The group of mostly young people looked distinctly out of place in the passenger bus doing the route from Tel-Aviv to a cluster of settlements on the West Bank. One of them wore a T-shirt with the combined flags of Israel and Palestine, a second had Che Guevarra and the inscription: "Long Live the Cuban revolution" while a young woman wore no less than six Animal Rights badges.
Other passengers glanced from time to time at the group, though in curiosity more than hostility.

Indeed, for these fifteen passengers the settlement where the bus stopped was only a way station. Some minutes' walking, past walls covered with posters from the recent settler struggle against the Gaza Disengagement ("Trust in God and support our heroic settler brothers in Gush Katif!") brought the group to a road frequented by Palestinian traffic.

In the sturdy minibus, the friendly driver - inhabitant of a nearby Palestinian village - immediately went into a prolonged reminiscence: "When I was young, we used to go to Tel-Aviv just on the spur of the moment, to have a drink in a cafe or something. There was no need for permits, hardly any checkpoint, nothing, just jump in the car and you get there in no time. Those were the days! And we also had many Israeli friends, they came visiting us every week."

As we came near to Immatin Village, our goal, the driver commented: "Just a few days ago this junction was totally full of military vehicles, I never saw so many soldiers in one place before. I could not pass, had to make a big detour. Some people in the villages around here were frightened, they thought there was going to be a very big raid on them, but for once the army was going after the settlers." At the time we passed there was hardly a sign of that military concentration - with the settlements of Homesh and Sa Nur some twenty kilometres to the north having been successfully evacuated two days earlier, in the final phase of Sharon's disengagement.
Outside the Immatin Health Center - a two-storey building festooned with posters of Arafat and of the imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Bargouthi - there were already numerous bands of local youths, waving Palestinian national flags. An organizer went around, distributing T-shirts and hats with the slogan "I am against the Wall", which were eagerly taken up by Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Altogether, about a thousand Immatin villagers have gathered for the march - reinforced by a solidarity bus from Bil'in to the south, where an intensive anti-wall struggle has been going on for much of the past year. And there was the usual melange of international volunteers - Americans, Italians, an Argentinian residing in Tel-Aviv, a group of French Canadian anarchists...

More Israelis arrived, by various circuitous routes, about fifty altogether - from Anarchists Against Fences, Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush. Those who had been in Immatin on earlier occasions, admitted to some trepidation. "The army was especially violent here, worse than in Bil'in and other places. in July they were rampaging right here, in front of this clinic. There was this bastard lieutenant colonel beating people up completely indiscriminately and seeming to enjoy it. I caught him in action, in full colour, and the footage got prominently into the Israeli and international TV. Afterwards the military police announced that they were investigating him, but I doubt that much will come that" said Israel Futerman, activist and free lance journalist. Some of the Israelis fingered the slices of onion they kept ready in their pockets - this vegetable being an excellent antidote against tear gas.

Suddenly an army jeep arrived, and an officer got down to confer with the march organizers. Soon details of what passed were told among the crowd. -"We will allow you to march to the site off the fence construction, on the condition that there will be no violence". - "We have no plans for anything violent, none at all. Just take care that none of your soldiers starts anything." While the officer was busy, some Immatin kids decorated his jeep with two-flag stickers which they got from a Gush Shalom activist. He did not notice the addition, and drove off.

It was a walk of some three kilometres to the site of the Fence - a path winding among olive groves, much of it uphill. Groups of village youths were lustily chanting: "The people cling to their land/ We hold the olives with a sure hand!". Others were keeping their breath. A plump Palestinian TV reporter from Ramallah kept wiping sweat from his brow and complaining of the big distance still to be walked. A villager was indignant: "What, do you want them to take even more of our land, just so that you'd could walk less!"

A Russian TV crew was rushing around with their camera, especially impressed by a tall villager with a bushy moustache with a child riding on his shoulders, waving an enormous Palestinian flag. "We came from Moscow for the Gaza Disengagement but it ended too quickly. Our hotel is still booked for another week, so we may as well cover this, too" explained Igor, the reporter.

As always, it was a shock to suddenly emerge from the olive groves, with every inch painstakingly used, into the open space brutally cut out by the bulldozers. There were soldiers and military vehicles waiting, and the front marchers cried out "Take care, this is a non-violent demonstration!". Indeed, we were not hampered in going on, right into the patch of raw scarred earth. "I can't remember the last time that we succeeded in getting this far. Usually they start with tear gas when we are still quite far from fence sites" said one of the anarchists. "I wonder what their game is today". There was no sign of any work being done on the fence construction. "It seems that we delayed them, at least for one day."

Organizers called upon everybody to sit down right there.
There was the singing of rhythmic Palestinian national songs, accompanied by a lot of clapping, and the usual intermingling of chanted slogans in Arabic, English and Hebrew: "One, Two, Three, Four - Occupation no more! Five, Six, Seven, Eight - Stop the killing, stop the hate!", "The Fence is terror, it is terror/ soldier, say no more, no more!".

Then Zahi Sowan of the Imatin Popular Committee got up and took the megaphone: "We have no other source of livelihood than our olive trees, which we inherited from our forefathers. Now you see here the withered remains of dozens of olive trees uprooted by the bulldozers, and there on the other side of where the Fence will go up there are thousands of trees to which we will no longer have access, trees which are simply going to be robbed.
You can see the factory belonging to the Immanuel Settlement, on the hill on the other side of the road. You should know that this factory was also built on a site where trees belonging to us had been cut down. We hear that the state of Israel has dismantled the settlements in the Gaza Strip and Jenin Area, but here they are expanding the settlements, making our lives bitter."

After him spoke Yonatan Pollak of the Anarchists. "They tell the Israeli public that this is a Security Fence.
That is an outright lie. We are here 17 kilometres east of the Green Line, deep inside Palestinian territory. To our west there is already a fence. What is being built here is a fence within a fence. Its sole purpose is to annex and widen the settlement and to imprison the Palestinians in a small enclave. That is an act of injustice which we oppose, and which is clearly a violation of international law and an infringement of human rights."
Suddenly, an activist burst out in Hebrew: "And you soldiers, take off your uniforms and join us in the next demonstration!". They did not respond, but there seemed a flicker of smile on the face of the army major standing just behind the speakers.

Then the villagers got up to hold a Muslim prayer, led by a white-haired sheikh in traditional clothing. Israelis and internationals (and some non-devout Palestinians) formed a buffer between them and the soldiers. And with the prayer over, Immatin activists started to lead the youths back to the village center, with a spirited singing and clapping all along the way. "A clapping hand cannot pick up stones, we don't want somebody to give the army an excuse on the very last moment" whispered an organizer.

Only when we got back to the clinic did the realization sink in that, indeed, a complete anti-Wall demonstration had taken place without any confrontation with the army. For what it is worth, this could be cited as proof next time the media tries to depict those who demonstrate against annexation and land-grabbing as "a bunch of violent rioters".

Was this just a fluke, or a first manifestation of new criteria in the army's attitude to this kind of demonstration? Unfortunately, what took place at Bil'in on the next makes the first answer more likely.

Video footage of this action (and of earlier ones in the same location, violently dispersed by the army) is available from: Israel Futerman +972-52-3785970 israelpnn@hotmail.com

photos:
http://gush-shalom.org/pics/Imatin%20035.jpg
http://gush-shalom.org/pics/Imatin%20008.jpg
https://israel.indymedia.org/media/all/display/1480/index.php
https://israel.indymedia.org/media/all/display/1466/index.php?limit_start=9