
Robert Naiman addresses the issue on the Huffington Post

…There’s nothing on the web sites of the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times, not even a wire story.

Those who blame the Palestinian people for their fate, attributing it to Palestinian violence, and faulting the Palestinians for not emulating Gandhi, King, or Mandela (whose role in the “armed struggle” is always conveniently elided for the purpose of this comparison) should periodically ask themselves, when Palestinians do engage in nonviolent protest, and are subjected to brutal repression as a result, how come the mainstream U.S. media don’t pay any attention?

Mairead Maguire in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now

Maguire:
“I was invited with my friend to attend a nonviolent conference in Bilin, a village outside Ramallah [in the West Bank], and to give a talk there, which I did. At the end of the conference, we were invited to participate in a nonviolent demonstration with some of the Palestinian members of parliament and Israeli peace activists and local villagers and international visitors.”

“We walked along to try to walk up toward the separation wall, and it was a totally nonviolent protest. And we were viciously attacked by the Israeli military. They threw gas canisters into the peace walkers, and they also fired rubber-covered steel bullets.

“As I tried to move back and help a French lady, I was shot in the leg with a rubber-covered steel bullet, and the young Israeli soldier who shot me was only 20 meters from me. I was stunned by it, and then later on, after having some treatment by the ambulance medics, I went back down to the front line with the peace activists, and we were again showered with gas. I was overcome and had a severe nosebleed and had to be taken by stretcher to the ambulance and treated.”

“And I witnessed there … an old Palestinian man with blood on his face. These were over 25 unarmed peace people who had been viciously attacked by the Israeli military. And it was a completely peaceful protest. It was absolutely unbelievable. I never in all my years of activism witnessed anything so vicious as from the Israeli military.”

Ana Nogueira is an independent documentary filmmaker who has footage of Maguire being shot. www.imemc.org — the web page of the International Middle East Media Center.

Other Coverage in the United States:

Common Dreams
Israeli Military Shoots Nobel Peace Laureate

Kansas City Info Zine
Israeli Military Shoots Nobel Peace Laureate

Bay Area Indy Media
Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire Shot With Rubber Bullet by Israeli Military at Nonviolent Protest

Two years ago the International court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s construction of the Wall and the settlements inside the West Bank were illegal.

The international community met the decision with a yawn. Apparently, international law is only to be enforced when it benefits the United States and Israel. Actually, the wall does not benefit the United States and like many of Israel’s policies, which the US protects at the UN, it hurts the US. This is an example of what Mearsheimer and Walt are referring to when they say that the US has set aside it’s own security and interests in order to advance the interests of Israel. In large part this is due to pressure from the Israel lobby in the US.

Nile TV Egypt via Mosaic on LINK TV

So the wall continues to be built and it is the Palestinians who are punished by the international community for exercising their right to vote. Apparently voting and democracy is only important if they vote the way the US and Israel want them to vote.

A delegation of church leaders from the UK visited the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. The visit coincided with the release of surveys in the US and in Bethlehem commissioned by Open Bethlehem.

The surveys show widespread ignorance in the US of Bethlehem and its plight. But the poll, which was carried out by Zogby, also revealed that if Americans knew that the wall had severed Bethlehem and Jerusalem and had led to the large-scale Israeli annexation of (mainly Christian-owned) land, they would oppose the wall.

Why is it do you think that Americans don’t know that the wall surrounds Bethlehem? If Palestinians built a wall around Bethlehem, so you think Americans would know about it?

All Christians should bring this statement to their local church leaders.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
Press Release 22/12/2006

The Israeli-built wall is “a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said today in Bethlehem.

Speaking to the town’s civic representatives shortly after walking through the wall, Dr Williams said the wall symbolised “the terrible fear of the other, of the stranger, which keeps us all in one kind of prison or another”, from which God 2,000 years ago came to release people.

Dr Williams was speaking on behalf of a delegation of UK church leaders to the town of Christ’s birth, which included the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the moderator of the Free Churches, David Coffey, and the Armenian patriarch of Great Britain, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian.

Accompanied by Christian church leaders from Jerusalem, the delegation made its way through the notorious checkpoint at the entrance to the town, which prevents all but a few Bethlehemites – who need special permits - from traveling and trading with neighbouring Jerusalem.

The church leaders had planned to walk through the pedestrian checkpoint – an elaborate steel construction involving turnstiles, CCTV cameras, and gun-wielding soldiers.

But at the last moment, the Israeli security forces diverted them through the less humiliating vehicle entrance point, causing camera crews waiting on the other side to rush to get pictures.

The delegation walked from the checkpoint down Star St to Manger Square, following the route said to have been made 2,000 years ago by Mary and Joseph.

They were greeted in the square by civic leaders at the International Peace Centre, close to the Basilica of the Nativity.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks were in response to a speech by Bethlehem’s Mayor, Dr Victor Batarsheh, which described how Bethlehem was now cut off from the outside world by the wall, causing economic hardship and the emigration of families. Bethlehem, he said, had been “transformed into an open prison” by the wall.

He told the church leaders that future peace depended on “dialogue, not separation.”

“Your presence is challenging this ugly wall,” Mayor Batarseh told them.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said they were “here to say to the people of Bethlehem that they are not forgotten. We are here to say: what affects you affects us. We are here to say, your suffering is our suffering too, in prayers and in thought and in hope.”

He continued:

“We are here to say, in this so troubled and complex land, that justice and security are never something which one person claims and the expense of another, or which one community claims at the expense of another. We are here to say that security for one is security for all. And for one to live under the threat of occupation or of terror is a problem for all.”

Citing an Advent hymn which sings of “Jesus Christ, the one who comes the prison bars to break”, Dr Williams said it was the church leaders’ “prayer and our hope for all of you that the prison of poverty and disadvantage, the prison of fear and anxiety, will alike be broken.”

He added that the church leaders had come because the Incarnation “assures us that these prisons could be broken, broken by the act of God in whose sight all are equally precious – Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Christian and Muslim; and for whom all lives are so equally precious that the death of one is affront to all.”

Following the speeches, the Mayor of Bethlehem declared the delegates honorary citizens of Bethlehem.

The delegates then made their way to the Basilica of the Nativity, where they prayed at the spot in a cave said to be where Jesus was born. As well as the Greek Orthodox-controlled Basilica itself, they visited the Catholic church alongside, from where the delegates made their way down to the cave where St Joseph is said to have received the angel’s warning to flee Bethlehem. Alongside it is another cave where St Jerome made the first translation of the Bible.

The delegates return Saturday, after a day of prayers and visits in the town of Christ’s birth.

The visit by church leaders coincides with the release of surveys in the US and in Bethlehem commissioned by Open Bethlehem.

The surveys show widespread ignorance in the US of Bethlehem and its plight. But the poll, which was carried out by Zogby, also revealed that if Americans knew that the wall had severed Bethlehem and Jerusalem and had led to the large-scale Israeli annexation of (mainly Christian-owned) land, they would oppose the wall.