Israeli soldiers suppress symbolic wedding near Jerusalem

Israeli soldiers Saturday suppressed a symbolic Palestinian wedding that aimed to protest Israeli laws and policies preventing the union of Palestinians from inside Israel with those living in theWest Bank. The participants gathered in Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem but inside the West Bank, to join the groom, who is from the West Bank, and the bride, who comes from the city of Nazareth in the north of Israel. They wanted to protest in a non-violent way the Israeli obstruction of their right as Palestinians to be together as a family. Participants, both foreign and Palestinian, sang traditional Palestinian songs and stood fast against Israeli soldiers who threw sound bombs at them and attempted several times to arrest a number of participants. The groom, Hazim, who is part of the campaign, said that they aim “to resist Israel’s racist laws which separate Palestinian couples and prevent the marriage between them.” He said “two people were supposed to participate in the event, but they retracted fearing that Israel might separate them.” The bus carrying participants from the West Bank was denied access at Jaba' checkpoint. Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint refused to let the bus through and proceeded to sabotage the wedding and the initiative. The Israeli soldiers have ended the wedding before it even started; they blocked the bride who was in her white gown and traditional kuffiya and stopped her from meeting the groom who was waiting on the other side of the checkpoint and the wall separating the West Bank from its natural surroundings. Clashes erupted between the soldiers, who screamed through loudspeakers that this protest was illegal, and the participants who responded “this is not a protest but a wedding.” “Love in the Time of Apartheid” which organized the wedding, is a campaign by Palestinians that aims to “expose and challenge Israeli laws preventing the reunification of Palestinian families when one partner holds Israeli citizenship while the other is a resident of the Palestinian territories,” said the campaign’s press release. The initiative came in light of an Israeli “Citizenship and Entry into Israel” law that, according to the United Nations Human Rights Committee “suspends the possibility, with certain rare exceptions, of family reunification between an Israeli citizen and a person residing in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip, thus adversely affecting the lives of many families.” The campaign’s goal is to pressure Israel into “revoking the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law for all and stop all related discriminatory policies that hinder the reunification of Palestinian families,” said the press release.