Introduction
At noon on July 7 2005 around 80 Palestinians from the village of Nazlat Issa in the West Bank, accompanied by international activists, carried out a demonstration against the Annexation Wall in their village.
Nazlat Issa is separates a few houses from the rest of the village. The residents of these houses have to pass through a checkpoint in order to get to work, to school, or to visit friends and relatives living in the neighboring Palestinian city of Baqa Gharbiya inside Israel. The checkpoint is always manned by soldiers or border police.
There was a group of Israeli soldiers with four jeeps waiting for us at the checkpoint. We approached to within about 50m of the checkpoint, chanting, singing, and dancing. The soldiers declared the village a closed military zone.
After the demonstration returned to the center of the village, Israeli soldiers entered into the village and arrested two Palestinian boys, aged 15 and 18.
The younger boy was released about one hour after his arrest but the
other boy was taken to an Israeli police station inside a nearby illegal Israeli settlement. He is currently being held without charge in an Israeli military prison called Salem, in the northern West Bank.
