BEFORE ❶ A MUST-READ. (Editor’s note: This is a condensed statement of the information anyone needs to understand much of the history of the “Middle East Crisis” of the last 67 years—by a woman who has lived through and written about all of it.) Samia’s blog.

❶ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
EXTREMIST  SETTLERS  ATTACK  ANOTHER  HOME  IN  DUMA
August 8, 2015
NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli settlers on Saturday morning attacked a Palestinian home with firebombs and rocks in the West Bank village of Duma, little more than a week after an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler and his father were killed in a deadly attack in the same village.
____Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that “a number of extremist settlers hurled two fire bombs at the home of Mahmoud Fazza al-Kaabna.”
____The fire bombs, Daghlas said, landed on the outer wall of the home near a window, but did not make it inside the house.
The attackers also hurled stones at the house, with one of them hitting al-Kaabna in the upper body.
More. . .

❷ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  FORCES  SUPPRESS  MARCH   OVER  WEST  BANK  CHURCH  SETTLEMENT  PLANS
August 8, 2015
HEBRON ― Israeli forces on Saturday suppressed a Palestinian march protesting Israeli plans to turn a southern West Bank church compound into a settlement outpost, as well as other Israeli “crimes,” locals said.
____Rateb al-Jbour, a coordinator for popular committees in southern Hebron, said that Israeli forces suppressed the march near al-Arrub refugee camp while it was making its way from the town of Beit Ummar towards the church compound, known as Beit al-Baraka.
____The 38-dunam compound has been in the spotlight since Israeli media reported in May that in 2012 the site was secretly PURCHASED BY AN AMERICAN MILLIONAIRE, IRVING MOSKOWITZ, [emphasis added] with the intention of turning it into a settlement outpost.
More. . .

❸ From: INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER (IMEMC)
INFANT  MORTALITY  RATE  RISES  IN  GAZA  FOR  FIRST  TIME  IN  FIFTY  YEARS

August 8, 2015 Press Release for Immediate Publication
United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA
via UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness

Jerusalem― The infant mortality rate in Gaza has risen for the first time in five decades, according to an UNRWA study, and UNRWA’s Health Director says the blockade may be contributing to the trend.
____Every five years, UNRWA conducts a survey of infant mortality across the region, and the 2013 results were released this week.
____The number of babies dying before the age of one has consistently gone down over the last decades in Gaza, from 127 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 20.2 in 2008. At the last count, in 2013, it had risen to 22.4 per 1,000 live births.
More. . .

❹From: PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY – WAFA
JEWISH  ORGANIZATION  DEMANDS  TO  EVICT  JERUSALEMITE  FAMILY
August 9, 2015
JERUSALEM, (WAFA) – A Jewish organization handed the Sarhan family from Jerusalem a judicial order to evict their three homes and a land they own, under the pretext that Jewish individuals own the property.
____According to Wadi Hilweh Information Center (WHIC), the Ateret Cohanim Jewish organization asked Sarhan family to leave the three homes and abandon a land of their own to the Jewish group, saying the property belongs to three Yemenite Jews who lived there before prior to 1948. . . .
____The homes are shelter to 10 Palestinians from the Sarhan family, who has been there for more than 80 years, according to WHIC.
____It said the homes are located within the Ateret Cohanim master plan for settlement activity in Silwan . . . .
More. . . 

❺ Opinion
From: PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
ASHRAWI:  ISRAEL  HAS  GONE  COMPLETELY  OUT  OF  CONTROL
August 1, 2015
PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi strongly condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval of 300 units in the illegal settlement of Beit El and plans to construct additional units in and around Jerusalem. . .

“Israel is deliberately and willfully defying international consensus to create ‘Greater Israel’ on historical Palestine. With its rapid, intensive and overwhelming violations, Israel has gone completely out of control, and it is quantitatively making it impossible for the international community to pursue these violations systematically.”

These comments were made following a meeting Dr. Ashrawi had with French Consul General Hervé Magro earlier today at the PLO Headquarters in Ramallah.
More. . .

“A  WINDOW,”  BY  SAMI  MUHANA
Between the sunrise and me there’s a window.
So I greet my old friends the morning air
and the horizon’s penciled line. Those clouds
are gossiping about a secret rendezvous.
I say hello to that dear memory.

Between my love and me there’s a window.
I gaze out into Spring through the eyes of
someone who loves flowers, whose dreams
are hindered by the little dreams of flowers ―
dreams of loss, dreams of goodbye.

Between God and me there’s a window
and I have named it Galilee.
―Trans. By John Glenday

Sami Muhanna is a poet and lawyer, and president and founder of the Arab Writers Union in Haifa. He is active in Palestinian political and academic affairs inside Israel.
From A BIRD IS NOT A STONE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY PALESTINIAN POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available From Amazon.com.