Israeli police clash with protesters in West Bank

WEST BANK (Agencies)

Israeli forces on Friday fired teargas at stone-throwing youths during a protest to mark five years of weekly demonstrations against the separation barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Geneva Mayor Remy Pagani were among the estimated 2,000 participants at the demonstration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

As they do every week, villagers and international activists marched to the wire fence where the Israeli forces are positioned, chanting slogans and waving Palestinian flags.

And as often happens, a smaller group of Palestinian teenagers used slingshots and hurled stones at the security forces, which responded with teargas and water cannons. Palestinians say the separation barrier aims at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.

"Central factor" " The rioters who arrive at the weekly disorders tend to intentionally attack security forces and damage the security fence, causing an accumulating damage " Israeli military statement The Israeli military said in a statement on Friday the barrier "is a central factor in thwarting terrorists who operate to harm Israeli civilians." "The rioters who arrive at the weekly disorders tend to intentionally attack security forces and damage the security fence, causing an accumulating damage." The protesters say they have won a partial victory as Israel last week began implementing a September 2007 High Court ruling ordering the barrier to be rerouted, returning some of the 575 acres (232 hectares) of Bilin's land that was seized to build a fence around the Jewish settlement of Modin Illit. "While the rerouting is viewed as a victory, demonstrators vowed protests will continue until the occupation is over and the wall is dismantled in its entirety," organizers said in a statement. The barrier -- a network of concrete walls, fences and barbed wire -- snakes through the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel in 1967 on which the Palestinians hope to build their state. To date, Israel has completed 413 kilometers (256 miles) of the planned 709-kilometer (435-mile) barrier, according to U.N. figures. When completed, 85 percent of the wall will have been built inside the West Bank, leaving 9.5 percent of the territory and 35,000 Palestinians between the barrier and the Green Line that marks the 1967 border with Israel. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a non-binding resolution in 2004 calling for those parts of the barrier that are inside the West Bank to be torn down and for further construction in the territory to cease. (alarabiya.net)