Residents of West Bank village of Bil’in, supported by hundreds of international and Israeli peace activists, laid the first structure on the lands they liberated from the Israeli occupation. Ratib Abu Rahmeh, spokesman of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, said: “The residents held the Friday prayers on the liberated lands and built the first structure on the site.”
The Israeli Army began work to dismantle the separation wall last week in line with an Israeli High Court ruling on the matter. The length of the wall set to be removed from Bil’in is 2.7-km-long. The new route of the wall, which is set to replace the existing one, is 3.2-km-long. The village will retain some 1,000 dunams of 2,300 dunams Israel confiscated to build the wall.
Abu Rahmeh said that the participants brought a bulldozer that cleared the road after the Israeli soldiers blocked the gate to prevent the people from going through it. No clashes were reported in the area which was a site of protests against anti-separation wall since 2005.