The Wonk Room

Fox News Reporter Tear Gassed By Israeli Troops

Every week for the last several years, Palestinians from the village of Bilin, accompanied by Israeli and international supporters, have turned out to non-violently protest the Israeli separation barrier that has been built on their land. As with many other areas along the barrier’s path, the barrier in Bilin imposes enormous hardships upon Palestinian residents, separating them from some 60 percent of their farming land in order to create a perimeter around the nearby Israeli settlement of Modiin Illit.

Yesterday, Fox News reporter Reena Ninan was gassed by Israeli troops, along with the rest of the demonstrators.

Watch it:

Despite Fox anchor Megyn Kelly’s apparent amazement that there is, like, totally an occupation going on here, such brutal encounters with the Israeli military are a daily fact of Palestinian life.

Bilin resident Iyad Burnat is a Palestinian activist and founder of the Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin. Reached by phone, Burnat described the scene at the protest: “When we got there today, the Israelis just started shooting tear gas. Why are they shooting at non-violent demonstrators? We are people with our hands up, we are protesting the confiscation of our land.” Burnat said that the barrier “is not a security wall, this is just to confiscate more land, and build more settlements on our land.”

Burnat described the frequent Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) incursions into Bilin, saying that “every night we have the IDF invading the village, searching the houses, arresting people from Bilin. Why? Because we say to all the world that this is our land. The soldiers come in the middle of the night, shooting into the houses, where our children are sleeping.”

Burnat’s claims are borne out by video footage on this Bilin website, as well as by reporting done for Mondoweiss, which has previously covered the IDF’s late-night incursions into Bilin.

In April, 30-year-old Bassem Ibrahim Abu-Rahma was killed while protesting the Bilin barrier when a tear gas canister fired by the IDF struck him in the chest.

While there is a legitimate security justification for the barrier, there is no justification for building it on Palestinian land, other than as a mechanism for appropriating it. In a 2005 ruling, the International Court of Justice found that “the construction of the wall and its associated regime create a ‘fait accompli’ on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case, . . . [the construction of the wall] would be tantamount to de facto annexation” of Palestinian land.

In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to reroute the wall near Bilin because the current route was “highly prejudicial” to the villagers and not justifiable on security grounds. In 2008, the Israeli court again rejected the placement of the wall and said it must be rerouted “as soon as possible.”

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