❶ Israeli Military Courts Issue Actual Imprisonment Sentences against Palestinian Minor Detainees
. . . ― (ᴀ) Military Court Watch progress report
. . . ― (ᴃ) Palestine’s forgotten children
. . . ― (c) Palestinian families appeal for release of bodies of 8 slain sons
❷ 3 Israelis evacuated from Aqsa as thousands celebrate ‘Jerusalem Day’ in Old City
❸ Palestinians rally in Gaza to mark 49 years of occupation
❹ Opinion/Analysis:  KHIRBET  TANA:  THE  PROCESS  OF  DESTROYING  PALESTINE
❺ POETRY by Hanan Ashrawi
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❶ ISRAELI  MILITARY  COURTS  ISSUE  ACTUAL  IMPRISONMENT  SENTENCES  AGAINST  PALESTINIAN  MINOR  DETAINEES
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
June 5, 2016
Israeli military courts Monday issued actual imprisonment sentences and imposed fines against a number of Palestinian minor detainees incarcerated in the Israeli jail of Ofer, during the month of May, 2016, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
___A PPS lawyer reported on Detainees representatives in Ofer prison, Abdel-Fatah Dawleh, as saying that the number of minor detainees who received actual imprisonment sentences, varying between three and 30 months, reached 48 in May alone.      MORE . . .
. . . ― (ᴀ) MILITARY  COURT  WATCH PROGRESS REPORT (with link to statistics)
. . . ― (ᴃ) PALESTINE’S  FORGOTTEN  CHILDREN
Open Democracy
Lord Norman Warner
June 3, 2016
Next year will mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration as well as the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. With no sign of an active peace process between the parties, here in Britain we have a historic responsibility to seriously challenge the Israeli government’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza. On a recent visit to the West Bank, I saw powerfully for myself the need for better legal protection for young Palestinians. Without this I fear that we will engender an entire lost generation of forgotten Palestinian children.      MORE . . .  
. . . ― (c) PALESTINIAN  FAMILIES  APPEAL  FOR  RELEASE  OF  BODIES  OF  8  SLAIN  SONS
The Palestinian Information Center
June 5, 2016
An appeal was filed to the Israeli Supreme Court to push for the release of the bodies of eight slain Palestinian youths, lawyer Muhammad Alyan said Sunday. The Israeli court is expected to set a time limit for the police to release the bodies of the eight Palestinians.  MORE . . .  

A lack of political will in the oPt clearly was the single most important reason for the failure of child protection organisations to take more concerted and consistent action to deal with the causes of systematic harm to Palestinian children. . . . Governmental and intergovernmental donors, UN agencies, INGOs, and even, to varying degrees, local NGOs act in a manner that contradicts their own understanding of the real causes of the chronic vulnerability of young Palestinians to political violence. As the following quote from a Palestinian academic suggests, this understanding rarely is shared publicly but is readily voiced informally:
It’s a political protection. I mean everyone knows this, even donors. I never met a donor who doesn’t know this. But they are constrained. All of them would talk off the record. They all are constrained. They all understand the imbalance of power that is the source of all the problems . . . but they have their jobs, they work within their mandates.
[. . . . ]
While discussions about child protection continue at the global level, a fresh approach is urgently needed in the oPt. . . .  these children would demand greater consistency between global norms and the reality of action on the ground. However, if agencies are inherently incapable of responding to such aspirations then serious discussion about their continued role is needed. It is clear from the statistics on, inter alia, arrest, death, detention . . . . that the approach pursued by UN and international organisations has failed to accord proper protection to Palestinian children, in spite of the huge resources expended on meeting that stated aim over decades.

• Hart, Jason, and Claudia Lo Forte. “Mandated To Fail? Humanitarian Agencies and the Protection of Palestinian Children.” Disasters 37.4 (2013): 627-645. [Available Online – or through EBSCO]

❷ 3  ISRAELIS  EVACUATED  FROM  AQSA  AS  THOUSANDS  CELEBRATE  ‘JERUSALEM  DAY’  IN  OLD  CITY
Ma’an News Agency
June 5, 2016
An Israeli court denied on Sunday a petition to bar the “Jerusalem Day” march from passing through the Muslim Quarter in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, just as 208 right-wing Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and thousands more gathered around the Western Wall to begin celebrations.
___The director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani told Ma’an that 208 settlers entered Al-Aqsa through the Moroccan gate under heavy protection by Israeli police and special forces.     MORE . . .            RELATED . . .

❸ PALESTINIANS RALLY IN GAZA TO MARK 49 YEARS OF OCCUPATION
Ma’an News Agency
June 4, 2016
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip commemorated on Saturday the anniversary of the 1967 Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights that began on June 5, a day that Palestinians refer to as the Naksa, meaning setback.
___Demonstrators at the Naksa Day rally waved Palestinian flags as they marched from the Unknown Soldier square in central Gaza City to the UNRWA headquarters, condemning Israel for its continued crimes against Palestinians.
___Hamas leader Ismail Radwan called for achieving national reconciliation in accordance with the Cairo agreement     MORE . . .  

❹ Opinion/Analysis:  KHIRBET  TANA:  THE  PROCESS  OF  DESTROYING  PALESTINE
The Jerusalem Fund
Lucian Dieterman
June 5, 2016
Incidents of Israeli settler violence are provided in the daily reports published by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department. Among the nearly constant settler violations against the Palestinian Muslims worshipping at Al Aqsa mosque, on May 18, there was an entry of Israeli settlers raiding a Palestinian village named Khirbet Tana [. . . .]
___HERE  IN  LIES  THE  CORE  ISSUE  AT  STAKE:  PALESTINIAN  EXISTENCE [emphasis added]. Through the destruction of small Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank, and continued illegal settlement construction, Israel continues the goals of the Nakba: to deny Palestinian existence and erase an entire people. This is clearly ethnic cleansing.      MORE . . .   

“FROM THE DIARY OF AN ALMOST-FOUR-YEAR-OLD,” BY HANAN ASHRAWI

Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off. I wonder
will I see half an orange,
half an apple, half my
mother’s face
with my one remaining eye?
I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and a look in
his eyes
I could not understand.

If I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
it could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose.

Next month, on my birthday,
I’ll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle —
I’ve gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.

I hear a nine-month-old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too—a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye—
I’m old enough, almost four,
I’ve seen enough of life,
but she’s just a baby
who didn’t know any better.

Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
From ANTHOLOGY  OF  MODERN  PALESTINIAN  LITERATURE.  Ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Available from Columbia University Press.