❶ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
4  KILLED,  DOZENS  INJURED  AS  ISRAELI  ORDNANCE  EXPLODES  IN  GAZA
August 6, 2015
GAZA CITY ― At least four Palestinians were killed on Thursday and over 30 injured when an unexploded ordnance from last summer’s Israeli military offensive went off while clearing rubble from a destroyed house in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said.
____Palestinian medical sources at the Abu Yousif al-Najjar hospital in Rafah said four bodies and multiple wounded Palestinians arrived at the emergency room.
[. . . .]
____Over 7,000 unexploded ordnance were left throughout the Gaza Strip following last summer’s war
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❷ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ARAB  LEAGUE  TO  DISCUSS  DRAFT  UN  RESOLUTION  ON  SETTLER  VIOLENCE
August 5, 2015
CAIRO ― An Arab League follow-up committee on Wednesday recommended further talks to discuss putting forward a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council to protect Palestinians from settler violence, officials said.
¬¬¬¬____The Arab Peace Initiative meeting in Cairo ―chaired by Egyptian Foreign Minister Samih Shukri ―called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to create an international mechanism for protecting Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories.
[. . . .]
Palestine remains the “primary issue for Arabs,” Shukri said.
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Related – ABBAS: ISRAELI GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR SETTLER VIOLENCE

❸ From: PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY – WAFA.
UNRWA  FINANCIAL  DEFICIT  DEPRIVES  HALF  MILLION  REFUGEE  STUDENTS  OF  EDUCATION
NEW YORK – Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Riyad Mansour warned Wednesday that, should UNRWA’s financial deficit remain unfulfilled, some half a million Palestinian refugee students will be deprived of their right to education, development, and dignity.
____Mansour’s statement came as he sent identical letters to the United Nations Secretary General, the President of the UN General Assembly and President of the UN Security Council, addressing them on the current financial hardship that the UNRWA has been recently seeming.
____Mansour stressed that the current financial shortfall to UNRWA’s core budget, which exceeds $100 million, and the chronic structural underfunding endured for decades by the Agency, are seriously threatening the viability, continuity and quality of UNRWA’s vital education, health, relief and social services in all of its fields of operation.
(More. . .)
Related

❹ From: THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR (MEM)
ABU-MARZOUK:  HAMAS  VISIT  TO  SAUDI  WAS  ‘SUCCESSFUL’
August 5, 2015
Hamas’s visit to Saudi Arabia during Ramadan was “successful”, a senior Hamas official said yesterday.
____The group’s official website carried an interview with senior member Mousa Abu-Marzouk, who said: “The visit achieved its planned goals; therefore, it was successful.” He also said that any future plans would be carried out “based on joint agreement and cooperation.”
____He noted that Hamas hopes to forge good relationship with the East and the West and “is working to evade obstacles” in this regard. . . .
____Regarding the relationship with Egypt, he said that Egypt stopped its efforts regarding indirect talks with the Israeli occupation about a year ago.
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❺ Opinion
From: PALESTINE CHRONICLE
‘ISRAEL  HAS  NOT  CHANGED  FOR  THE  WORSE,  IT’S  ALWAYS  BEEN  BAD’
August 4, 2015
By Alan Hart
The quote above is from a Mondoweiss article by Avigail Abarbanel with the headline “It’s time for American Jews to recognize that they have been duped (by Zionism).”
____This very courageous Jewish lady who now lives in Scotland is a psychotherapist . . . . She was born in Tel Aviv in 1964. During her two years of compulsory service with the Israeli army in which she became a Staff Sergeant, it invaded Lebanon. In 1991 she left Israel to make a new life in Australia. . . . In 2001 she renounced her Israeli citizenship.
____That done she became an activist for Palestinian rights. She supports a one-state solution and a full right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. She says: “To state it clearly, I no longer believe that Israel has a right to exist as an exclusively Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinian people.”
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“WAITING  FOR  THE  RETURN,”  BY  MAHMOUD  DARWISH
The huts of my beloved on the sand―
I am staying awake with the rain.
I am the son of Ulysses who waited for the mail from the North;
A sailor called him, yet he didn’t go.
He anchored the boats
And took to the highest mountain.

Rock! On which my father prayed,
Shelter revolutionaries.
I will not sell you for precious pearls,
Nor will I ever leave.

The voices of my beloved stride over the wind,
And overrun castles.
Wait for us, Mother, at the door,
We are coming back.
The time is ours;
The wind blows as the sailor will,
And the ship overpowers the tide.
What will you cook for us, Mother?
We are coming back.
They’ve looted the oil jars
And the flour sacks, too?
Then bring us the corn of our fields.
We are hungry.

Translated by Dr. Yehia El-Ezaby, American University in Cairo
From: A LOVER FROM PALESTINE AND OTHER POEMS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PALESTINIAN POETRY. Ed. Abdul Wahab Al-Messiri. Washington, DC: Free Palestine Press, 1970. Available from Amazon.
About Mahmoud Darwish