Protests Transform W. Bank Town

On a hill of olive trees, 60 protesters edge warily toward higher ground.

Their gaze is fixed on a slope more than a quarter of a mile away, where bulldozers are scraping the earth to make way for the separation barrier Israel is building in and around the West Bank.

Staring back from there are about a dozen members of Israel’s border police -- some on horseback, others perched with rifles on nearby rooftops. Their job is to make sure the construction goes on unimpeded.

The midday standoff is as tense as it is familiar to both sides.

Nearly every day for the last two months, hundreds of demonstrators -- Palestinian residents of Biddu and neighboring villages, supporters from Europe and the United States and some Israeli activists -- have gathered at the construction site outside Jerusalem to denounce the barrier and to get in its way as much as possible.

The divider, which if completed as planned would stretch 452 miles, is the subject of challenges before Israel’s Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

While justices deliberate -- a decision by Israel’s high court may come as soon as next week -- the continual protests have turned this stretch of rolling farmland into a sometimes-violent center of ground-level opposition to the project.

Israel says it needs the barrier to keep out suicide bombers, but opponents assert that it amounts to a seizure of Palestinian farms and will disrupt daily life in the villages it traverses.

The demonstrations in Biddu are now so routine that news reporters seldom bother to show up anymore. But the protests are regularly marked by clashes between stone-throwing fence opponents and police, and dozens of people -- including some of the officers -- have been injured during the two months of protests.

The protesters argue that Israeli authorities use heavy-handed methods, such as tear gas, rubber bullets and occasionally, they charge, live ammunition. Military and police officials deny using live bullets to disperse crowds.

“They’ve used a lot of rubber bullets, so you can’t even come near,” said Shora Esmailian, a 22-year-old protester from Sweden who has taken a room in Biddu to remain close to the action. “They’ve pushed us back more and more.”

Military officials describe the gatherings as “provocations” and accuse some demonstrators of breaking the law by hurling rocks and threatening the Israeli forces guarding the construction sites.

“I suggest to them that they stay away from places where they are interfering with the implementation of government decisions and not to create provocations,” Israel’s top military officer, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said of barrier protesters in an interview last week with the Haaretz newspaper.

A violent demonstration in February left two Palestinians dead; a third died later of injuries. Activists say a fourth, an elderly man, died after exposure to tear gas. Two weeks ago, a 23-year-old Palestinian man died after being hit by a bullet as he sat in an olive grove near the work zone, witnesses said.

And last week, the Rabbis for Human Rights group charged that border police officers tied a 13-year-old Palestinian boy to the hood of their jeep for two hours to deter protesters from throwing rocks at them. A photograph showed the boy as he sat strapped to the protective mesh of the vehicle’s windshield.

Israeli officials said the April 15 incident was under investigation. “There is at least prima facie evidence that procedures were not being abided by,” said Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. “Israeli police procedure does not include tying someone to a jeep.”

The barrier project -- a blend of fencing, concrete walls, patrol roads and surveillance cameras -- has drawn dozens of protests since construction began last year. But those in the Biddu area have stood out for their duration and intensity.

Protests first took place here in late February, around the time the International Court of Justice held its hearings on the barrier. The actions were briefly suspended after Israel’s high court temporarily halted construction around Biddu, but picked up again when the bulldozers resumed work.

On a recent afternoon, half a dozen protesters from Europe and the United States were present along with about 50 Palestinians and a handful of Israelis who ventured into the West Bank for the day. Organizers said the crowd was much smaller than usual, a fact they attributed to residents’ fear after a fatal shooting a few days earlier.

“It’s like a low feeling in the village,” Esmailian said, as the group gathered for a brief march through the town of 7,500.

Because of recent violence, the group decided this day to stay out of trouble by remaining on a hill at least a quarter of a mile from the work zone, too far even for shouts to be heard. The protesters milled about, glaring across the valley at the snorting tractors, and contemplated what to do next.

A carpenter from Oakland shared war stories but admitted feeling discouraged that the group’s daily efforts had so far done little to hold up construction. Another young foreigner chafed at the low-key approach: “We shouldn’t be part of the scenery,” he grumbled. “We should be noticed.”

Elad Orian, a 29-year-old Israeli graduate student taking part in his first protest in Biddu, said it felt odd to be facing off against Israeli soldiers. He had been one once. Just days earlier, Orian said, a friend on military reserve duty was assigned to guard the construction zone on the opposing hill.

During a three-hour stopover, a visitor saw no hostile actions by either side.

Israeli officials say soldiers and police have shown restraint in the face of thrown rocks -- and at times, they say, Molotov cocktails -- especially at the end of a day’s demonstrations.

“It’s turned into a friction point,” said Army Capt. Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the military, which shares responsibility for guarding the site with police. “Usually it starts quietly and ends less quietly.”

To Mohammed Ayyash, Biddu’s 53-year-old deputy mayor, the turmoil has brought fatigue to his normally quiet community. But he said the barrier will cut off Biddu from much of its agricultural land.

“Of course we are tired,” Ayyash said, as a young protester handed out plastic cups of mint tea. “But for the sake of our land, we forget about tiredness.”