❶ Hunger Striker, Mohammed Al-Qeeq Finally Set Free by Israel
❷ Israel interrogates 2 Palestinian children for 6 hours over allegations of stone throwing
❸ Israeli legal plan for settlements raises red flag in West Bank
❹ Hamas: Lieberman’s threats of assassination do not scare us
❺ Opinion/Analysis: ZIONIST  IDEOLOGY  AND  WHERE  IT  HAS  LED  ISRAEL
❻ POETRY by Fouzi El-Asmar
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❶ HUNGER  STRIKER,  MOHAMMED  AL-QEEQ  FINALLY  SET  FREE  BY  ISRAEL
Palestine Chronicle
May 20 2016
Mohammed Al-Qeeq, a Palestinian activist and journalist, has been released from prison by Israel. After a 94-day hunger strike in protest against his treatment by Israeli authorities, a deal was reached in February securing his release.
___Al-Qeeq, 33 worked as a news reporter for the Saudi-owned TV network, Al Majd. He was held in Israeli detention, without trial since November 2015. Only four days later, he began his hunger strike.       MORE . . .    

❷ ISRAEL  INTERROGATES  2  PALESTINIAN  CHILDREN  FOR  6  HOURS  OVER  ALLEGATIONS  OF  STONE  THROWING
Ma’an News Agency
May 21, 2016
Israeli authorities Friday released two Palestinian children after detaining them for six and a half hours for allegedly throwing stones at settlers in the village of al-Tur in occupied East Jerusalem, according to the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
___Israeli forces detained Muhammad Samih Ulayan, 10, and Mustafa Abu al-Hawa, 12, as they were walking in al-Tur, before transporting them to a nearby illegal Israeli settlement and then to the al-Tur police station. After transferring the children to the Salah al-Din police station, they were interrogated for six and a half hours, the information center reported.
___The center added that the Israeli police interrogated the children without anyone present.       MORE . . .  
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ)  MILITARY  COURT  WATCH Briefing Note – March 2016      MORE . . . 

❸ ISRAELI  LEGAL  PLAN  FOR  SETTLEMENTS  RAISES  RED  FLAG  IN  WEST  BANK
Al-Monitor (Palestine Pulse)
Rasha Abou Jalal
May 19, 2016
Numerous Palestinian groups are condemning Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s plan to apply Israeli laws to Jews living in West Bank settlements, which the groups said would further divide Palestinians and Israelis and give Israel the chance to annex the settlements.       MORE . . .   

❹ HAMAS:  LIEBERMAN’S  THREATS  OF  ASSASSINATION  DO  NOT  SCARE  US
Ma’an News Agency
May 20, 2016 5:00 P.M. (Updated: May 21, 2016)
A Hamas official on Friday said threats by ultranationalist Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman, who was offered the position of defense minister at the Israeli Knesset a day earlier, would not scare the movement’s leaders.
___Member of Hamas’ politburo, Fathi Hammad, said Lieberman’s threats of assassinating Hamas political and military leaders would not affect the movement [. . . .]
___“We do not call for war, but we would fight if it was imposed upon us,” Hammad said.
MORE . . .   

❺ Opinion/Analysis:  ZIONIST  IDEOLOGY  AND  WHERE  IT  HAS  LED  ISRAEL
Palestine Chronicle
Jeremy Salt
May 18 2016
Israel beyond redemption? Should we conclude, after seven decades of worsening behavior, that while there’s life there’s hope – life for the Zionists and Israel, of course, and, in fact, no hope for Palestine and the Palestinians, at least as far as the state of Israel is concerned.
___The binary divide is marked on the 68th anniversary of Israel’s ‘independence’. While the Zionists celebrated with street parties and flyovers, the Palestinians in the West Bank were put under lockdown. This was no more a war of ‘independence’ than was the ‘Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ (UDI) by the Rhodesian white minority leader, Ian Smith, in the 1960s.  It was a war of colonial conquest, the most extreme ever waged, even worse than the French invasion of Algeria. It ushered in the Nakba, the takeover of Palestine which has proceeded in stages ever since.       MORE . . .

“DETERMINATION,”  BY  FOUZI  EL-ASMAR
(From “Letters from an Israeli prison,” 1977 ―Fouzi El-Asmar was imprisoned for a year in 1969-1970, then subject to a year of house arrest in 1971.)

I.
Man, whenever you reach out
to snatch my bread
and the remaining rays of light
in my eyes,
to dissolve some dream
of mine . . . a remaining pride
to delay a rising sun.

Deep in my loins
you will only reach
a dignity and
a solid determination.

II.
Whip me
Fetch more whips
more executioners
by the thousands
Turn my skin
into shoe soles
Rub salt in every wound
old wounds
new wounds
Search my mind
for every thread of a new image
of a new poem,
Take away the pen and the pencil.
With my blood
I shall write
every day
a million songs.

El-Asmar, Fouzi. THE  WIND-DRIVEN  REED  AND  OTHER  POEMS. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1979.   Available from Amazon.
An interview with Fouzi El-Asmar about “Al-Ard.”