On the night of September 16, Bil'in non-violence leader Mohammed Khatib was woken up by the urgent news that soldiers were raiding the home of his fellow activist Abdullah Abu-Rahme. They failed to find Abu-Rahme at home, but were searching the house with great savagery, damaging property and intimidating Abu-Rahme's wife and children. Khatib, as member of the Bil'in Popular Committee, hurried to the spot demanding to talk to the officer in charge.

As Khatib on the following morning told the Israeli Y-net News, the result was highly unpleasant: "The nightmare began, all of the soldiers in the apartment began to beat me with everything possible -- hands, rifles, feet. They kicked me in the head, the face, and the stomach. It lasted for twenty minutes. I lifted my face and saw someone who had interrogated me in the past. I told him: "Why did you do this to me? I only wanted to speak to the officer." He said: "If you don't call your friend and bring him here we will do what we did to Abu-Rahma"" (the activist shot to death in March). In the end, the soldiers left without having captured Abu-Rahme.

The incident should be understood in the framework of the increasing brutalization since the Gaza War. For several years, though many were wounded nobody got actually killed in the weekly Bil'in demonstrations. But in March this year, Bassem Abu Rahme -- the personal friend of many Israeli activists -- was shot dead by a tear gas canister, shot from such close range that it became a lethal missile. The army had set as its goal to altogether stop the weekly processions, with soldiers invading the village in order to stop the procession before it could even begin.

This was not particularly successful, and the army -- in cooperation with the Shabak (Israeli Security Service) -- shifted the bulk of their attack from confronting the mass of demonstrators during the day to tackling them individually at their homes in nightly raids.

Two Bil'in youngsters who were nabbed and subjected to weeks of interrogation -- isolated from the outside world and forbidden to see a lawyer -- were in the end induced to sign full "confessions" in which virtually everybody involved in the weekly demonstrations was implicated. A large number of teens were mentioned by name as "stone-throwers" while the older organizers, in particular all members of the Bil'in Popular Committee were implicated as "inciting to stone-throwing."

Armed with this incriminating list, the army and Shabak intensified their manhunt, raiding the village virtually every night. Some of the detentions were foiled by Israeli and international activists staying the night in threatened houses as witnesses. However, in a considerable number of cases the hunters did manage to pounce, grab "suspects" ranging from boys to fathers of families and haul them off to face prolonged detention.

Muhammed Khatib had been among the arrested in a raid on the night of August 3, along with six other Palestinian activists (and one American). But to the military prosecutor's great embarrassment, Khatib was able to prove conclusively that he had been abroad -- on a speaking tour of Canada -- on the date when, according to the "confession" in the army's possession, he had supposedly "called upon village youths to throw stones at the soldiers."

The exit stamps in his passport left the Military Court no choice but to set him free on August 17. Upon release Khatib was asked by The Nation to write an article, which he duly did -- getting an increased American hearing for "Palestine's Peaceful Struggle."

So, that's why he had to be punished...

Since the night of September 30, there have been no further night raids, apparently due to the publicity. However, 16 Bil'in villagers remain in detention. Sometime in 2010, maybe...

None other than South African Bishop Desmond Tutu visited Bil'in, fully endorsing its persistent von-violent struggle against the "Separation Fence. "Just as a simple man named Gandhi led the successful non-violent struggle in India and simple people such as Rosa Parks led the struggle for civil rights in the United States, so simple people here in Bil'in are leading a non-violent struggle that will bring them their freedom. The South Africa experience proves that injustice can be dismantled."

And, the Bishop had not come to Bil'in alone, but accompanied by former US President Jimmy Carter and assorted other international VIP's. Nobel Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire of North Ireland had, on one of her earlier visits to Bil'in, the doubtful honor of being personally treated to a large dose of Israeli tear gas.

So far, however, numerous expressions of support and sympathy have failed to produce a tangible result. The 2004 ruling of the International Court at the Hague, declaring the construction of the Fence inside Palestinian territory to be a violation of International Law, had no effect in Bil'in (other than for a time increasing the villagers' morale). The Government of Israel simply refused to abide with the International Court's ruling, its lawyers coming up with sophisticated legal sophistry to justify this.

Nor was there a change on the ground when in mid-2007 Israel's own Supreme Court, rendered a verdict on the specific case of the Bil'in villagers, represented by Adv. Michael Sfard.

The court ruled that the government could build a fence in order to safeguard settlements which had already been built, but not to erect a fence designed to secure possession of unbuilt land earmarked for further extension of a settlement. Which meant that the Bil'in villagers could get back at least the part of their land on which the settlers had not yet built.

The court failed, however, to set an alternate route for the fence, but asked the army to draw one up and submit it to them. The army presented a route that was virtually identical to the original one. Adv. Sfard protested that it was tantamount to contempt of court; the judges agreed and told the army to try again; the army, after a long dragging of feet, presented a bit more reasonable map.

But, while being so energetic about raiding and arresting Bil'in villagers, the army is far more lethargic about actually rerouting the fence. "This year we don't have the budget and manpower resources. We might do it sometime in 2010" was the most to which military representatives were willing to commit themselves.

From Berlin to Bil'in