May 15 Nakba protests in Israel. Nakba for Palestinians is “The Catastrophe”, the day they they were displaced. My personal opinion is there will be no peace there until Palestinians have a place to call home.
From someone who was there:
“This started as a peaceful march to the Palestinian side of the Wall in Bethlehem. A French student at the Bible College told me she was in the front row. Someone asked her if the Palestinians were throwing rocks, and she said no, it was a bunch of kids, indicating that they were about her waist high. The soldiers used tear gas to drive the marchers back two blocks from the wall, in front of the Bible College, where my group was eating lunch. The marchers were milling around, waving the Palestinian flag (which is illegal). The soldiers fired a half dozen tear gas rounds at us over the course of a few minutes. My eyes burned a little, but not badly. Then the marchers moved forward again, to about a half block from the soldiers. I went with them, and started videoing. Then an APC came forward. What happened next is shown in the video. When the gas cleared, I saw three or four Palestinians throwing stones (but not before), and someone piled tires in the road and set them on fire. That’s about the point we gathered our group and the local pastor escorted us back to the guest house.
Coming back into Bethlehem from Hebron there was burning debris all over the road: tires, dumpsters, trash cans. Looks like there was another altercation. The thing is, the back entrance is well inside PA territory, and there aren’t supposed to be Israeli troops there.
No internet on the bus today. I wonder if the Israelis shut it down because of the protests…”
