Whether as a result of the violence in Jerusalem or just because there’s a new commander in town, the Israeli army is once again increasing its oppressive measures in the West Bank village of Bil’in. By Roy Wagner There's nothing new under the sun in Bil'in. If you take a look at the Wikipedia page on Bil'in, you'll see that the last updates about the village's struggle against the separation wall refer to 2012. B'Tselem's page on Bil'in was last updated almost two years ago. One could easily be led to believe that the struggle is over. But Bil'in continues…

Dozens of companies involved in the Israeli combat, homeland security, and defense markets demonstrated their technologies during last week's Tel Aviv Security Week Arms Expo. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky headed to the conference to speak to representatives of the companies that help maintain the occupation through the building of walls, fences, checkpoints, or protest-suppression technologies. By Lia Tarachansky / ‘The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky is an Israeli-Russian journalist with The Real News Network reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. She is the director of ”On the Side of the Road,” a documentary on Israel’s biggest taboo – the events of 1948 when the state…

Fourteen-year-old Yusef a-Shawamreh, who the IDF killed one week ago in the southern West Bank, was not vandalizing the separation barrier when he was killed, but was crossing it to pick plants on his family's agricultural land, B'Tselem reported Wednesday following its own investigation. According to the report, a-Shawamreh was shot when he and two friends, Zahi a-Shawamreh, 13, and al-Muntaser Beallah a-Dardun, 18, were going through a wide gap in the fence that has existed for at least two years; it is safe to say the IDF has known about the gap in the fence. The two surviving youths told…

During the early hours of Friday morning, Palestinians in two Palestinian villages took part in a "direct action" to destroy parts of the separation barrier. In Bir Nabala, located on the other side of Route 443, Palestinians used hammers to break open a hole in the wall, while Palestinians in Rafat (near the Ofer Military Prison) cut through 20 meters of the security fence bordering their village. The army did not arrive during the action, and no mainstream media outlet was invited.

In what might be a shot to the heart of current peace negotiations, Netanyahu is reviving plans to build a 'security fence' in the Jordan Valley. If the fence follows the original route it will enclose any future Palestinian state, cement impossible Bantustan borders and give birth to a new map of Israel's borders. Ten years after international pressure led Israel to scrap construction plans for the Jordan Valley section of the security/separation fence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on track to revive them. Two Ma'ariv – Makor Rishon correspondents on Sunday reported that several government ministries are already making preparations for the…

Six months after the Ministry of Defense announced plans to resume construction of the fence in Gush Etzion, the IDF informed settler leaders that construction will not be resumed until the route is reevaluated by government. The Gush Etzion settlement bloc just south of Bethlehem is the location of one of the biggest gaps in the wall in Israel-Palestine. Dozens of miles of the planned route of this project, launched ten years ago following the rise in suicide attacks in Israeli cities, remain unbuilt with construction at a full halt for nearly five years. The lack of construction is due…

Ten years have passed since Israel started building the wall, probably the largest and most expensive construction project in its history, which does not seem to be going anywhere. For four months now I've been presenting its story, and now it is time to offer some breaking updates, look into the future, and conclude. The final chapter of the series. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills This was supposed to be a four part mini-project for the week of Passover. However, as work progressed, interview followed interview, and the tours along the wall's route unraveled new stories, and as the…

The immediate trigger to start building the wall was the security of Israeli citizens. Ten years later, with all the known accumulated effects on Palestinians, nature, economy and political affairs – has the barrier fulfilled its stated goal for Israelis? Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills Standing on the cemetery mount in Budrus, at first sight the separation fence seems to make perfect sense. Over the clouds of tear gas rising from the field below where the village youth and the army youth are exchanging stones for grenades, beyond the fence which is now almost on the Green Line after…

After a long run-down of the wall's history and effects, and as the series nears its end, I wish to share a collection of thoughts and notes on the aesthetics of the barrier and on the way it fits into the Israeli and Palestinian landscapes, all gathered while wandering along its route. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills With all due respect to this seemingly omniscient software giant, there are some things that Google simply doesn’t tell you about the world. A few months back, I was leaving a demonstration in the West Bank, planning to travel home to Tel…

UNESCO is set to discuss the dangers facing Jerusalem's eco-systems, a new UNRWA report elaborates the harm caused to water sources and flora throughout the West Bank, and environmental NGOs warn of the impending extinction of several species – these are the wall's effects on mother nature. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills An event of somewhat historic proportions is about to take place in Saint Petersburg in the coming days: for the first time ever, the annual UNESCO convention is to discuss a request to recognize a world heritage site that was put forward by the Palestinian Authority, which…

 The wall was built to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel, so they say. But the people who do enter Israel on a daily basis are the tens of thousands of Palestinians who work here. Some go through hours of waiting at checkpoints, others climb the wall and risk injury or arrest – but all have experienced a dramatic change for the worse in their lives. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills We arrive at Eyal checkpoint at 4:30 a.m. The sky is pitch black yet minivans packed with laborers are already passing us in the opposite direction on their…

There is no place quite like it in the entire West Bank. Residents of the village of Walajah petition the courts, demonstrate, initiate protest theater and music shows - yet still see the wall is expanding and surrounding them from all directions. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills The last time I visited Walajah I left only in the late afternoon, around dusk. It was a Friday, and the car was going downhill towards the checkpoint into Jerusalem, a breathtaking view all around, when suddenly I saw tens of Palestinians carrying bags and walking in the opposite direction. At first…

Commemorating 10 years since construction of the wall also means commemorating almost 10 years of the struggle against it, as described in the previous chapter. Just as we shall later examine what the wall has accomplished, one should also ask what exactly the struggle against it succeeded in doing, especially as so many people have paid such a high price for it, and most of it is still east of the Green Line. Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills The first and most obvious answer to this is simple: in many places, villages involved in the uprising were able to…