***image4***Two hundred local residents walked to the Wall to mark the Week Against the Apartheid Wall.
Villagers chanted slogans against the occupation and against the apartheid Wall and calling for the destruction of all Walls, from Berlin to Palestine. When they arrived at the iron gate, soldiers started firing tear gas at the demonstrators.
Two buses which arrived from Salfit district to show solidarity with the local residents were blocked from entering by a flying checkpoint and were turned away by the Occupation forces after 2 hours of altercations.
During the protest, Ahed Khwaja, co-ordinator of the Niâlin committee said, âNiâlin in an example of land theft, colonial expansion and apartheid that Israel is practising on us. Most of our lands have been taken by three settlements. The Wall came to isolate the people from the village and from their land and to steal more land for the expansion of the settlements. Itâs encircled the village from three areas, and one of them from the colonial apartheid roads. Thatâs where weâve become isolated from other Palestinian communities, without land and without work. They want us to leave â we will not leave, we will stay. And the Wall, the settlements and the occupation is the one to leave.â
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