Ramallah, January 29: Israeli forces on Thursday arrested 10 Palestinians including the leader of the Palestinian Peaceful Protest Against the Separation Wall.
Palestinian security sources said that the 10 were arrested in the Jordan Valley and the villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin.
Ratib Abu Rahmeh, member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, told Arab News that the Israeli forces arrested Mohammad Abdulkarim Al-Khatib from his home in Bil’in.
Abu Rahmeh added that “Israeli troops arrived at Khatib’s Bil’in home at 1:45 a.m. and arrested him following a thorough search of the residence. They said the soldiers did not present a search warrant, and confiscated a cell phone and documents the troops claimed were possibly inciting.”
Khatib, considered one of the spearheads of the protest movement in Bil’in, was arrested a few months ago and was released by an Israeli military judge two weeks later. The Israeli prosecution claimed he was photographed throwing stones at security forces. However, Khatib’s Israeli attorney Gabi Lasky proved he was abroad when the rally in question was staged.
Khatib predicted in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on Wednesday that the national struggle taking place in the West Bank would spread and reach the level of a popular intifada similar to the one that took place in 1987. “We’re positive 2010 will see us beat the occupation. We see it in the fact that the Israeli military is nervous about the fact that it can’t curb (the protest),” he said.
This Bil’in resistance style is taking place in other villages also in the West Bank, but Bil’in has become a symbol: Since 2005 residents of Bil’in responded in fact with peaceful resistance to the separation wall, that far from the Green line, snakes deeply inside the West Bank annexing 1,968 of 4,040 dunums of Bil’in lands.
——-Agencies