“. . . I shall sing in spite of fences in spite of jailers . . .” (Fouzi El-Asmar)

 

demolish_marajem_nablus
Israeli Soldiers Demolish homes near Nablus. April 4, 2016 (Photo: IMEMC, April 4, 2016)

❶ Israel to Demolish Two Homes in Nablus Village
❷ Israel Okays 82 housing units in Ramat Shlomo settlement
❸ Israeli forces raid, blockade Ramallah area village after settler vehicle comes under fire
❹ Opinion/Analysis: THE  PARIS  PEACE  GAMBIT:  EVERYONE  GAINS  EXCEPT  THE  PALESTINIANS
❺ POETRY by Fouzi El-Asmar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  TO  DEMOLISH  TWO  HOMES  IN  NABLUS  VILLAGE
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
June 7, 2016
Israeli authorities on Tuesday notified Palestinians in the village of Duma, to the south of Nablus, about their intent to demolish two homes and a carpentry workshop of their own, according to local sources.
___Adeeb Dawabsheh, deputy mayor of Duma, told WAFA that the Israeli army cited construction without permission as a pretext for the demolition notice.
___He said the two homes and the workshop are the property of two local Palestinians from the Dawabsheh family.      MORE . . .  
RELATED . . .   ISRAELI  FORCES  SERVE  DEMOLITION  NOTICES  FOR  SHEEP  PENS  IN  BETHLEHEM  VILLAGE  

If the Israeli government recognises ‘pragmatically’ that at present Jews will not be able to settle throughout the territory of their geography of imagination because of demographic and geographic realities—namely the existence of a concentrated Palestinian population in many areas—what would be the expedient territorial adjustment while still adhering in the longer term to ‘core beliefs’? The answer is: adopt a strategy to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state by confining Palestinian population concentrations to non-contiguous ‘enclaves’ while Israel retains effective control over all Palestine’s international border . . . . Such ‘dynamic enclavisation’ is probably unique as a tactic of spatial dismemberment in expanding a nation-state with undetermined territorial borders, although it is familiar as a tactic in military geography employed on the battlefield [. . . .]
___Palestinians are invited at best to a kind of ‘mock’ sovereignty over an archipelago of truncated spaces—behind borders which are in some profound sense provisional. Indeed, provisionality seems a kind of modality for the way territory is dealt with under the Zionist – nationalist geopolitical code of control and its extension. In that sense, a kind of dynamic unilateral repartition of Mandatory Palestine seems an underlying strategy.

  • Falah, Ghazi-Walid. “The Geopolitics of ‘Enclavisation’ and the Demise of a Two-State Solution to the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict.” Third  World  Quarterly  26.8 (2005): 1341-1372.

❷ ISRAEL  OKAYS  82  HOUSING  UNITS  IN  RAMAT  SHLOMO  SETTLEMENT
The Palestinian Information Center
June 7, 2016
The Israeli municipality’s planning and construction committee in Occupied Jerusalem on Monday authorized the marketing of the 82 housing units in Ramat Shlomo settlement despite the government’s objection and without notifying it, Israel’s Channel 2 claimed.
___Ramat Shlomo is an illegal settlement located in northeast Jerusalem, next to the Palestinian village of Shuafat.
___A diplomatic crisis erupted between Israel and the US in March 2010 due to the former’s plan to build 1,600 new housing units in the settlement, coinciding with US vice-president Joe Biden’s visit to Palestine in order to push for renewed peace talks.  MORE . . .  

Fouzi  El-Asmar  lived  as  a  Palestinian  Arab  in Israel  for  the  first  thirty-five  years  of  his life.
___His poetry. . . captures the existential predicament of this condition: can one “be” an Arab in Israel if one refuses to accede one’s soul to the state authorities or protests the suffering of one’s people, who live under the oppression of a state that claims to speak for the protection of the Jewish people everywhere and for all time?   [. . . .]
___To be a Palestinian Arab in Israel at this moment is to represent an intractable problem for the demography and long-term “security” of the Jewish state, and is a painful reminder of how the founding conditions of Israeli society were built on the Palestinian Arab’s exclusion, transfer, or vulnerable location within an apartheid state. The Palestinian Arab in Israel lives in the shadow of the destruction of Palestinian civil society, which Israel’s settler colonial violence unleashed, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the rise of militant Zionism.

  • Abraham, Matthew. “The Perils Of Separation: Fouzi El-Asmar’s To  Be  An  Arab  In  Israel  As An Allegory Of Settler Colonial Anxiety.” South  Atlantic  Quarterly  107.4 (2008): 715-734.

❸ ISRAELI  FORCES  RAID,  BLOCKADE  RAMALLAH  AREA  VILLAGE  AFTER  SETTLER  VEHICLE  COMES  UNDER  FIRE  
Ma’an News Agency
June 7, 2016
Israeli forces raided and imposed a blockade on the village of Deir Abu Mashal in the central occupied West Bank Monday evening after Palestinian gunmen reportedly fired shots at two Israeli settler vehicles in the area, and an Israeli settler returned fire.___Locals told Ma’an that a large number of Israeli forces stormed Deir Abu Mashal northwest of Ramallah and broke into shops and gas stations, seizing hard drives from outdoor surveillance cameras. Witnesses added Israeli soldiers questioned several Palestinian youths.   MORE . . .

1-ramat shlomo
Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish settlement in the mainly Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem with Palestinian houses seen from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, on June 5, 2014. (Photo: Getty Images)

❹ Opinion/Analysis: THE  PARIS  PEACE  GAMBIT:  EVERYONE  GAINS  EXCEPT  THE  PALESTINIANS
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
Ramzy Baroud
June 7, 2016
In their defense, the Israelis seem to have figured out the whole thing and opted out. But the hapless Palestinian leadership, along with their Arab League partners, joined by the French, EU and UN representatives, and even US Secretary of State, John Kerry, decided to play along.
___However, the French peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is nothing but a charade, and they all know it, Palestinians included.
___So, why the colossal waste of time?       MORE . . . 

“I  SHALL  SING,”  BY  FOUZI  EL-ASMAR

I shall create
out of the darkness of my jail
my dawn
out of the jaw of hatred
my destiny.
I shall sing
the wind
the sun
the flowers
the spring.
I shall sing
in spite of fences
in spite of jailers
in spite of hatred.
1-IMG_4977

Fouzi El-Asmar
El-Asmar, Fouzi. THE   WIND-DRIVEN   REED   AND   OTHER   POEMS. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1979.  Available from Amazon.

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