❶ Follow up U.N. submission on night-raids – June 2016

• Background from: Counselling Psychology Quarterly

❷ Israeli forces detain at least 10 Palestinians in overnight West Bank raids

• Background from: Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

❸ Opinion/Analysis:  PALESTINE’S  FORGOTTEN  CHILDREN
❹ POETRY by Fadwa Tuqan
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❶ FOLLOW  UP  U.N.  SUBMISSION  ON  NIGHT-RAIDS  – JUNE  2016
The Women‘s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC)
June 30, 2016
Today, WCLAC lodged a follow-up submission with the UN concerning the devastating impact that Israeli military night raids are having on Palestinian women and families in the West Bank. The latest submission includes 50 testimonies from women who have first-hand experience of a night raid between January and May 2016 . . . .
___According to research conducted by WCLAC, it is estimated that since June 1967, the Israeli military has conducted at least 66,000 night arrest raids on Palestinian homes, or an average of four night raids every night. This figure does not include the more common night raids in which no arrests are made or day-time incursions into Palestinian town and villages, which if included are estimated to bring the likely total number of raids to around 150,000 since 1967.
[. . . .]   The issue of military night raids on civilian centres of population was recently raised by the US Department of State in its most recent annual report on human rights.  MORE . . .

From: Counselling Psychology Quarterly
The consequences of military and political violence on children have been widely documented . . . Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Acute Stress Disorder, Traumatic Depression, somatization and so on. The disorders that affect Palestinian children are typical of daily exposure to relentless and extreme traumatic events. Experts in the field . . . . reported that in the year 2000, 42% OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN SUFFERED FROM PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. . . .  In 1993 during the First Intifada, 232 children were killed . . . By the end of . . . the recent war in Gaza [2008] approximately 1100 children were reported killed . . .
___In such traumatized contexts, family relationships are put under huge pressure, since family members feel unable to cope with the hardships they have to face day after day. . . . Social support, emotional bonds with relatives and confidence in family resources are considered key to regulating resilience to traumatic stress . . . .
___ . . . [However] no satisfactory answer has yet been found to the clinical question of how to treat children traumatized by war.

• Veronese, Guido, Marco Castiglioni, and Mahmud Said. “The Use Of Narrative-Experiential Instruments In Contexts Of Military Violence: The Case Of Palestinian Children In The West Bank.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 23.4 (2010): 411-423.   SOURCE. 

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  AT  LEAST  10  PALESTINIANS  IN  OVERNIGHT  WEST  BANK  RAIDS
Ma’an News Agency
July 1, 2016
Israeli forces carried out search and detention raids across the occupied West Bank overnight Thursday detaining at least 10 Palestinians, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.
___Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces detained four Palestinians from the village of Beni Naim . . . . An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed three detentions were made in Beni Naim, adding that they were detained under suspicions of being Hamas operatives . . . . ___In Hebron City, Israeli forces detained four Palestinians after raiding and searching their houses.      MORE . . .  

From: Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
When I was little, I always thought that the stars were singing. I would lie in bed at night watching the sky from my window and see the stars twinkle and wink at me; I heard them singing especially for me. It took me years to realize (to my disappointment) that the singing actually was coming from crickets. Stars were dead things I was told, they do not sing, they don’t wink at you, they merely reflect light. Years later, as I lay in my bunk in prison trying to listen to the sounds of the night, the stars (which I couldn’t see from my cell window) were singing, it wasn’t my imagination, they really were singing. I felt that we, the stars and I, had found our secret bond again and we had both reclaimed our magic voice.

• NIMR, SONIA. “Dreaming Of Never Land.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 37.2 (2014): 540-555.   ARTICLE.  (Special online edition)

❸ Opinion/Analysis: PALESTINE’S  FORGOTTEN  CHILDREN
Military Court Watch
(reprinted from openDemocracy.com)
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. . . .
___ Earlier this year I understood better [this reality] when I found myself sitting in disbelief whilst watching proceedings unfold in Ofer Israeli military court in the occupied West Bank.       MORE . . . 

“LABOR  PAINS,”  BY  FADWA  TUQAN

The wind blows the pollen in the night
through ruins of fields and homes.
Earth shivers with love,
with the pain of giving birth,
but the conqueror wants us to believe
stories of submission and surrender.

O Arab Aurora!
Tell the usurper of our land
that childbirth is a force unknown to him,
the pain of a mother’s body,
that the scarred land
inaugurates life
at the moment of dawn
when the rose of blood
blooms on the wound.

From The Hypertexts   
About Fadwa Tuqan