PHOTOS | Bil’in residents inaugurate a flower garden with a difference

[ PIC 03/10/2013 – 10:36 AM ]
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RAMALLAH, (PIC)– Residents of Bil’in town have created a large rose garden using Israeli tear gas shells for planting seedlings. The tear gas bombs were fired by Israeli soldiers along the past years during protests against the Apartheid Wall.

The garden was made in the same place where the martyr Bassem Abu Rahma was killed after being shot by a tear gas canister at short range in 2010.

Bassem’s mother told the PIC reporter that she has sued the occupation for killing her son however the case was closed, stressing that her son was martyred while defending Palestine and Jerusalem.

The people of the town said that they decided to create this garden to send message to the world that the Palestinian people have hope despite the wounds.

Meanwhile, the popular resistance in Bil’in has organized on Wednesday its annual conference for popular resistance attended by a large number of Palestinian factions’ leaders and representatives and foreign activists.

The four-day conference was organized in the liberated part of the town after managing to gain a decision from the ICC to restore the lands confiscated by the occupation.

For his part, Bassem al-Tamimi a leader of the Popular Resistance in Nabi Saleh village called during the conference for escalating popular resistance in the coming days especially in light of the political crisis.

Resistance is the sole effective option to address the occupation, he stressed, calling for a national strategy to overcome this crisis.

The occupation had confiscated 2,200 dunums of lands in Bil’in village, while the villagers managed to restore 1200 acres of them in 2011 where economic projects and public parks for children were established.

The confiscated lands are located near Modi’in settlement built on the village’s lands. It is worth mentioning that violent clashes take place each Fridays in the village when soldiers try to quell peaceful demonstrations protesting the apartheid wall and the land confiscation.

Team Palestina published the next photos to it’s facebook page
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BILIN, West Bank (AP) — Residents of this Palestinian village have planted flowers in hundreds of spent Israeli tear gas grenades to honor those killed during their weekly protests against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.

Mohammed Khatib, a village organizer, said Wednesday that the unusual garden is meant to show that life can spring from death.

Bilin has become a symbol of Palestinian protests against Israeli policies in the West Bank. The village’s struggle to regain land taken by the barrier was the subject of “Five Broken Cameras,” a documentary nominated for an Oscar last year.

Palestinians say the barrier, which cuts into the West Bank, amounts to a land grab. Israel says it’s needed to keep Palestinian attackers out.

The Bilin garden commemorates Bassem Abu Rahmeh, a protest leader who was killed in 2009 when a tear gas grenade struck him in the chest during a demonstration. Bassem’s sister, Jawaher, died nearly two years later, a day after a weekly protest during which villagers said she inhaled Israeli tear gas.

During West Bank protests, Israeli troops often fire tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and occasionally live rounds, portraying them as appropriate means against Palestinian stone throwers.