My first visit was in January 2006 and I met locals, internationals and Israelis who had created their own facts on the ground with an outpost where the held their ground 24/7, inside the 10x10 brick house on sleeping bags on top of dirt floor for weeks at a time. The outpost was erected a few hundred yards from where the new settlement of 700 upscale apartments was being built for Israelis only on legally owned Palestinian property.
The Bilin Outpost, Jan. 2006
The indigenous people of Bil'in had brought their case
against the settlement to the Municipal Court and that Court agreed the
building of the settlement dwellings was illegal and ordered construction to
cease. But, building has continued and the day I was there, a half dozen USA
made Caterpillar tractors were moving earth for the anticipated paved road that
only Jewish colonists- most of them from the USA-will be allowed to travel
upon.
"So, we brought in another caravan and during the night we built a concrete brick building within four hours. All day and all night people stay here to resist the wall and occupation. People come and go; they are from all over the world. They support our nonviolently resisting the wall that is clearly stealing our land. This electric wall and the IDF are not allowing us onto our land to care for our olive trees. They confiscated our land and impose military law upon us and claim we are trespassing on our legally owned land."
Abdullah, Coordinator of Against The Wall in Billin told me that there were 1,600 people who call home Billin and legally own 4,000 dunums of property. The Israeli government confiscated 2,003 dunums of agricultural land and is building apartments that Palestinians are forbidden to approach. The Israeli government continues the building of the illegal electric fence that prevents the indigenous landowners from accessing what is legally theirs.
A twenty-year-old activist from New York told me, "We are fighting an important struggle. If America would only learn the truth about what is happening here, they would stop their blind support of the Israeli government that denies people basic human rights."
It was after the outpost was demolished that the people began the weekly ritual marches every Friday afternoon after prayers at the mosque. On my last visit to Bilin in 2009 with Code Pink activists, the Israeli forces had taken to blasting the nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs the moment we approached the Wall/Fence which is on legally owned Palestinian property. On my previous demonstrations to the Wall/Fence, there had at least been a few minutes of dialogue between the Palestinians and Israeli forces, but the times had changed.
The day after getting gassed again in Bilin, I saw Vanunu for the first time in seven months and was struck that he had let his hair grow so long and how his pants had gotten so worn. It was good to reconnect after suffering another major failure of communication month's prior. It hadn't been our first communication break down nor was it our final. I am writing this on Palm Sunday 2010, and Vanunu is not speaking with me at this time again and he officially returned to atheism on 22 November 2009.
But, on that Sunday in June in 2009, Vanunu and I attended the English and German services at the Lutheran church where Vanunu has been a member for three and a half years, and afterwards he admitted, "I was isolating myself from my supporters."
I took comfort that he was however active and engaged with his local community, and every day Vanunu walked for hours to the furthest points of east Jerusalem and weekly played volleyball, shared a dinner and attended a Bible study with his church friends.
Vanunu was confident he would soon be released from open-air captivity and traveling the world. In particular he mentioned going to Ireland and staying a while with Mairead Maguire the Nobel Peace Laureate. He intended to travel to London, America and Norway before settling down.
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