❶ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY

Israeli commander kills Palestinian teenager near Ramallah

July 3, 2015
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A senior Israeli commander shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank Friday after he threw stones at his patrol, medics and Israeli officials said.
____Muhammad Hani al-Kasbah,17, was killed by two bullets after allegedly throwing stones at an Israeli military vehicle close to the Qalandiya checkpoint, south of Ramallah, medics told Ma’an.
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❷ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
PALESTINIANS COMMEMORATE MURDER OF TEENAGER ABU KHDEIR
July 2, 2015
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in East Jerusalem Thursday to commemorate the first anniversary of a teenager being burned to death last summer.
____Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, was abducted and killed on July 2, 2014, weeks after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
____Protesters in the streets of Abu Khdeir’s Shufat neighborhood waved Palestinian flags and held up posters and images of the boy in a beige baseball cap, an AFP correspondent said.
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❸ From THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
WHEN WILL DAD COME BACK?
Refaat Alareer
The story of my brother, martyr Mohammed Alareer
July 2, 2015
The last time my little niece Raneem saw her dad was when the Israeli shells were falling on the heads and houses of more than 10,000 Palestinians in Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, last summer. My brother Mohammed took the time to help guide many families to shortcuts in a desperate attempt to escape the flying shrapnel and debris.
____He never came back. Not because he did not keep his word, but rather because the Israeli occupation has developed a policy of destroying people and their relationships.
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❹Analysis
From THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR (MEM)
RAND CORPORATION PREDICTS A BLEAK FUTURE FOR ISRAEL

Nonviolent resistance would cost Palestinians $12 billion over ten years and the Israelis $80 billion. Violent uprising, the worst of all possible scenarios, would cost Israel $250 billion (slightly less than its 2014 GDP) and the Palestinians $46 billion (more than three times their 2014 GDP).

Nasim Ahmed
July 2, 2015
The unsustainability of Israel’s occupation is acknowledged almost universally, yet its permanence is the only reality known to most Jews and Palestinians. Its supposed temporary nature has not prevented Israel from becoming more entrenched in its occupation, thus making any future peace deal unviable.
____This unbridgeable divide is reflected in the way that new generations of Israelis make increasingly greater demands on Palestinians . . . . while Palestinians have reached a near consensus that . . . there is nothing left for them to give other than to admit total submission and humiliation.
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❺ Opinion
From +972 MAGAZINE
ONE YEAR SINCE GAZA: WHY THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A ‘PRECISION STRIKE’

You often hear of an airstrike on Gaza being labeled a ‘precision strike.’ But how precise can a half- or one-ton bomb be when dropped on an area the size of Detroit?

Natasha Roth
July 2, 2015
“In Gaza, we use bombs that are extremely precise, and strike only Hamas targets – not civilians…” – Lt. Omer, Israeli Air Force Pilot [. . . .]
____When you read about an airstrike on Gaza by the Israeli Air Force, you invariably hear it being described as a “precision strike.” [. . . .]
____But look a little closer next time you read about the IAF’s “precision strikes.” . . . a phrase culled straight from the euphemistic military patois that goes into much of the IDF Spokesperson’s press releases (note that this is far from a uniquely Israeli phenomenon—see “surgical strikes,” below).
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“THE YOUTH,” BY MAHMOUD SHUKAIR
That tender-skinned youth did not stint in giving his blood for us. He understood. He understood, by virtue of his good instincts, that we needed clean air and a country, so he did not stint.
____It was his right to live so that he could get to know the country’s cities, one by one. It was his right to live so that he could go to university and read, at the least, ten thousand books. It was his right to live so that he could have a beautiful wife who would share the worries and joys of the world with him. It was his right to live so that he could live, like everyone else. Yet he understood by virtue of his good instincts that we. . . . so he didn’t stint. There he is leaving us now, clutching to the last a stone that he was going to hurl at the enemy.
―Translated especially for this collection. (One of the “vignettes” from the collection of short stories. These “vignettes” are more like prose poems than short stories.)

From Shukair, Mahmoud. Mordechai’s Moustache and his Wife’s Cats, and other Stories. Translated by Issa J. Boullata, Elizabeth Whitehouse, Elizabeth Winslow, and Christina Phillips. London: Banipal Books, 2007.
Mahmoud Shukair has been a prodigious creator of short stories since the mid-1960s. He was born in 1941 in Jerusalem and grew up there. He studied at Damascus University and has an MA in Philosophy and Sociology (1965).
____He has published numerous volumes, including nine short story collections, 13 books for children, a volume of folk tales, a biography of a city, and a travelogue. He has written six series for TV, three plays, and countless newspaper and magazine articles, including for online publications.
____He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist, was editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine, Al-Talia’a [The Vanguard] 1994-96, and editor-in-chief of Dafatir Thaqafiya [Cultural File] magazine 1996-2000, when he was also director of literature for the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
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