Clashes with OF, tear-gas and rubber coated bullets were fired at Palestinians

[Mac Seafraidh]

2008-10-25

OF troops fired rubber coated bullets and tear gas at the weekly anti-wall demonstration held Friday afternoon in the village of Bilin west of  Ramallah causing tens of participants to suffer breathing difficulties.

Hundreds of local residents and about two hundred foreign sympathizers marched after the Friday prayers to protest the building of the apartheid wall and the confiscation of Palestinian land.

Foreign sympathizers included a number of journalists and students from Belgium participated in this week's demonstration, participants from Denmark and Britain.

Participants called for the dismantlement of the apartheid wall and the settlements. They also demanded and end of land confiscation and the removal of roadblocks, as well as calling for Palestinians to be allowed to harvest their olives without the harassment of Jewish settlers, which has markedly increased during this year's olive season.

The demonstrators reached the wall and tried to reach the village fields that were isolated behind the wall at which point the OF fired teargas, stun grenades and rubber coated bullets.

Meanwhile, extremist Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters and foreign sympathizers helping them in the northern West Bank governorate of Nablus. Settlers set fire to fields in the village of Burqa to the north of Nablus and hurled stones at Palestinian cars travelling near the village.

Settlers from the settlement of Yetzhar tried to take over fields in the village of the Asira al-Qebleyeh and placed barbed wire around those fields.

Settlers from the Kedumim settlement attacked Palestinian olive harvesters and stopped foreign sympathizers from reaching the fields to help Palestinians from the village of Kafr Qaddom to the West of Nablus. OF troops quarreled with journalists covering the events and threatened to arrest al-Jazeerah TV correspondent.

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