❶ Unearthing Gaza’s history
❷ Qalandiya International 2016 Edition to Explore Subject of Return
❸ Israeli forces raid, destroy property at al-Quds University
. . . . . ❸―(ᴀ) Video: Israel demolishes every home in West Bank Bedouin village
❹ IOF demolish municipal slaughterhouse, east of Bethlehem
❺ Opinion/Analysis: BEFORE  ZIONISM:  THE  SHARED  LIFE  OF  JEWS  AND  PALESTINIANS
❻ From an essay by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ UNEARTHING  GAZA’S  HISTORY
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
April 2016
Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City has been the focus of excavation works by the Ministry of Endowments to unearth ruins dating back to the Byzantine era. The 1,500 year old remains include crowns, columns and a cross, which indicates there may have been a church on the site, Director of Museums and Antiquities at the Ministry of Tourism Hiam Al-Bitar told MEMO.
___It is expected that the city centre may have contained many churches from the Byzantine era.      MORE . . .

❷ QALANDIYA  INTERNATIONAL  2016  EDITION  TO  EXPLORE  SUBJECT  OF  RETURN
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Qalandiya International’s executive council announced that the third edition of its collaborative artistic program will be launched between the 5th and the 30th of October 2016 and will be built around the theme of return. . . .
___ . . . the over-riding aim of the festival this year is to open up an in-depth discussion around the important subject of Palestinian return – particularly in the context of the terrible events currently unfolding in the region.
___This is a period in which the Nakba’s repercussions are revealed as harsher as and more devastating than ever before.     MORE . . .  

❸ ISRAELI  FORCES  RAID,  DESTROY  PROPERTY  AT  AL-QUDS  UNIVERSITY
Ma’an News Agency
April 5, 2016
Israeli forces stormed the campus of al-Quds University in the occupied West Bank village of Abu Dis east of Jerusalem’s Old City early on Tuesday morning, damaging property, local sources told Ma’an.
___Israeli troops raided the university campus at 3 a.m. and left at 5 a.m. For two hours, the soldiers locked campus security guards in one room after breaking their walkie-talkies.
___The soldiers then ransacked a building hosting the Dean of Students . . . .   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❸―(ᴀ)  VIDEO:  ISRAEL  DEMOLISHES  EVERY  HOME  IN  WEST  BANK  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE
Mondoweiss
Sheren Khalel and Abed Al Qaisi
April 4, 2016
Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year.
___Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control.     MORE . . .  

❹ IOF  DEMOLISH  MUNICIPAL  SLAUGHTERHOUSE,  EAST  OF  BETHLEHEM
Palestine News Network – PNN
April 5, 2016
Israeli Occupation bulldozers on Tuesday morning tore down the municipal slaughterhouse in Beit Sahour town east of Bethlehem, claiming it has no building permit.
___Eyewitnesses told PNN that an intense number of troops broke into the town and demolished the slaughterhouse that’s property of the town municipality, preventing locals from approaching the area.
___The demolition comes as part of a wave of demolitions which IOF embarked months ago.      MORE . . .

❺ Opinion/Analysis:   BEFORE  ZIONISM:  THE  SHARED  LIFE  OF  JEWS  AND  PALESTINIANS
+972 Magazine Blog
April 4, 2016
Noam Rote
Menachem Klein’s book, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron, is a depressing one. Originally released in English, the book — which is being published in Hebrew  — paints a picture of a shared life between Palestinians and Jews at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, bringing us face-to-face with daily life, commerce, education, celebrations, and sadness. It shows that us this kind existence, despite everything we were taught by the Israeli education system, is possible. And then Klein goes on and destroys this delicate balance, burning everything that is left of it today.      MORE . . .

From “JERUSALEM, TIME EMBODIED,” BY JABRA IBRAHIM JABRA (1919–1994)

The city of Jerusalem is not just a place; it is also a time. One cannot understand it only in its limited physical boundaries. It must be seen in its historical perspective, as if it were history itself. As if an observer might grasp the history of four thousand years in a single glance.

In this city, history lives. Every stone pronounces it. This history is full of contradictions, full of disasters, but it is also the story of a city for which all of humanity has yearned. Because it has never been, not for one day, merely a city composed of stone and dirt, business and politics. It has always been a city of dreams and longing, and of the human spirit’s gaze toward God.  [. . . . ]

When an enemy comes and crushes sidewalks with armored cars, when he blows up houses with everyone in them, when he tears family and friends up from their roots, when he casts a boy—now a young man—across valleys and deserts, from one road to another, from one home to another, is this not a brazen attempt to sever Self from Self?

From this experience comes every Palestinian’s feeling that he must return. Return is more than a reclamation of the land stolen by an enemy. It is winning back that part of the Self that had been taken, and returning it to itself so it can be whole again.

From: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. THE  EIGHTH  JOURNEY.  Beirut: Modern Library (al-Maktaba al-‘Asriya) Press, 1967 (collection of literary and social criticism). Republished by ARAB  STUDIES  JOURNAL (January 26, 2015). Web.
About JABRA IBRAHIM JABRA (1919–1994)