❶ From PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
EREKAT ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF 1967 OCCUPATION: ISRAEL CONTINUES TO DENY PALESTINIAN RIGHTS
June 5, 2015
Over 12 million Palestinians living in the occupied State of Palestine and worldwide are commemorating 67 years of the ongoing Nakba and 48 years of Israel military occupation since 1967.
____“The Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, is determined to undermine the Palestinian right to live in dignity, and is obstructing our right to self-determination,” said Dr. Saeb Erekat, Member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee. . .
____ The 5th of June marks the 48th anniversary of the six-day war and the Palestinian Naksa, in which Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, The Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan heights.
(More. . .)

❷ From PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY (WAFA)
ISRAELI FORCES DEMOLISH OVER 30 RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURES IN JORDAN VALLEY
June 4, 2015
Israeli forces early Thursday demolished over thirty residential structures and livestock barns in the northern Jordan Valley localities, according to a municipal source.
____Escorting bulldozers, Israeli forces broke into and cordoned the area off and prevented locals from approaching the structures slated for demolition.
____According to Head of al-Malih Village Council, ‘Aref Daraghma, forces proceeded afterwards to level and demolish residential structures, livestock barns and tanks belonging to four families without any prior notice purportedly for being built without license. . .
____Mayor of Tubas and the Northern Jordan Valley Ahmad As‘ad slammed the demolition as a ‘racist Israeli occupation practice’.
____“These practices unveil the true face of the Israeli democracy. Carried out a day after Israeli general elections, they indicate that the Israeli government is led by settlers, seeking to fulfill their plans and expel indigenous Palestinian communities from the Jordan Valley in order to expand settlements and Judaize the land,” remarked As‘ad. . . .
(More. . .)

❸ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
IN SHADOW OF SETTLEMENT, SUSIYA VILLAGERS VOW TO FIGHT DISPLACEMENT
Charlie Hoyle
June 4, 2015
KHIRBET SUSIYA (Ma’an) — “Seven times they have demolished it,” Susiya resident Nasser Nawaja says. “But the villagers have built it again every time.”
____One of the 300 or so Palestinians living in the herding and shepherding community in the south Hebron hills, Nawaja is part of the latest generation of Palestinians who have inherited a decades-old struggle against forced displacement by Israel.
____”People are very sad. Every night they pray to God that their homes will not be demolished, the situation is not normal,” he told Ma’an . . .
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(Background)
(More background)

Haifa neighborhood before 1948

❹ From ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER (AIC)
STATUS OF PALESTINE IN 2015
June 4, 2015
Some of this information is from a summary issued by the Negotiations Affairs Department (an independent group advising Palestinian negotiators):
– It has been 67 years since the occupation of 78% of Palestine in 1948.
– It has been 48 years since the occupation of the other 22% of Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) that started 1967.
– Today there are 12.5 million Palestinians. 7.2 million of us are refugees/displaced people (six million from the ethnic cleansing of 1948-1950, 843,737 from 1967 Naksa, and 345,217 internal displacement within the green line, 57,669 internally displaced in 1967 areas).
– UNRWA has 5.4 million registered refugees and has established and operates in 59 official refugee camps (17 unofficial camps). . .
– When the Balfour declaration was issued in 1917, there were some 850,000 Palestinians – only 7 percent of us were Jewish-Palestinians (and most Jews were also opposed to Zionism).
– Roughly 6.5 million Palestinians still live in Palestine, though they are restricted to use 8.7% of the land (Qumsiyeh calculation) and have no sovereignty even in those remaining areas.
(MORE. . .)

❺ From +972 MAGAZINE ONLINE
HOW THE IDF’S HI-TECH REVOLUTION CHEAPENS PALESTINIAN LIVES
Natasha Roth
June 3, 2015
The IDF is developing new technology that will eventually cut down on the need for soldiers to go to the front lines. What does this mean for the Palestinians whose lives will hang on the decision of a machine?
The Israeli army is optimistic that there will be no need for soldiers to be stationed on Israel’s borders in the future. Not because there will be peace, and not because there will be no need to maintain militarized borders. Rather it is because they are working towards unmanned, weaponized patrol vehicles that will do the job instead.
____A blog post on the topic published on the IDF’s English-language website, which was was shared on the IDF’s official Facebook page, was accompanied by the comment: “In 10 years there won’t be any soldiers guarding Israel’s borders. . .
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“A WOMAN,” BY SAMIH FARAJ

Take one step towards the old house
And another down the stairs to the home
Where a woman sits in the early evening light:
Light, the radiance of a dove, shining;
Or light like the light from a shrine.
No one knows where she has come from –
Through which quarter or distant land she passed.
What shadow the light cast when she’d gone.
No one knows the flood she passed through –
The risks she took, the daily deluge.
No one can measure the vast sea she crossed,
The hazards she held in her small hands.
An ordinary woman: one step at a time, one step
On the land lacking, on the barren soil; one step
On the time passing; one step on the clock ticking.
Except for something in her now rising, hot, scolding,
Even her dreams are besieged, it seems; yet
In the middle of a siege it’s still possible to dream.
A dream of the old house, and her first step.
—Translated by Jackie Kay

Samih Faraj is a teacher in Deheishe Refugee Camp and a lecturer at Hebron and Bethlehem Universities. He has been editor-in-chief of several journals, including VOICE OF THE NATION.
About education in Deheishe Refugee Camp.
Poem from A BIRD IS NOT A STONE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY PALESTINIAN POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available from Amazon.com.
About the book