❶ ‘We want our sons’: Families of slain Palestinians held by Israel stage sit-in at Aqsa

• From Washington Report On Middle East Affairs 

❷ IOA renews administrative detention of 15-year-old boy

• From Journal of Comparative Family Studies

❸ Israeli forces kill Palestinian teenage girl in Hebron
❹ POETRY by Mourid Barghouti
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❶ ‘WE  WANT  OUR  SONS’:  FAMILIES  OF  SLAIN  PALESTINIANS  HELD  BY  ISRAEL  STAGE  SIT-IN  AT  AQSA
Ma’an News Agency
June 24, 2016
Family members of slain Palestinians whose bodies are still being held by Israeli authorities staged a sit-in at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, demanding Israel return the bodies under their campaign titled: “We want our sons.”
___Participants in the sit-in raised posters emblazoned with the phrase: “We want the martyr–” with the name of each Palestinian and the date he was killed printed underneath.
___Muhammed Elayyan, father of Bahaa Elayyan, a Palestinian shot dead during an alleged car-ramming attack in October, said “we are here today to remind all worshipers who came to Al-Aqsa that the bodies of the eight martyrs have been in (Israeli) refrigerators for months.”     MORE . . .

From Washington Report On Middle East Affairs
Slow as the Israeli authorities are when it comes to punishing Jewish Israelis for crimes against Palestinians, retribution for the Israeli deaths was swift and severe [2015-2016]. Just after the government declared “an all-out war on Palestinian terrorism,” hundreds of Palestinians were arrested, and at least six killed. . . .
___In the coming weeks more Palestinian deaths followed, many of them of children under 16. But despite the mounting number of casualties, the demonstrations continued, along with the stabbings . . .  Israel’s minister of transportation, Yisrael Katz, warned that Israel’s response would soon resemble Operation Defensive Shield, Israel’s massive invasion of the West Bank in 2002 during the second intifada . . . .
___On Oct. 6 [2015], Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the PLO, called for international intervention to protect Palestinians from “relentless attacks by Israeli military forces and terrorist settlers.” Riyad Mansour, Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon charging Israel with assaulting medical emergency teams and preventing them from rescuing the wounded.
[. . . .]
___As the death toll on both sides increased, a young West Bank resident expressed the feelings of many Palestinians when he said, “I don’t want demonstrations, I want an agreement with Israel.” But . . . . Education Minister Naftali Bennett recently demanded that Netanyahu “free the bound hands of the army,” and rearrest all Palestinians released in past prisoner exchanges. He proposed that Israel build a new settlement after each Palestinian attack.

• Marshall, Rachelle. “Lack Of Hope, Worsening Oppression Spur Young Palestinians To Act.” Washington Report On Middle East Affairs 34.8 (2015): 8-11.  SOURCE.

❷ IOA  RENEWS  ADMINISTRATIVE  DETENTION  OF  15-YEAR-OLD  BOY
The Palestinian Information Center
June 25, 2016
The Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) renewed the administrative detention of the Palestinian child Hamza Hamad, 15, for the second consecutive time. A rights group affirmed that Hamad’s administrative detention was renewed for four months after spending four months in Israeli jails without charge or trial. Hamad, whose father Muayed Hamad is held in Israeli jails and serving seven life sentences, was arrested from his house in Silwad town in Ramallah last February.      MORE . . .       RELATED. . . .

From Journal of Comparative Family Studies
Labeled as irregular child combatants in everyday crossfire, these children are easily relegated as regrettable but largely avoidable and ill-conceived footnotes in an encounter between irreconcilable grownups. .  . .
__However, Palestinian children are not simply “collateral damage” of the conflict in a black hole of law or those who have volunteered to be attacked because they have not been passive. They remain impermissible targets whose basic rights cannot be legally discounted though their context leads to problems of implementation. Those who argue that Palestinian children have forfeited their rights as children by their participation fail to unlock the complexities and context of these little vulnerable lives under assault as well as misconstrue the nature and scope of children’s rights. Over half of the population of Palestine are children’ but despite their increased profile within the conflict, they are largely constructed as mute victims or misguided puppets rather than participants in the process and possessors of rights.
___Dominant narratives – Palestinian, Arab, Israeli and Western – fail to fully consider the implications of daily degradation of life on the Palestinian childhood experience beyond the statistics of fatalities and injuries. Consider the residual quality of Palestinian childhood in face of the eclipse of children’s rights — of negations of Palestinian right to dignity and self-esteem, of personal development and family life, of education and opportunity, of health and adequate standard of living, of freedom from torture and stress, and most importantly, the right to a future.

• Sirajsait, M. “Have Palestinian Children Forfeited Their Rights?” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 35.2 (2004): 211-228.  SOURCE.

❸ PALESTINIAN  WOMAN  SHOT  DEAD  AFTER  HER  CAR  HITS  VEHICLE,  2  ISRAELIS  LIGHTLY  INJURED
Ma’an News Agency
June 24, 2016
A Palestinian woman was shot and killed Friday afternoon after her car crashed into a stationary vehicle, lightly injuring two Israelis in the Hebron district of the southern occupied West Bank in what the Israeli army has claimed was a car-ramming attack.
___An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that after a Palestinian woman allegedly carried out a car-ramming attack near the entrance of the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the eastern outskirts of Hebron, Israeli forces responded by firing towards the “assailant,” killing her.
___The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed her death, identifying her as Majd al-Khadour. Israeli sources said she was 18 years old.     MORE . . .

“HOW  ARE  YOU?”  BY  MOURID  BARGHOUTI

Waiting for the school bus,
watching his breath turn into mist near his nose
in the icy morning,
the schoolboy’s fingers are frozen,
too stiff to make a fist.

On the pillow of regret,
the defeated soldier
lazily tries to get up,
raising his broken toothbrush
to his teeth.

Early or late,
The stranger awakens in his exile, his homeland.
Their clothes, their car number pates, their trees,
their quarrels, their love, their land, their sea
belong to them.
His memories are like rats gathering on his doormat,
new and warm
in front of his closed door.

On a lonely pillow,
the mother throws a quick glance
at the bed of her elder son,
made for the final time
and empty, forever.

A voice from the neighbouring window is heard:
“Hello, good morning, how are you?”
“Hello, good morning, we’re fine,
we’re fine!”

From: Barghouti, Mourid. MIDNIGHT  AND  OTHER  POEMS. Trans. By Radwa Ashour. Todmorden, Lancashire, UK: Arc Books, 2008. Available from B&N.
Mourid Barghouti (born July 8, 1944, in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah, on the West Bank) is a Palestinian poet and writer. While Barghouti was studying at the University of Cairo in 1967, the 6-Day War broke out, and he was unable to return to the West Bank until 1996. He was expelled from Egypt in 1977 and was exiled in Budapest.