Activists made a hole in Israel"s West Bank wall for the second time in less than a week on Monday in a demonstration to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Reuters reported. Their faces masked, the activists tethered a 2-metre (6-foot ) wide section of the cement barrier to a truck which then pulled it over. The crowd of around 50, which had gathered at a section of the barrier near an Israeli checkpoint at Qalandiya, cheered as the 6-metre (20-foot) high section fell. Israeli troops fired tear gas at the crowd, some of whom threw stones over the wall. Several demonstrators passed through the hole they had made, hoisting a Palestinian flag and setting ablaze tyres on the other side. The panels of the walls in Israel"s separation barrier are cast in the same inverted T-shape as the wall constructed through Berlin by communist East Germany. Israel began building its barrier of fences and walls at the height of the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000 and it now runs along most of the West Bank border, at many points encroaching into West Bank territory. -- SPA
