***image2***Aboud village has been the site of increasingly large demonstrations since the local grassroots committee against the Wall declared every Friday a day of popular activities. On Friday the 25th of November, a demonstration of around 700 villagers revealed the unity and determination of Aboud to halt the Apartheid Wall project that will isolate 5830 dunums of the villageâs land.
People congregated near the village council in the morning, raising slogans calling for their rights including the right to be free on their land, and the right to halt the racist Occupation. The Wall, a symbol of this racism, united the resistance of the villagers as they marched to their threatened lands immediately west of the village. Here, Occupation bulldozers have been destroying Palestinian lands on a daily basis for several weeks, as the Apartheid Wall cuts across the northwest Ramallah district.
Occupation Forces arrived in masse and attempted to disperse the demonstration. As the people defiantly continued the march to their lands, Occupation Soldiers used sticks and rifles to beat the villagers back. The popular movement surged past the Occupation Forces who then began to fire into the crowd with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
Dozens of villagers were injured, some beaten so badly that several ambulances were required to transport the wounded to hospitals. Yet despite the brutal attack, Aboud villagers remained adamant that they would halt the Apartheid Wall and restore the rights of all villagers to live and work freely on their lands.
The Wall will surround Aboud from three directions with a total of 12Km snaking around the village to shut Palestinians out from 5830 dunums of their lands. Already the village lost 1450 dunums of land confiscated in the 1980s to expand the Ofraim and Beit Areh settlements. The local committees, promised that the determination to resist the Wall will see popular actions gather tempo until the Wall is torn down and the Occupation ended.
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