(Demonstrations and confrontations in Qalandia, Jerusalem and Bethlehem – Russia Today)

In various parts of present day Palestine – the Palestinian people are protesting against oppression from the Israeli government and the systematic and calculated theft of Palestinian lands.  They call this “Land Day”.  The people protested peacefully but the Israeli government would not allow for this peaceful protest against Israel – the Apartheid state…so after warning protesters for about five minutes…they shot stun grenades and tear gas canisters into the crowd.

Well – if you treat people with no dignity and disrespect them long enough they’ll push back…and they did.  Real freedom doesn’t exist in Israel if you’re a Muslim; and if you try to boycott Israeli goods – they’ll put you in jail.  I repeat – Israel has made it illegal to boycott Israeli goods for those who live in Palestine…you could be sued or lose your non-profit status for attempting to boycott Israeli goods.

972Mag has the story:

The village of Budrus was actually one of the quieter places to be today. This small yet ancient village, with lands on both sides of the green line, was one of the first to raise the flag of non-violent resistance to separation fence, and after a long struggle, regained 95 percent of the lands de-facto annexed to Israel by the construction of the barrier. The route of the fence was changed, an award-winning film was made about the local struggle, and many villages were inspired to take the same path of struggle. “Today’s demonstration is actually mainly symbolic,” says local popular committee activist Ayed Morrar. “This is all about resisting the occupation and commemorating Land Day. Even though we were so successful in our struggle, the occupation lives on.”

Andrew Sullivan writes an excellent article and asks:  Why continue to build the settlements?

Let us be clear. The Israeli government is systematically taking and holding the land that could be the Palestinians’ future state. They have been doing so for decades. The deliberate population of occupied land violates the Geneva Conventions. The occupation itself enrages the Arab and Muslim world and creates a huge drag on the US’s strategic need to build up allies among emerging Arab democracies, and defuse Jihadism across the globe.

The answer is that the settlements are there because the current Israeli government has no intention of ever dividing the land between Arabs and Jews in a way that would give the Palestinians anything like their own state; and have every intention of holding Judea and Samaria for ever.

And Sullivan points to this article in Haaretz - it is clear the Israeli government is not and has not been acting in good faith.

Civil Administration’s maps and figures, disclosed here for the first time, suggest the barrier route was planned in accordance with the available land in the West Bank, intended to increase the area and population of the settlements.

A total of 569 parcels of land were marked out, encompassing around 620,000 dunams ‏(around 155,000 acres‏) − about 10 percent of the total area of the West Bank. Since the late 1990s, 23 of the unauthorized outposts were built on land included in the map. The Civil Administration is endeavoring to legalize some of these outposts, including Shvut Rahel, Rehelim and Hayovel.

Etkes believes this indicates the settlers who built the outposts had access to the administration’s research on available land − more proof of the government’s deep involvement in the systematic violation of the law in order to expand settlements, he says.

Land Day Protests

A documentary on the story of Budrus…a Palestinian village the Israelis tried to divide into two with a fence.

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