News

Israel Moves To Shut Down Demonstrations Against Security Barrier

By Gal Beckerman January 28, 2010

Palestinian activist Mohammed Khatib, who has been leading weekly protests against the path of Israel’s security barrier through his home village, Bil’in, was arrested last night in a pre-dawn raid.

The arrest — the latest in a series of late night army raids in Bil’in in which protest activists were arrested — was reported by Reuters based on a statement by the Bil’in Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which Khatib heads.

The committee has held protests every Friday against the security barrier’s route, which splits Bil’in’s residents off from the land they own and farm. The protests typically attract to 200–300 people to the barrier, including Israeli and international supporters. While most are non-violent, some hurl rocks and projectiles at the army, which has routinely broken up the protest using tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. Scores have been injured on both sides, and one Palestinian died after he was struck in the chest by an Israeli-launched tear-gas canister last April.

In related news, Jerusalem police said Thursday that it plans on forcibly shutting down weekly demonstrations taking place in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinians and left-wing activists have been non-violently — but without a permit —protesting against the legal, but nonetheless controversial, takeover by nationalist Jewish groups of Palestinian homes.

Both Khatib’s efforts and the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah — both profiled in the Forward this week — are part of an ongoing turn towards civil protest against selected targets by certain factions of Palestinian society. In the case of Bil’in, a senior military official told the Forward that the army planned to comply “in the next month or two” with a ruling Israel’s Supreme Court issued two-and-a-half years ago ordering the army to adjust the security barrier route at Bil’in so as to reunite the village’s residents with their land.

Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO