West Bank Garden of Tear Gas Canisters - In Pictures

Morning peeps..

Found these pictures today and thought I would share. I think the Palestinians have every right to be recognised as their own country. And it is disgusting that the Israeli Government and other Governments will not give them their country back. For the residents of Bil'in in Palestine they are still holding weekly protests at the West Bank separation barrier.. Many residents, supporters, protesters and activists have sacrificed a lot to try and get their homeland back. The Israeli Government has taken away 60% of their farmland..

The residents have worked on making a garden at the West Bank barrier. Using empty tear gas canisters as pots and planting flowers in them. Looks pretty cool.. This was done in memory of the lives lost during the long occupation and as a sign of peace and to show that life comes from death. It is a shame that many media outlets portray the protesters as being violent and throwing stones. But it is usually the military throwing things. However even on the Bil'in website they say that is exactly what the usual charges are. Even though these incidents didn't happen..

Anyways check out the interesting tear gas canister garden...

The Palestinian residents of Bilin have come up with a novel use for the teargas canisters left over from clashes with Israeli soldiers during the weekly protest against the West Bank separation barrier

Sabiha Abu Rahmeh waters the plants. Her son, Bassim, was killed in the weekly protests five years ago

A close-up of a flower planted in a teargas canister

A Palestinian man plants a flower in the garden

A flower being watered. Villagers say the garden is meant to show that life can spring from death

Rows of flowers planted in the canisters, collected after clashes with Israeli soldiers

A flower in its unconventional pot

Flowers brighten up the stark razor wire in the village

Bed springs are used to hold the canisters upright

As well as the weekly protest, the village also hosts an annual conference

Link to Article

Link to Bil'in Village site

Support and help the Palestinians. It is clear they can not acheive their goal without international and global help..!





Peace
Fluff

Interesting how you sign off with 'Peace'....

The Israeli boys and girls would really like to stop having mortars and rockets fall on their heads and homes too.

It takes both sides to sustain that endless fight. It takes two sides of a fight that was going a thousand years before America or the modern world map was even a dream to give form ...let alone Israel formed as a nation. Borders and lines on paper are only a small part of why BOTH these people are determined to murder the civilian population of the other side.

Neither side has a bucket of spit worth of moral high ground over the other. They've each committed or allowed in their name, enough atrocity to satiate anyone's blood lust. Yet, Palestinians are still rocketing civilian neighborhoods on a regular basis ....and Israelis respond by bombing the crap out of civilians on the other side.

The band plays on ...in this two sided fight.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Wrabbit2000
Neither side has a bucket of spit worth of moral high ground over the other.

I would disagree.

Its very easy to see how this "conflict" began.

Zionist Jews felt/feel entitled to a piece of land regardless of who was currently living on it.

And they came to the region spewing violence and terrorism in an effort to steal this land.

Their most notorious act was the bombing of the King David Hotel while dressed as Arabs.

The Palestinians were violently attacked and have been systematically exterminated and displaced.

They didnt ask for this fight, it was thrust upon them.

Incredibly, TPTB have somehow gotten away with portraying the Zionist Jews as the victims...

So to say that neither side has the moral high ground is completely false.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Thank you for your reply Wrabbit.. I usually sign all my threads off with Peace or Namaste. Is that a bad thing..?

There is always two sides to every story. But I do think the Palestinians should be given their land back. If Israel gave it back to them there would be no nothing raining down on their heads and homes. If your nation and land was taken away from you and occupied for so long. Would you not be a little bit p****d off...? I would...

reply to post by gladtobehere


I'm afraid you'll need to crack a few more books than that to get an accurate and not modern political concept of what started the fighting we see today across our television screens. I'll say this...not a damn thing in this century or the last one has anything to do with it, at the heart of it.

You could wipe out Israel tomorrow to the last child, pave the place over and make it a parking lot for the rest of the region ...and somewhere in this world an Arab or a Jew would still be looking to kill the other for things neither honestly can explain at this point for WHY it has to be that way. They've BOTH just been raised at this stage to know it does, for some reason, have to be that way.

It's a sad, pathetic and really tragic circle of tit for tat and it predates anything for the formation of the State of Israel. That land was awash in blood before Jesus came to walk it ..and it'll be awash in blood centuries from now. I doubt it ever changes....but we'll get covered in that blood if we try and meddle as we keep doing, IMO. Just covered in it.

reply to post by fluff007

Well, I agree that they need a 'two state solution', to talk about it seriously. They really do.

I also agree that they need to stop killing each other like it's a sporting event and anyone is keeping score for prizes. That goes for both.

In reality, there isn't Palestinians vs. Jews anyway. There is Hamas vs. Israel. Hamas vs. Fatah. Fatah Vs. Hamas. BOTH Vs. Israel. Israel vs. each, on their own terms and combined as separate things. Israel vs. the Settlers (Operation Price Tag for reference on that) and Settlers vs. the IDF while of course, the West Bank Palestinians and Settlers are both friendly in some cases and life/death enemies in most others.

Absolutely nothing there is clear or easy to sort out. Never has been...and no easy solution will work. If it would, it would have been done.

I'll say this though... The PLA of the West Bank and Hamas of Gaza are two RADICALLY different animals. The PLA can be worked with and I believe they WANT peace in the end..if they can get it without losing more to achieve it. Hamas has, right in their charter, the obliteration of Israel and every living thing in it.

One is a Government. The other is a pack of murderous thugs pretending to be one....and even the PLA hopefully called for revolt in Gaza to overthrow Hamas rule after the recent counter-coup in Egypt. They OPENLY called for Gaza to revolt against Hamas. This is the Palestinian Authority saying this.

So....clarity is what the situation desperately needs. Never has and may never get. I wish it were better on that to have a viable solution which didn't carry body counts in the 7 figures ..........including about a 1.4 million (roughly 20%) Israeli Arabs who live and work as citizens of Israel inside the borders.

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by gladtobehere

 

I'm afraid you'll need to crack a few more books than that to get an accurate and not modern political concept of what started the fighting we see today across our television screens. I'll say this...not a damn thing in this century or the last one has anything to do with it, at the heart of it.

You could wipe out Israel tomorrow to the last child, pave the place over and make it a parking lot for the rest of the region ...and somewhere in this world an Arab or a Jew would still be looking to kill the other for things neither honestly can explain at this point for WHY it has to be that way. They've BOTH just been raised at this stage to know it does, for some reason, have to be that way.

It's a sad, pathetic and really tragic circle of tit for tat and it predates anything for the formation of the State of Israel. That land was awash in blood before Jesus came to walk it ..and it'll be awash in blood centuries from now. I doubt it ever changes....but we'll get covered in that blood if we try and meddle as we keep doing, IMO. Just covered in it.

No, Wahhabism has a definite starting point. There has never been long standing peace anywhere on this planet. However, you seem to gloss over the fact that the Palestinians have been systematically tormented. If your house was bulldozed, what would your response be?

At the top, you are right. The leaders are all bastards. Same here. But the people of Palestine.....this was dropped in their laps.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


I don't gloss over the fact the Palestinians have been the general whipping boys for the area and region. In fact, that's the whole point. They have been the proverbial whipping boys for everyone. Jordan threw them out. Egypt has been no kinder and we won't even get into the home or lack of one they could find in Lebanon or Syria. These borders, in most cases, are modern inventions and mean the Palestinians have no more specific limitation to the current areas they are confined within than anyone else. Arabs AND Jews alike have planted them where they are....and they are as trapped from the East of the West Bank as they are from the West.

I think the reason I don't focus on the plight of the Palestinians in that regard is two fold.

First, the jews are hardly the victors across history or without their own persecution issues going back centuries. It's not a one sided street ..although ironic that in the end, it's a fight between the two most "victimized" minorities by all in the area. Given how the Palesitnians and Jews fought side by side before the end of the British Occupation and they went to war against each other for what was left? The Irony is thick indeed.

The second reason is simply that for most on the other side of these debates, the hate for anything Jewish and/or anything Israeli is SO intense and blinding (it's a sickness) that even bringing up the fact Palestinians have legitimate problems often invites a tirade on the evils of jews vs. the virtues of arabs and how the world would be Utopia but for the Jews polluting the place.

So I avoid that aspect of the topic as something to bring up myself ..because perspective is lost in about half a second almost every time.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I find it to be most ironic that the Jews have been persecuted over the centuries, and that it continues today in Palestine. That is what israel came to be known as by the Jews who are still there today (ethnically speaking). Sure, they dropped their religion in favor of Islam. Since Judaism is essentially a religion and not an ethnicity. Especially when you consider the wide expanse of European and Russian jews with not a stitch of middle eastern genetics.

In a bid to make amends for the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe, the Europeans begin to cleanse the only actual ethnic Jews: the Palestinians.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well actually, you're completely wrong. Who do you think made up the populous of Palestine before the 1940s?




Hint: Jews had a political party.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well I just had to reply to this. I actually know a few people that work with the PLA and a few more people who live under their "Authority." Unfortunately both groups relay the same message. And that is The PLA is part of Israel. Sure they got arabic faces and speak the language.. but their pocket books is filled with Israeli Money and the propaganda is nothing but re-runs from Israeli News. And in fact the only radio or tv they can get for the most part is Israeli or audited/fitted for Palestinian viewers by Israel.

reply to post by NeoMuslim


Well, now that depends on how far you want to go back and no, I'm not wrong about this. This is one of those topics I've actually learned about at ATS and related research from threads here, a great deal. I've been trying to find a thread a member did quite some time back that was apolitical and a true and accurate, straight history of who had the land, when and why to present day. A real mega-thread for time and effort put in...but after a few pages of searching I cannot find it.

However, Israel ..as a formal nation..had the land for nearly a thousand years.

Israel from 1312 to 460 B.C.E.

You might note, that was well before Islam came into being as a religion at all. So historically? Well... Not the best place to go in who has claim to what, for that patch of dirt.

In modern times? Well, this is one of the better sources I've found for straight history that isn't so boring it's bedtime reading. It covers it pretty well and from a few pages back from the source link here, it picks up from the fall of the Ottoman Empire/WW-I and the years following, where the real seeds for all that have come since had really started.

The crisis of Palestine reached a boiling point in the years immediately after the war. With international sympathy firmly behind the Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, Zionist leaders pressured the British to admit thousands of displaced Jews. At the same time, underground Jewish groups such as the Irgun and the renegade Stern Gang initiated a campaign of terrorism against the British. Washing its hands of the whole imbroglio, Britain declared in February 1947 that its mandate over Palestine would end on May 14, 1948. The matter was then addressed by the United Nations, which, after rejecting various plans, voted for the partition of Palestine in November 1947. The plan called for the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with al-Quds (Jerusalem) to be placed under UN trusteeship. More than half the territory, including the valuable coastal strip, had been allotted to the Jews, who only owned about 6% of the land. The Arabs were shocked, and conflict was inevitable.

On May 14, 1948, the British terminated their mandate over Palestine, and the Jews immediately proclaimed the independence of the state of Israel. The Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel, followed promptly by the United States. The tragedy of Palestine was born.

Source

Nothing is straight forward or easy in that region. The period where Jews and Palestinians had converging interests came after World War II and as the final push to get the British out. Then, of course, they went after each other...yet again..as it's been for a few thousand years now. Back and Forth.