From MONDOWEISS
ONE LAST APPEAL BEFORE A BEDOUIN VILLAGE IN THE NEGEV IS DEMOLISHED AND A JEWISH TOWN IS BUILT IN ITS PLACE
Allison Deger
June 1, 2015
The Bedouin village of Umm el-Hieran in Israel’s southern Negev desert is running out of time and appeals before it will be razed to the ground and an exclusively Jewish town will be built in its place. After a decade of legal battles—a matrix of court cases over lands, houses, and demolition orders—the Bedouins now have one final petition at their disposal, a re-trial. If they lose this hearing their township will be demolished and the saga will end with a modern Jewish bedroom community owned by a private Israeli developer that does not sell homes to Arabs. . .
____. . . In the lead up to the final ruling expected in the next few months the 25 Jewish-Israeli families who want to move into Umm el-Hieran are already living in mobile houses in a nearby nature reserve. They relocated there in 2009. Set behind a barbed-wire fence and a gate, they are ready to motor their caravans downhill to the Bedouin town as soon as the bulldozers remove the last shanty structure. Their hope is to construct 2,500 units serving more than 10,000 Israelis.
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From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER CALLS FOR LIFTING OF GAZA BLOCKADE DURING VISIT
June 1, 2015
GAZA CITY (Ma’an)
The German foreign minister on Monday called on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza in return for Palestinian security reassurances during a visit to the beleaguered coastal enclave.
____Frank-Walter Steinmeier, heading a delegation of 60 German officials, arrived in the region on Saturday to hold talks with top Palestinian and Israeli officials.
____During Monday’s visit to Gaza he said the enclave was a “powder keg” at risk of exploding, and called for efforts to quicken reconstruction.
____”I came out of all my discussions yesterday in Jerusalem and in Ramallah with the hope that all parties are mindful that here we are sitting on a powder keg here and that we must ensure that the fuse does not catch light,” Steinmeier said at a press conference in Gaza City’s fishing port. . .
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From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
LAWYER: PALESTINIAN CHILDREN FACING TORTURE IN ISRAELI JAILS
May 31, 2015
Palestinian children are being beaten and tortured in a “heinous” way by Israeli soldiers during interrogation, a Palestinian Authority lawyer has said.
____Hiba Masalha, a lawyer for the PA committee of prisoners’ affairs, said in a statement on Sunday that teenage detainees are being “terrified, threatened and blackmailed” in contravention of international law and conventions advocating children’s rights.
____Masalha said that she had visited Section 3 of Megeddo prison, where 68 Palestinian teens are currently being held. Most of the detainees she met had been arrested from an orphanage in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem. . .
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From THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE
Special report
ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PALESTINE CAPITAL MARKET AUTHORITY
Abeer Odeh
June 2015
The Palestine Capital Market Authority (PCMA) is a quasi-governmental agency . . . established in 2004 as the regulator of the Palestinian non-banking financial sector. The PCMA is governed by a board of directors . . . and its mission is to regulate, supervise, and oversee the securities, insurance, financial leasing, and mortgage finance sectors in Palestine . . . the PCMA is responsible for developing and maintaining sound capital markets in Palestine. . . .
____During recent years, Palestine has successfully positioned itself as an emerging nation on the international stage by joining several international organizations where it can demonstrate its capabilities. After the state of Palestine was granted observer status by the United Nations General Assembly . . . February 2014, the PCMA was admitted as the 124th ordinary member of the International Organization of Securities (IOSCO). . . .
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From JONATHAN COOK: THE BLOG FROM NAZARETH
BEN GURION ’48 LETTER BARRED RETURN TO HAIFA
Jonathan Cook
May 27, 2015
Over many decades, Israel’s self-serving deceptions about the Nakba in 1948 have been exposed for the lies Palestinians already knew them to be.
____It was long accepted in the west that, as Israel claimed, Palestinians left their homes because they had been ordered to do so by neighbouring Arab leaders. . .
____. . . For decades Israel’s supporters have been arguing that Haifa, one of Palestine’s most important cities, was not ethnically cleansed of its population. The tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled under Israeli attack in April 1948 were later urged to return, according to Israel’s supporters, but they chose not to . . . But now a letter signed by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the engineer of its ethnic cleansing policy in 1948, shows that, far from Haifa’s doors being thrown open, Ben Gurion ordered that the refugees be barred from returning. . .
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“Jaffa,” by Rashid Hussein
An opiate cloud hangs over Jaffa,
And the lean roads are pregnant with flies and boredom.
In the streets of heaven, the moon’s funeral.
Jaffa is then without a moon;
Jaffa is then blood on a stone.

Jaffa, who suckled me the milk of orange,
Thirsts! She, whose waves watered the rain.
Jaffa, who broke the days on these sands,
Is motionless, her back broken.
Jaffa, who once was a garden, its trees, men,
Is now an opium den dulling our senses.

I was in Jaffa, removing the rats from her forehead,
Raising the rubble, uncovering corpses without knees,
Burying the stars in the sands and fences.
I took the bullets from her bones and sipped anger.

And, when feeling tired, I got myself a dry bush,
Smoked it and rested.

From A Lover from Palestine and Other Poems: An Anthology of Palestinian Poetry. Ed. By Abdul Wahab Al-Messiri. Washington, D.C.: Free Palestine Press, 1970.

Rashid Hussein was born in Nazareth in the Galilee in 1936. After college he was a school teacher, but was dismissed for his political views. He edited Al-Fajr, an Arabic journal that was banned in 1962. He later wrote on Arab affairs for Uri Aveneri’s paper Ha-olam Hazeh.
____He published two volumes of poetry in 1957 and 1959. He was one of the organizers of Al-Ard, the revolutionary Palestinian movement whose goal was equality for all citizens of Israel that started in 1958 and was banned in 1964. He was imprisoned by Israel several times. He finally chose self-exile after the 1967 War. He emigrated to New York where he lived and wrote until his death in 1977.