OUTSIDE NILIN (West Bank), July 7: Israeli soldiers fired teargas and stun grenades on Monday to stifle protests against the West Bank barrier, declared illegal by the World Court four years ago this week.

The army kept a curfew on the Palestinian town of Nilin for the fourth day, using force to keep a small group of protesters and journalists from approaching the cordoned-off town of 5,000.

Ayman Nafi, the blockaded town’s mayor, said vegetables, dairy products and some medicines were in short supply and the local pharmacy had not been allowed to open.

“They want to send a message: resisting the construction of the wall will inflict suffering and damage upon you,” Nafi said. “Their policy will increase our determination to prevent them from erecting this racist wall.”

The army imposed a curfew on Nilin on Friday after violence erupted during protests at a barrier construction site.

An army spokesman said eight security personnel and two workers were hurt in protests in the area over the past month.

Israel says the network of razor-wire fences and concrete barricades helps keep out Palestinian suicide bombers who killed nearly 300 Israelis in the three years between the start of an uprising in 2000 and the beginning of work on the barrier.

Palestinians say the barrier, which loops around Jewish settlements that dot the occupied territory, cutting off Palestinian villages from swathes of agricultural fields, is a land grab that could deny them a contiguous and viable state.

Khalil Amira, a farmer walking to his home near Nilin, said the army denied him access to 10 hectares of his land last month because of plans to extend the barrier, depriving him of the olive groves that provide his family’s livelihood.

“They want to remove us from our land — it’s illegal,” Amira, 61, said. “The land means I am still here and still alive. Without my land, I’m nothing. What do I do?”Mohammad Khawaja, a bank worker, said by telephone from Nilin that soldiers had arrested people who ventured outside during the night-and-day curfew imposed in the town on Sunday.

“When soldiers came to search my house early this morning, I asked one of them, ‘What are you doing to Nilin?’” Khawaja said.

“The soldier said ‘The wall’s going up, no matter what’.”

RULING: On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague ruled that Israel’s construction of the 720-km barrier on occupied land was illegal. The United Nations says Israel has ignored that ruling.—Reuters