As the village of Bil’in mourns the killing of one of its young anti-wall activists, the victim’s relatives say they are more determined than ever to keep resisting the occupation peacefully.
BIL’IN, West Bank – The streets of this tiny village surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and an illegal so-called “security fence” are eerily calm under the afternoon sun.
One by one, villagers, friends and relatives are all heading to the mosque to comfort the Abu Rahma family on the third day of mourning since Bassem, aged 31, was killed by a tear gas canister shot in his chest by an Israeli soldier, as he was peacefully protesting against what on this side of the fence is called “the apartheid wall”.
Together with the accompanying settlements, the fence is robbing the village 60% of its agricultural land. Abdullah Abu Rahma, a relative of the victim and the head of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, was near Bassem when he died. He says the whole village of slightly less than 2,000 people is in mourning, as Bassem – also endearingly called “Al Fil” (The Elephant, an apt nickname given his strength and stature) – was everyone’s friend here.
The villagers’ distraught faces and their constant flow into the mosque is testimony to his charisma as a simple and kind but determined man struggling for his people’s land.
On the same morning when he would die, Abdullah says Bassem fed the bird he kept in a cage, and freed it soon afterwards, before heading towards the mosque to prepare for the demonstration. “He gave the bird some food and then he let it fly out of the cage. I think he must have felt something,” Abdullah says.
After their midday prayers last Friday, Bassem marched with his fellow villagers, Israeli and foreign peace activists towards the fence. “He did not even have a stone in his hands,” Abdullah says.
The International Court of Justice had ruled this fence and accompanying land-grab to be “contrary to international law” as far back as July 2004, while an Israeli Supreme Court ruled two years ago in a case filed by Bil’in’s mayor that there were not enough “security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil’in’s land”.
In a separate, paradoxical Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2007, the settlement of Mattiyahu East built on Bil’in’s land was legalised retroactively.
The fence is still there and the land stolen from the villagers is called a “closed military zone”, giving Israeli forces a pretext to shoot at anyone approaching the area.
“We carried a metal sheet in front of us because we knew soldiers would be shooting at us,” Abdullah says. “ My friend and I opened the gate and walked in with the shield, and Bassem was behind us, around 20 metres away on a hill. We entered there and they threw gas hand grenades at us. But then they started shooting their canisters towards Bassem with their guns.”
At one point Bassem was shouting at the Israelis to stop shooting as they had hit what he believed to be an Israeli activist – who turned out to be French – in her leg.
“I heard Bassem shouting ‘Don’t shoot, there’s an Israeli injured’,” Abdullah says. “He knew she was an international activist but had no idea she was French. So he shouted at the officer ‘Stop firing, you’ve just injured an Israeli... Don’t shoot’. Then all of a sudden I hear him say ‘A ya abba’ (Oh my father) and he fell to the ground. A friend of mine started shouting ‘Fil’ is injured. I ran next to him and I saw this big hole full of blood in his chest.”
Rushed in a car to a government hospital in Ramallah, Bassem was already dead by the time they arrived.
“We all started crying, some fell down in distress. I didn’t know how to convey this bad news to the family and villagers. Everyone, from children to the oldest people, has many stories to tell about Bassem. He gave his life, not to Bil’in, but to all the Palestinian people.”
Despite the terrible loss, Abdullah and Bassem’s family insist that nonviolence remains the only effective resistance against the occupation.
“It’s more effective than anything else, and that’s why the Israelis want to kill us,” Abdullah says. “They’re terrified, they want to stop us at all costs, because they are seeing other villages following our nonviolent path, and Israelis and international activists are joining us. Bassem was killed at the moment he believed he was helping an Israeli.”
karl.schembri@ramattan.com
Karl Schembri is a correspondent for Ramattan News Agency in the West Bank and Gaza
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