❶ Israeli army carries out explosions in central Gaza Strip
. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) On anniversary, 900 Gazans remain in need of care for injuries sustained in 2014 war

• background from Criticism

❷ Sufism in Gaza: healing the soul

• background from Global Governance

❸ Opinion/Analysis:  WOMEN  SAIL  TO  BREAK  THE  SIEGE  ON  GAZA
❹ POETRY by Samih al-Qasim
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❶ ISRAELI  ARMY  CARRIES  OUT  EXPLOSIONS  IN  CENTRAL  GAZA  STRIP
Ma’an News Agency
July 14, 2016
Israeli warplanes carried out air raids in the central Gaza Strip late on Wednesday night, with conflicting reports on the nature of the strikes.
___Palestinian sources said that Israeli warplanes carried out two airstrikes targeting lands east of al-Bureij refugee camp in the besieged Palestinian territory.
___They added that at least two missiles hit an unknown target south of the Camera military site.     MORE . . .    
. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) ON  ANNIVERSARY,  900  GAZANS  REMAIN  IN  NEED  OF  CARE  FOR  INJURIES  SUSTAINED  IN  2014  WAR
Ma’an News Agency
July 7, 2016
Some 900 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to require medical attention as a result of permanent disabilities they sustained during Israel’s devastating 51-day assault on the small territory that began on July 8, 2014, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
___On the second anniversary of the war, the Gaza Strip’s Shifa hospital had 3,839 registered patients waiting for scheduled operations, more than half of which were classified as major surgeries, according to a statement published Monday by UNRWA, adding that surgical appointments were being scheduled for as far away as 2018. MORE . . .

From Criticism
. . . . working through the implications and particularities of genocides needs to be separated from a discursive sacralization of the Holocaust that legitimates a politics of absolutism. Such a sacralization has become so powerful and simultaneously so empty of meaning that it seems to exert a magnetic force even on those who seek to oppose the politics it legitimates.
___But it need not be so. . .  we can also take inspiration from the most prominent spokesperson from the Palestinian diaspora, the late and sorely missed Edward Said. Said repeatedly refused “morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession.” He also frequently referred to Palestinians as “the victims of the victims.” Although this formulation sounds at first like a pure example of equation and symmetry, I do not think he was suggesting that victimization leads inevitably to further identical forms of victimization. Rather, Said meant that Israelis and Palestinians have been brought together by the contingencies of history, by logics only partly in their control. They occupy a shared, yet divided place—both a geographic territory and a geography of memory. This place is not, today, a site of symmetry and peace—it is a site of asymmetry and violence, and Gaza is a resonant symbol of that condition. Transforming that condition will take more than the work of multidirectional memory, but without changing the way we think about the past it will be difficult to imagine an alternative future.

• Rothberg, Michael. “From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory.” Criticism 53.4 (2011): 523-548.

❷ SUFISM  IN  GAZA:  HEALING  THE  SOUL
The Electronic Intifada
Yousef M. Aljamal
July 6, 2016
Nabhan al-Babili assembles his followers every night in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. The 62-year-old is the head of Gaza’s al-Rifaiya order of Sufi Islam, a position that was held by his father, Abdullah, and his grandfather, Abdulqader, before him.
___It is at such nightly gatherings, in a space richly decorated in green and Islamic calligraphy, and the larger weekly hadrat gatherings, that al-Babili leads his followers, or murids, in a spiritual journey of revelation [. . . .]
Sufi orders generally do not have political agendas and in Palestine have maintained good relations with different political parties.
___“We focus only on celebrating religious occasions,” said al-Babili.     MORE . . .  

From Global Governance 
. . . . the Goldstone Report is not as significant as it seems in relation to either establishing the criminality of Operation Cast Lead or in creating prospects that those Israelis (or Hamas officials) will be held accountable for their gross departures from the law of war. . .  The enduring significance of the Goldstone Report concerns the weakening of the state system and the United Nations to uphold basic human rights, the rise of global civil society, and the essential connections between peace and justice. Specifically, the Goldstone Report has stoked a storm of controversy in the United States and Israel while contributing a validating pat on the back to those engaged in the legitimacy war that the Palestinians are winning on a symbolic global battlefield, and increasingly pinning their hopes on. This legitimacy war has become the leading moral struggle of our time, a sequel to the antiapartheid campaign waged so effectively throughout the world in the late 1980s. Whether it ends in the sort of political victory that unexpectedly and nonviolently transformed South Africa from a racist regime to a multiracial constitutional democracy cannot be foretold. . . .  unless this multifaceted relevance of the Goldstone Report is acknowledged, neither its limits nor its contributions can be properly appreciated, and it is then likely to be misremembered as a failed yet valiant challenge to the impunity of the strong. My hope is that, through dialogue and experience, the Goldstone Report will eventually be appropriately appreciated for its contribution to the struggles of the weak and oppressed, specifically of the Palestinians, and become integrated into a growing confidence in the transformative impact of the theory and practice of nonviolence.

• Falk, Richard. “The Goldstone Report: Ordinary Text, Extraordinary Event.” Global Governance 16.2 (2010): 173-190.

❸ Opinion/Analysis: WOMEN  SAIL  TO  BREAK  THE  SIEGE  ON  GAZA
The Palestinian Information Center
Dr. Aayesha Soni
June 24, 2016
The Gaza strip is a piece of land 41 km long and 6-12 km wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers. Situated on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, it has a strong population of 1, 8 million people. . .  [It] is also the world’s largest open air prison, being under complete siege by land, air and sea since 2007. Its neighbors, Israel and Egypt, have been complicit in the persistent and debilitating strangulation of the people of Gaza, with the limitation of all basic goods from entering the region.
___2016 is going to be a momentous occasion as the Freedom Flotilla Coalition sends out its first ever Women’s Boat to Gaza later this year. These well-known women from all over the world intend to break the siege in a bid to awaken the globe to the dire humanitarian crisis that Israel has imposed on Gaza. Their aim is to stand in solidarity with the women of Gaza who are renowned for their strength, courage and unconquerable spirit of resistance.      MORE . . .

“I  MAY  LOSE  MY  DAILY  BREAD,”  BY  SAMIH  AL-QASIM
I may lose my daily bread, if you wish
I may hawk my clothes and bed
I may become a stonecutter, or a porter
Or a street sweeper
I may search in animal dung for food
I may collapse, naked and starved
Enemy of light
I will not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.
You may rob me of the last span of my land
You may ditch my youth in prison holes
Steel what my grandfather left me behind:
Some furniture or clothes and jars,
You may burn my poems and books
You may feed your dog on my flesh
You may impose a nightmare of your terror
On my village
Enemy of light
I shall not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.

“Poems of Resistance: 7 Poems for Palestine.” SCOOP  WORLD  INDEPENDENT  NEWS. January 2011. Web.
About Samih Al-Qasim

Israel Bombs Gaza Strip In Response To Palestinian Rocket Fire, July 2, 2016. (Photo: India Live Today)