***image2***The Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, together with the Local Committee Against The Apartheid Wall in Kafr Qaddum village, organized a demonstration on February 19th. The march through the main road of the village culminated in speeches calling for the destruction of the Wall and an end to the daily oppression endured by Palestinians by the Occupation Forces. Such measures have been gradually deployed in order to expel Palestinians and secure further territory for the settlement of Shomron.
The Occupation Forces closed the two gates to the entrance of Qalqiliya city in 2002. Since then Palestinians have used a dirt road leading to the village of Hajja in the south. Despite attempts to rehabilitate the road, the rainfall over the winter destroyed it and left the 4000 inhabitants with no means of movement. After some pressure, Occupation Forces allowed the people to use the two closed gates. However, the gates open for 5 minutes each hour, symbolizing the racist manner in which the Occupation conducts its operations in Palestine.
However, the provocation did not end there. With each passing week the numbers of hours when the gates open are declining. At first the gates would open for five minutes every two hours. Now they are only opened for a few minutes in the whole day. Moreover, Palestinians are continually physically assaulted by settlers from the Qedumim settlement, built on some 7000 dunums of the villageâs lands. They regularly throw stones on farmers waiting at the gates. The racism of the Occupation soldiers has no limits, revealed by the recent case of a bleeding child forced to wait two hours at the gate until Occupation soldiers allowed him to pass. Such discrimination also applies to teachers going to their schools.
The oppressive Occupation policies against the people in Kafr Qaddum have reached a point where silence can no longer be tolerated. The Wall looks to carve out further misery for the Palestinian peopleâs future: a people imprisoned in ghettos, regulated by gates and exposed to the most vicious forms of racism.
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