❶ From AL MONITOR
BEDOUIN FACE EXPULSION AS ISRAEL BUILDS GREATER JERUSALEM
Aziza Nofal
June 4, 2015
RAMALLAH, West Bank — For years, Umm Mohamad, from the Abu Nawar Bedouin compound north of occupied Jerusalem, has been trying to find a house for her son Walid so he can get married and settle in the area where she lives. Her efforts have not paid off, though, as the Israeli occupation forces refuse to allow them to build a new house, not even a tent.
____The house Umm Mohamad and her sons are hoping to get is only a tent, but the plan is far-fetched as Israel is trying to expel them from their land to another location that was built to accommodate Bedouin and other communities. . . . [The family is] part of the 700 Bedouin living in the area facing the Ma’ale Adumim settlement — the largest in the West Bank. . .
____Israel issued a May 14 decision to expel the population to a region in the north of Al-Eizariya numbering 46 settlements of Bedouin groups from the highlands of Jerusalem.
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❷ From INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER (IMEMC)
SOLDIERS ATTACK PROTESTERS MARKING THE 48TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NAKSA, IN HEBRON
Bassam Shweiki
June 06, 2015
Israeli soldiers attacked, Saturday, Palestinian protesters as they were commemorating the 1967 occupation of the full area of historic Palestine by the Israeli military. The demonstrators tried to reach the Bayt Al-Barakah (i.e. House of Blessing) in front of Arroub Refugees Camp, a building which was built on land belonging to the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.
____The land in question was recently threatened to be confiscated by the Israeli occupation authorities to establish a new settlement. Following the threat, the Israeli military declared the area as a military closed area.
____Dozens of activists participated in this demonstration, which was called for by the Hebron Defense Committee. . .
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❸ From MONDOWEISS +972
12 PALESTINIAN MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT ARE IN ISRAELI PRISON
Noam Rotem
June 6, 2015
An Israeli military court decided last week to continue detaining Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian parliament, who has been imprisoned by Israel for the past two months. Jarrar was first arrested and put in administrative detention, which in effect meant that she could be held indefinitely without being charged or seeing trial. However, in the wake of a global campaign for her release, the state decided to release her from administrative detention and put her on trial.
____Jarrar is not the only member of the Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to be held by Israel. Israel is currently imprisoning 12 other Palestinians parliamentarians, who were elected in the last democratic elections to take place in the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Some are in administrative detention, which in the eyes of the international community makes them political prisoners. . .
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❹ From THE PALESTINIAN INFORMATION CENTER
REPORT: 850 THOUSAND PALESTINIANS ARRESTED SINCE 1967
June 5, 2015
Data from the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-detainees show that Israel has arrested more than 850 thousand Palestinians since 1967, consisting 20 percent of the Palestinian people.
____The commission expressed deep concerns over “the escalated Israeli daily arrests and violations that mainly target the Palestinian society.”
____Daily arrest policy is a main feature of Israeli occupation, the statement said, pointing out that more than ten arrests are daily reported in occupied Palestine.
____Since 1967, 206 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails, including 71 prisoners were tortured to death. . .
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❺ From PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
UN CONFIDENTIAL REPORT: ISRAEL VIOLATED CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
June 6, 2015
A confidential UN document obtained by Reuters on Friday reported an alarming number of child victims in the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza. The document was prepared by UN agencies for submission to the UN special envoy for children in armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, as she prepares a draft of the annual list of violators of children’s rights.
____The 22-page confidential document reportedly uses strong language in its condemnation of violations of children’s rights during the attacks on Gaza. It specifies what it said were unlawful deaths and injuries caused by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in its attacks on schools and hospitals.
____2100 Palestinians, mostly civilians and around 540 children, were killed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza. 371 of the children killed were 12 years old or younger.
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“THE OLIVE TREE,” BY TAWFIQ ZAYYAD
Because I do not knit wool,
Because I am always hunted
And my home is always raided,
Because I cannot buy a piece of paper,
I shall carve all what I see
And all my secrets
On the homeyard olive tree.

I shall carve my story and the scenes of my tragedy;
I shall carve my sorrows
In the orange grove and on the tombs of the dead;
I shall carve all the bitterness I taste
(Until my tongue is sweetened by days to come).
I shall carve the serial number
Of every piece of land,
The spot of my village on the map.
The destroyed houses,
My uprooted trees,
All the crushed wild blooms

I shall care the names
Of all the connoisseurs of torture,
The names of their prisons,
The trade-mark of their chains,
The archives of the jailors
And their maledictions.
I shall carve:
“Fafr Qassem, I will never forget you,
And your memory, Deir Yassin will never face.”
I shall also carve;
“After all our trials and pains
We have finally reached
The heights of intense tragedy.”

I shall carve the sun’s beckonings
And the moon’s whisperings
And what a skylark recalls
At a deserted well.

For the sake of remembrance,
I shall continue to carve,
On the homeyard olive tree,
All the scenes of my tragedy,
And all the stages of the disaster,
From the beginning
Till the end.
—translation by Sulafa Hijjawi and Abdul Wahab Al-Messiri

About Fafr Qassem
About Deir Yassin
From: A Lover from Palestine and Other Poems: An Anthology of Palestinian Poetry. Ed. Abdul Wahab Al-Messiri. Washington, DC: Free Palestine Press, 1970.

Tawfiq Zyyad (7 May 1929 – 5 July 1994) was a Palestinian politician well known for his “poetry of protest”. Born in the Galilee, Zyyad studied literature in USSR. He was elected mayor of Nazareth, a victory that “surprised and alarmed” Israelis. Elected to the Knesset 1973, Zyyad was active in pressuring the Israeli government to change its policies towards Palestinians both in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. A report he co-authored. . .
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