Fatah to mark its 45th anniversary in Ni'iln this Friday

Echoing the recent calls by PA and Fatah officials for Palestinians to resume using popular resistance to the Occupation, the Fatah movement in the Ramallah area will mark its 45th anniversary by joining the people of Ni'ilin in trying to implement the International Court of Justice decision ordering the dismantling of the Wall.

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When: 12:30 PM, Friday, 1 January, 2010

Where: Ni'iln, West of Ramallah

For more details: Jonathan Pollak: +972546327736

 

Echoing recent calls by PA and Fatah officials for "thousands of Palestinians to demonstrate daily" and to adopt the popular struggle model in resistance to Israeli occupation, the Ramallah area Fatah will mark the movement's 45th anniversary in joining the weekly demonstration against the wall in Ni'ilin.

A senior Fatah organizer said today that "Through 15 years of negotiations all we Palestinians have gained is the cementing of the reality of occupation through more settlements, segregated roads and the Wall. There is no other choice for us but struggle, and there is no other path for the people to thread, than that of resuming the strategies of the first Intifada."

Recently, Israel has increased its attempts to bring the weekly demonstrations against the Wall to a forced end. In addition to a coordinated arrests campaign of the leadership and participants of these demonstrations, in the village of Ni'ilin, the army has illegally reintroduced the use of 0.22” caliber live ammunition for crowd dispersal purposes. The 0.22” munitions, often colloquially referred to as “twotwo” were classified as live ammunition and banned as crowd-control measures already in 2001, by the then military Judge Advocate General, Menachem Finkelstein.

Despite this fact, the Israeli military resumed using the 0.22” munitions to disperse demonstrations in the West Bank in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. Since then at least two Palestinian demonstrators were killed by 0.22” fire:

  • on 13 February 2009, Az a-Din al-Jamal, age 14, was killed in Hebron.
  • on 5 June 2009, Aqel Srour, age 35 in Ni'lin.
  • 28 other than Srour were injured by .22” bullets in Ni'iln alone.

Following the death of Aqel Srour, JAG Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit reasserted that the use of the 0.22” munitions “are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances”. Despite this clarification by the JAG, on 13 November 2009, the army resumed using the 0.22” munitions against demonstrators in Ni'ilin, already injuring four demonstrators, in conditions very far removed from life-threatening situations (under which the shooting of live ammunition is permitted).