❶ From: PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY – WAFA
ISRAELI  POLICE  ORDERS  TWO  JERUSALEMITE  FAMILIES  OUT  OF  THEIR  HOMES
August 5, 2015
JERUSALEM – Israeli police Wednesday asked two East Jerusalem Palestinian families to leave their homes, under the pretext of absentee ownership, according to WAFA correspondent.
____Israeli police ordered Sabri Abu-Nab and Abdullah Abu-Nab . . . and their families to leave their homes before August 11, because the two properties are “absentee”.
____Jewish settler organizations, claim the two homes are located on the site of an abandoned Jewish synagogue.
____Abdullah Abu-Nab . . . said settler groups had no proof of ownership of the two homes, which have been inhabited by the Abu-Nab family for hundreds of years, even before the establishment of Israel.
____Zuhair Rajabi, a pro-Jerusalemites activist and advocate, said . . . lawyers will travel to Turkey to obtain paperwork from the Ottoman era that proves the Abu-Nab’s ownership of the two homes.
(More . . .)

❷ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  3  PALESTINIANS  IN  EAST  JERUSALEM
August 5, 2015
JERUSALEM ― Israeli forces detained three Palestinians after raiding their homes in the neighborhood of al-Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem, locals said.
____Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, a member of a local monitoring team, said that Israeli forces detained two brothers, identified as Allan and Anan Obeid, in addition to Ayob Bahaa Obeid.
____Abu al-Hummus said that clashes broke out between Israeli forces and Palestinians during the detention raid.
(More. . .)

❸ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAEL  ARRESTS  SECOND  SUSPECTED  JEWISH  EXTREMIST
August 4, 2015
JERUSALEM (AFP) — A second suspected Jewish extremist was arrested Tuesday in Israel following the firebombing of a Palestinian home that burned a baby alive, the Shin Bet internal security force said.
____Israel on Monday arrested Meir Ettinger, whose grandfather Meir Kahane founded the racist anti-Palestinian Kach group, and a court prolonged his detention until the weekend on suspicion of “nationalist crimes”.
____”A second individual, Eviatar Slonim, was arrested for belonging to an extremist organisation,” a Shin Bet spokeswoman told AFP, without providing details on any charges against him.
____Israeli television reported that the office of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein had given permission for authorities to place three suspected Jewish extremists in “administrative detention”.
(More. . .)

❹ From: PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
ISRAELI  SETTLERS  SPRAY  WALLS  WITH  ANTI-ARAB  SLOGANS,  EAST  JERUSALEM
August 5, 2015
Extremist Israeli settlers on Wednesday morning have sprayed hate slogans on walls of homes and shops near Damascus gate in East Jerusalem, calling for “Death of Arabs” . . . .
____For their part, Israeli occupation authorities claimed to have opened an investigation in the matter, but Jerusalem locals assured that these investigations are never taken seriously.
____They added that, if detained, the attackers are released under the claim that they have mental-issues. Despite the numerous attacks on Islamic and christian sanctuaries, none of the extremist Jewish settlers is held accountable for their crimes.
(More. . .)

❺ Opinion
From: +972 MAGAZINE
THE  SILENT  TRANSFER  OF  PALESTINIANS  FROM  JERUSALEM
Betty Herschman
August 4, 2015
There are many ways to test the notion of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. One could do a comparative analysis of how much the municipality invests in East and West Jerusalem — roughly 1:9. One could drive up the road that neatly divides the bougainvillea draped neighborhood/settlement of East Talpiot and Palestinian Jabal Mukaber, a model of a neighborhood excluded from the city planning process; or consider that Palestinians, nearly 40 percent of the population of the city, are second-class residents denied the right to vote in national elections. For absolute clarity, one need only look at the eight Jerusalem neighborhoods that are located squarely within the municipal borders…but relegated to the other side of the separation barrier.
____ Findings from Ir Amim’s comprehensive new report, “Displaced in their Own City,” reveal that at least 80,000 and possibly more than 100,000 Palestinians — between one-fourth to one-third of the entire Palestinian population of Jerusalem, linked to the city for generations by ties of family, livelihood, economics, identity, culture, and religion — now live in these abandoned enclaves. The area of Kufr Aqab and Semiramis as well as the Shuafat refugee camp, including the neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Shehadeh, and Dahiyat al-Salaam, are totally, indisputably divided from Jerusalem by a concrete wall and checkpoints, as well as the municipality’s near complete abdication of responsibility for providing basic services, safety oversight and law enforcement.
(More. . .)
(See *** below for related articles.)

“GIFT,” BY SEEMA V. ATALLA

One afternoon
you tried to give me Jerusalem.

Knobbly onion domes,
purple windows stained with God’s tears
carrot juice, cobblestones
your girlhood ringlets, sunny laugh
the very gates of the Old City
so faithfully embroidered

It was impossible ― too precious
the gift, too short the time
or so I thought then

You suffered, like Jerusalem
and left us

Now I think of your finger
the one that clutched a live wire
the day you nearly fell off the roof
the pinkie forever clenched, scarred
stunted
a lifetime that never healed.

Decades later, oceans away, I want to tell you:
I have it.
The gift you tried to give me. I’ve found it
it’s been with me all along.

Jerusalem like a blue bead embedded in my tongue
Jerusalem like a rock in the pit of my stomach
ring whose metal digs into my skin
ache under one drib, which never goes away

Jerusalem
the pain cross-stitched into my heart
with a needle that pierces both ways:
going in and coming out.

From BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE ISREL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. By Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012.  Available from Barnes & Noble

Palestinian-American Seema V. Atalla was born in New York, completed high school in Amman, Jordan, and now lives in Southern California where she teaches at Mt. San Antonio College. In 1992 she obtained an MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. She is best-known for her translations of Arabic short stories and poems.
Poem first published in We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, edited by Kannal Boullata and Kathy Engel (Interlink Press, 2007).

***ARTICLES  RELATING  TO  ETHNIC  CLEANSING  OF  JERUSALEM.
http://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/chained-to-the-fence-inequality-in-east-jerusalem-37812/
http://socialistworker.org/2014/11/19/israel-tightens-the-noose
http://www.globalpost.com/article/6545247/2015/05/11/israels-court-allows-nationalistic-jewish-parade-march-through-jelms-arab
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/06/labyrinth-daytrip-jerusalem
http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/east-jerusalem-family-latest-targets-of-settler-eviction-campaign
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/jerusalem-babylon/.premium-1.623685
http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.626327
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/11449-activists-call-for-global-action-to-demand-freedom-for-jerusalem-and-its-people