Month: August 2016

POST FOR AUGUST 30, 2016

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NOTE: This post was prepared for yesterday, August 30, but because of unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to finish it. However, it is imperative to post the excerpt from the article by Ghazi-Walid Falah as background for the news items of detention and torure.

❶ Palestinian minor tortured in Israeli jail after being shot and detained for rock throwing
. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) PPS: “Army Kidnaps Twenty-One Palestinians In The West Bank”
. . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Israel Issues 8 Administrative Detention Orders To Palestinian Prisoners

falah
Ghazi-Walid Falah, professor at the University of Akron, Ohio.

❷ “Geography In Ominous Intersection With Interrogation And Torture: Reflections On Detention In Israel.”
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❶ PALESTINIAN MINOR TORTURED IN ISRAELI JAIL AFTER BEING SHOT AND DETAINED FOR ROCK THROWING
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 29, 2016
Two Palestinian minors have been tortured, abused, and medically neglected in Israeli custody, one of which after being shot at point-blank range when Israeli forces detained them for rock throwing earlier this month, a lawyer from the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs said Monday.
­­­___The lawyer, Luay Akka, said that 17-year-old Mumin Tawfiq Hamayel and 16-year-old Abd al-Fatah Mubarek were both being held inside Israel’s Ofer prison.    MORE . . .

. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) PPS: “ARMY KIDNAPS TWENTY-ONE PALESTINIANS IN THE WEST BANK”
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
August 30, 2016
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) has reported that Israeli soldiers have kidnapped, overnight and on Tuesday, twenty-one Palestinians, during massive military invasions and searches of homes, in different parts of the occupied West Bank.
___The PPS said the soldiers invaded several towns in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, violently searched homes and kidnapped nine Palestinians, including children. MORE . . .

. . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) ISRAEL ISSUES 8 ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION ORDERS TO PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 29, 2016
Israel’s military court at Ofer prison ruled that eight Palestinian prisoners be placed in administrative detention on Monday, the controversial Israeli policy of internment without trial or charge based on undisclosed evidence.
___The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a statement that five were sentenced to six months in administrative detention, identified as Ammar Ibrahim Hamour, Huthaifa Subhe Jabareen, Yousef Abd al-Aziz al-Batran, Hazim Ghaleb Nayroukh, and Muhammad Hussein Abu Aida.
___Israeli forces also ordered Muhammad Yousef Awad, Alaa Salim Rujbe, and Yousef Issa Amar to four months in administrative detention.
___Rights groups have claimed that Israel’s administrative detention policy, which allows internment without trial or charges under undisclosed evidence, has been used as an attempt to disrupt Palestinian political processes, notably targeting Palestinian politicians, activists, and journalists.      MORE . . .

❷ Falah, Ghazi-Walid. “Geography In Ominous Intersection With Interrogation And Torture: Reflections On Detention In Israel.” Third World Quarterly 29.4 (2008): 749-766.  SOURCE.  

NOTE: Professor Falah was detained in 2008 as an academic visitor to Palestine. The reasons for his detention differ from those of a Palestinian citizen, but the methods used by the Israelis to extract information are very much the same even today. See biographical note at end.

My detention was principally political, a form of punishment and intimidation for my writing as a geographer over two decades. But I was not detained and held in isolation because I had committed some crime and there was a court order to keep me separate from other prisoners. There was another aim: to extract by almost any means thought necessary what the Security Police deemed ‘usable information’, especially about my academic contacts with Arab and Iranian geographers (and/or others) in the Middle East. From this viewpoint of intelligence extraction my time behind bars and in a micro-space of extreme coercion was utilised to the utmost to get the maximum ‘information’ from . . .  to break my will to resistance before I could see my lawyer. ‘Detention’ is not a static space of some kind of suspension of time, as a detainee simply ‘waits’ or is abused as a form of punishment: it is a mechanism in highly confined and pressurised hyper-dynamic space to extract intelligence under the impress of limited legal time. While my detention was to intimidate me as an academic, it also was a prime example of space–time mobilised to gather what is the interrogator’s stock in trade: intelligence as it is fantasised by interrogators to exist.
[. . . .]
How did the Israeli interrogators in my case approach the issue of gathering information for some ‘usable’ end? Interrogator Ehud (all names here are aliases) said: ‘We have a puzzle here, and we need answers for each question we are asking you in order to construct the puzzle’. ‘There is nothing that we are not going to get an answer to. If we do not get the answer directly from you we have to get it from other sources, and no matter how long it takes we will.’ Basically he is saying: we will be keeping you a long time until we get the answers we think we want. This was perhaps a technique to make me speak, but the issue of the ‘puzzle’ is consistent with the broader dimension of gathering ‘usable’ information. Another interrogator, Lavi, said: ‘We are interested in the truth and this is why we keep repeating the same questions and many others. It does not matter for us whether you are innocent or guilty. We are interested in knowing the truth.’ He also commented: ‘our interrogation is not like the police. The testimony you give to the police officer and then you go to court and they have to prove your innocence. We are different because our duty is to know the truth in order to protect the security of the ‘‘state’’.’
[. . . .]
The practice of isolating a detainee for a certain time, either by being left alone behind bars or simply isolated from a normal setting in the world outside the prison is coercion at the ultimate micro-scale of the individual body. From the interrogator’s perspective, this practice means that the detainee is not allowed to engage in any contact whatever without the full authority and supervision of the interrogator or another related person in authority. The interrogators act based on state law. One idea behind such spatial isolation is the prevention of ‘contamination’ by contact with others. ‘Usable information’ should be best extracted from a detainee before the interrogation process is ‘contaminated’ by his contact with others who may provide him with advice on how to answer (or not answer) questions or explain certain legal rights. Hence, interrogators seek a court order to prevent any contact between the detainee and his lawyer. In addition, they may request the court to place a gagging order on the case for a certain period of time. Building on a rationale of isolation and an assumption of ‘naiveté’ in a detainee (where s/he is not familiar with the imprisonment procedure), the interrogators seek to extract maximum usable information in a minimum amount of time before the spatial capsule they have created for the detainee is ‘pierced’ or ‘contaminated’. So the quality of usable information in this architectonics becomes a direct function of the degree of spatial isolation.

Ghazi-Walid Falah is a Bedouin Israeli-Canadian geographer, who is a tenured professor at the University of Akron, Ohio. He is an expert on political, social and urban geography of the Middle East and the Arab World, with special emphasis on Israel. Falah is a founder of the journal The Arab World Geographer and is Editor-in-Chief. The AWG has become the major journal published in English for research on the geography of the Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern worlds.
___He was held for over three weeks in an Israeli jail after he was arrested on suspicion of espionage on July 8, 2006, while touring near the Lebanon border. He was denied access to a lawyer for the first 18 days of his detention.
___On July 30, 2006, the Israeli Shin Bet security service and the Israeli police released Dr. Falah without filing charges against him.

“. . . the colonel came over and asked why I’d been provocative . . .” (Sam Hamod)

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bilin
Palestinian, Israeli and international activists march during a protest marking ten years for the struggle against the Wall in the West Bank village Bil’in, February 27, 2015. (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

❶ Israeli Commander: I Will Make All the Youth of Al-Duheisha Camp Disabled
❷ Israel investigating claim unarmed Palestinian was shot in the back

  • Background from Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies.  “. . . territoriality is ultimately about power and is embedded in social relations . . .”

. . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Five Palestinians Injured by Army Fire during Funeral of Slain Palestinian in Silwad
❸ Israeli forces attack non-violent weekly protest in Bil’in village
❹ POETRY by  Sam Hamod

` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  COMMANDER:  I  WILL  MAKE  ALL  THE  YOUTH  OF  AL-DUHEISHA  CAMP  DISABLED  
The Middle East Monitor-MEMO  
Aug 27 2016
An Israeli army commander responsible for the Al-Duheisha area, known to locals as “Captain Nidal”, has repeatedly been reported as threatening to make “all youth in the [Al-Duheisha] camp disabled”.
___BADIL, the Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, reported an Israeli army commander making repeated threats during and after raids on the camp as well as during interrogations.      MORE . . .  

❷ ISRAEL  INVESTIGATING  CLAIM  UNARMED  PALESTINIAN  WAS  SHOT  IN  THE  BACK  
Ma’an News Agency   
Aug. 28, 2016
The Israeli army’s military police have reportedly opened an investigation into the killing of an unarmed Palestinian man who was shot dead by Israeli forces on Friday, an Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an.
___Thirty-eight-year-old Iyad Zakariya Hamed, a resident of the Ramallah area village of Silwad, was shot dead by Israeli forces near a military post at the village’s entrance not far from the illegal Israeli settlement Ofra, when soldiers alleged that they saw Hamed “charging” towards them.
___Israeli media initially reported that Hamed, a husband and father of three, fired shots at the Israeli soldiers, though it was later confirmed that he was unarmed.     MORE . . .    

silwad
Clashes in Silwad after the funeral of Iyad Zakariya Hamed. (Photo: Palestine Chronicle via Twitter)

. . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) FIVE  PALESTINIANS  INJURED  BY  ARMY  FIRE  DURING  FUNERAL  OF  SLAIN  PALESTINIAN  IN  SILWAD  
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC    
August 26, 2016
Israeli soldiers shot, on Friday, five Palestinians with rubber-coated steel bullets, at the western entrance of Silwad town, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, during the funeral procession of a Palestinian who was killed by the soldiers a few hours earlier.      MORE . . .

  • Hallward, Maia Carter. “NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES, NARRATING CHECKPOINTS: THE CASE OF MACHSOM WATCH.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 17.1 (2008): 21-40.

Territoriality has a tendency to ‘neutralize’ the relationship between identity and geographic boundaries by classifying according to area rather than type. This means that all who live within a specific area are classified accordingly, regardless of felt identification or other personal characteristics (such as language, culture, etc.) . . .  Palestinian movement between areas is regulated according to the identity card—each of which is identified with a particular geographic location—they carry, regardless of family, personal, or work-related considerations. Likewise, discussions of Jewish settlements are often framed in ‘neutral’ planning language . . . rather than noting . . .  location on the West Bank, or Jewish-only population in the midst of a Palestinian Arab population, etc. Territoriality is ultimately about power and is embedded in social relations; an ‘area’ becomes a ‘territory’ only once its boundaries have been established. . . Boundaries must be maintained constantly . . .  they are applied in various degrees to different people and at different times . . .
[. . . .]
Checkpoints serve as gatekeepers; they delimit a boundary and soldiers staffing them enforce regulations regarding who can cross . . .  The vast majority of checkpoints are located deep within the West Bank  . . . consequently, they primarily affect Palestinians trying to conduct their daily lives. However, checkpoints also make Israeli–Palestinian interaction extremely difficult: Israeli law forbids Israeli citizens from entering areas under nominal Palestinian control . . .  and it is extremely difficult for Palestinians to obtain permission to travel to Jerusalem or areas within 1948 Israel. Such restrictions amplify tendencies to stereotype the ‘Other’ as ‘Enemy’ and further solidify place (area)-based boundaries of identity. Official language used to justify the checkpoints often reflects the displacing tendency of territoriality, as it shifts focus away from the location of the checkpoints . . .  as well as the relationship between the controllers and the controlled (it focuses on the regulation of who can cross and not on who has the power to make that classification).

❸ ISRAELI  FORCES  ATTACK  NON-VIOLENT  WEEKLY  PROTEST  IN  BIL’IN  VILLAGE    
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
August 27, 2016 12:06 AM
On Friday afternoon, dozens of local residents from the village of Bil’in, along with Israeli and international activists, marched toward the site of the Israeli Annexation Wall constructed on village land. They were pushed back by Israeli forces who attacked the protesters with rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and concussion grenades.  ___According to the Popular Resistance Committee of Bil’in, this week’s protest focused on the recent desecration and attacks on holy sites by Israeli settlers and soldiers. These attacks have included armed marches by settlers and soldiers into the Al-Aqsa mosque, as well as the defacement of numerous Christian churches by Israeli assailants.  ___Palestinian residents of Bil’in have been protesting every Friday for the past eleven years, and the weekly protests recently entered the 12th year.      MORE . . .  

“AT THE ISRAELI CHECKPOINT – A POEM,” BY SAM HAMOD
(In memory of Mahmoud Darwish, the greatest of Arab Poets)
At the checkpoint, the
Israeli private asked me my name, I told
her, my name is
Zaitoun, she asked, what does that mean,
I told her 4,000 year old trees, she laughed,
asked for my real name, I told her, “Dumm,” what?
i said, it means blood, she said, that’s no name, I told her
blood of my grandfather, my father, my uncle
and even mine if necessary, she bridled, called the corporal,
he came running up, said, what kind of threat is that,
I said, it’s no threat, it’s just a fact,
he called the sergeant, he came up and hit me before he spoke,
my mouth  bled,  I told him, this is the blood I mean, that same
blood, you are afraid of, it’s over 4000 years old, see how dark it is
he called the lieutenant, who asked why my mouth was bleeding,
the sergeant said I had threatened him, the lieutenant asked me
if that was the truth, I told him, I had only stated facts, that
they would be true, after they conferred, he called the
colonel, the colonel came over and asked why I’d been provocative,
I said,all I was doing was stating facts; he asked what I did,
I told him, I was a farmer, he asked what kind, I told him
a farmer with words, what some call a poet—
he asked me if I knew the work of Amichai, I told him yes,
that I’d met him, that he knew what I meant, that Amichai was
sorry for what he’d felt he “had to do”—the colonel shrugged
dismissed the others and told me, “pass on,
I understand, but they don’t, they are not Jews, I am Jew,
not a Zionist”
I pulled the qhubz arabi from my pocket, pulled some zaitoun
from another, some jibbin from my bag and gave it to him–
we laughed, he split the bread in half—
we ate together, we laughed at how sad and foolish all this was

-Sam Hamod is a poet who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, has published 10 books of poems, the winner of the Ethnic Heritage Prize for Poetry, taught at The Writers Workshop of The U. of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Howard and edited THIRD WORLD NEWS in Washington, DC. He contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: samhamod@sbcglobal.net.

 

“. . . You may impose a nightmare of your terror on my village. . .” (Samih al-Qasim)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
2014CRD_Gaza_Schools_0-001
A damaged classroom in the school in Gaza bombed by Israel, July 30, 2014, while more than 3,200 people were sheltering there. The attack killed 20 people. (Photo: Anne Paq/Human Rights Watch)

❶ Palestinian murdered after buying candies for his disabled kids
❷  UN responds to Israel closing case into airstrike near UNRWA school during 2014 Gaza war

  • Background: British Journal of Psychotherapy 

❸ 4 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in critical condition, handcuffed to hospital beds
❹ POETRY by Samih al-Qasim
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PALESTINIAN  MURDERED  AFTER  BUYING  CANDIES  FOR  HIS  DISABLED  KIDS
Days of Palestine
Aug 27, 201
Israeli occupation forces murdered on Friday Palestinian citizen in West Bank city of Silwad after buying some candies for his disabled children.
___At first, the Israeli occupation forces and the Israeli parrot media claimed that his approached an Israeli military post with his car near the illegal settlement of Ofra. ___Palestinian eyewitnesses insisted that the Israeli narrative about the incident was false as the Palestinian did not plan to harm any Israelis.
[. . . .]  Official Palestinian medical sources identified the Palestinian as Iyad Hamed, a resident of Silwad who was married and had three disabled children.
___Later on, when a video showed the man buying the candies for his disabled children went viral on the internet, the Israeli occupation admitted that its soldiers had shot the Palestinian mistakenly.   MORE . . .   

❷ UN  RESPONDS  TO  ISRAEL  CLOSING  CASE  INTO  AIRSTRIKE  NEAR  UNRWA  SCHOOL  DURING  2014  GAZA  WAR
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 26, 2016
The United Nations Friday responded in a statement to Israel’s announcement Wednesday that the military had exonerated itself from any wrongdoing in a missile attack near an UNRWA-run school in Rafah during the 2014 Gaza war, which killed 15 people. . . .   ___According to the statement released by UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, on August 3, 2014 . . . Israeli forces launched a missile at a road outside of an UNRWA school, which was designated as an emergency shelter for displaced Palestinians on July 18 and was at the time sheltering at least 2,900 Palestinians.
___The strike resulted in the killings of 15 civilians, while at least another 30 were injured.
___ “This raises serious questions about the conduct of military operations in relation to obligations under international humanitarian law and respect for the inviolability and sanctity of United Nations premises under international law,” Gunness said in the statement.     MORE . . .   

  • Kemp, Martin. “DEHUMANIZATION,  GUILT  AND  LARGE  GROUP  DYNAMICS  WITH  REFERENCE  TO  THE  WEST,  ISRAEL  AND  THE  PALESTINIANS.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 27.4 (2011): 383-405.  SOURCE.

[. . . .]
Central to the defensive ends served by the denigration of the Palestinians is the avoidance of a profound depression that would follow from the acknowledgement of Israel’s responsibility for the Naqba . . .  [That drives] the Israelis to dehumanize the Palestinians, [but] breaking with this necessity and embracing their humanity is a requirement for both peace and for Israel’s survival. . . . Israel’s ‘large group tent’ is in large part held together by the projection of Israel’s profound and unresolved conflicts onto the Palestinians, and that dehumanization of the latter is . . .  difficult to reverse. One conclusion might be that political Zionism has not offered an escape from the dynamics of oppression, merely a reversal of roles.
[. . . . ]
. . . it could be imagined that the collective psyches of the West and Israel are each grappling with a crippling burden of culpability. I suggest this, and that each engages the other in their efforts to minimize the consequences. The West, aware of the pain that guilt would occasion for itself achieves distance by reassuring Israel – identified with the fate of ‘the Jews’ – that it has no need to feel guilty. The West has regularly upheld Israel’s position that it is the Palestinians who need to make up for something, and that it is their failure to do so that explains the protracted stalemate. For the West to concern itself with the lived experience of the Palestinians would be to challenge an Israeli psyche in part held together by its refusal to acknowledge those realities.
[. . . .]
Responding to [the] suggestion that we attend to the moment when the terrorist decides to ‘abandon their species decency’, G. Awad writes: “Less dramatic, but also lethal, is the slow and cumulative abandonment of a deeply ingrained species decency where there is no defining moment: this can be seen in the increasingly destructive actions of the Israelis against the Palestinians. A powerful oppressor can, more often than not, afford to wait things out and take his time; an occupation or an embargo can slowly yet effectively destroy the soul and the body of ‘the others’. The powerful can kill without dirtying their hands or exposing themselves to imminent danger . . . many Arabs and Muslims, even if they are horrified by the nature of the suicide bomber’s attacks on innocent civilians, do not see such attacks as being any more horrible than the slow, methodological killing of their innocents by the powerful” (Awad, G. “The minds and perceptions of ‘the others.’” 2003).

❸ 4  HUNGER-STRIKING  PALESTINIAN  PRISONERS  IN  CRITICAL  CONDITION,  HANDCUFFED  TO  HOSPITAL  BEDS 
Ma’an News Agency  
Aug. 27, 2016
Four Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners are reportedly in critical condition at Israel’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital, according to a statement released Saturday by the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, as 120 other Palestinian prisoners continued hunger strikes in a mass solidarity movement.
[. . . .]  
___ each of the prisoners declared a hunger strike in protest of being placed in administrative detention — an Israeli policy of detention without charge or trial almost exclusively used against Palestinians.
___The committee said in the statement that the hunger strikers were in “dire health conditions,” as they have lost a significant amount of weight and have been suffering from pains and numbing in their bodies.      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
Steal 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. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1101/S00522/poems-of-resistance-7-poems-for-palestine.htm
About Samih Al-Qasim

“. . . The twenty revolutions that will eternalize this cell . . .” (Fouzi El Asmar)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
Aug. 19, 2016, Philadelphia: Friday Protest: Free Bilal Kayed! End Administrative Detention! (Photo: Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network)
Aug. 19, 2016, Philadelphia: Friday Protest: Free Bilal Kayed! End Administrative Detention! (Photo: Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network)

❶ Palestinian released, placed on house arrest after serving 14 year sentence in Israeli prisons
❷ Palestinian PM Office: Israel’s ‘horrific treatment’ of Bilal Kayid amounting to ‘torture’
❸ Seven Palestinians arrested in WB, Jerusalem
❹ Opinion/Analysis:  “HUNGER STRIKE: STILL AN EFFECTIVE MODE OF RESISTANCE FOR PALESTINIAN PRISONERS?”
❺ POETRY by Fouzi El Asmar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PALESTINIAN RELEASED, PLACED ON HOUSE ARREST AFTER SERVING 14 YEAR SENTENCE IN ISRAELI PRISONS 
Ma’an News Agency 
Aug. 24, 2016
An Israeli judge Tuesday ordered the release of a Palestinian from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukkabir who was redetained four days after being released from a 14-year sentence in Israeli prisons, according to local sources.
___Israeli Magistrate Court’s judge ordered the release of Jerusalemite prisoner Sufian Fakhri Abdo from Israeli prison and imposed 14 days of house detention and a 10,000 shekel ($2,653) fine on him.  MORE . . .

❷ PALESTINIAN PM OFFICE: ISRAEL’S ‘HORRIFIC TREATMENT’ OF BILAL KAYID AMOUNTING TO ‘TORTURE’
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 23, 2016
The Palestinian Prime Minister’s office called on Tuesday for the immediate release of Bilal Kayid, saying that Israel’s “horrific treatment” of the hunger-striking prisoner amounted to “torture.”
___Kayid has been on hunger strike for 70 days after Israeli authorities sentenced him to administrative detention — internment without trial or charges — on the day he was scheduled to be released from prison after serving a 14-and-a-half year sentence.  ___Kayid has since been hospitalized after his health severely deteriorated. However, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) has kept him shackled to his hospital bed and has had guards surrounding him at all times.     MORE . . .    

❸ SEVEN PALESTINIANS ARRESTED IN WB, JERUSALEM
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 24, 2016
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested on Wednesday morning seven citizens in raids to different parts of the occupied West Bank.
___The public Israeli radio said that the occupation forces accused four of the detainees in involving in “terrorist actions.”
___Local sources said that Israeli forces raided several houses in the town of Halhul in Hebron, and arrested three citizens identified as Abed Jnazrah, Ayman al-Omran, and Ali Sarayaa.       MORE . . .

❹ Opinion/Analysis: “HUNGER STRIKE: STILL AN EFFECTIVE MODE OF RESISTANCE FOR PALESTINIAN PRISONERS?”
Bailey, Pam.  Washington Report On Middle East Affairs 33.3 (2014): 21-22.

Prisoners are perhaps the most powerless individuals in the world. They are at the mercy of their captors–deprived of freedom of movement, stripped of virtually all personal resources, limited in communication with the outside to rationed, supervised moments.  ___But the human spirit is not easily extinguished and, particularly when people are imprisoned for their belief in a cause, the natural leaders among them fight back with what little they have: their brains and their bodies.
[. . . .]   The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association has joined the World Organization Against Torture to express concern about their health and harsh treatment, as well as call on international activists to protest to Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is considering a new rule that would allow the force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners whose lives are in danger. Israel had previously stopped the practice after three prisoners died as a result.
[. . . . ]  Sometimes, however, what seems like individual wins can carry larger symbolism–as in the case of Samer Issawi. Over the course of a partial hunger strike of 266 days, Issawi lost half his body weight and suffered numerous health problems–yet rejected offers to release him if he agreed to be deported someplace other than East Jerusalem. By insisting on going home, he captured the hearts of activists and caught the fickle media’s attention–and won.
___”My victory was a Palestinian victory that proves nothing is impossible in the face of our will,” he says now. “If I had to do it over again, I would, because nothing is more valuable than freedom.”     FULL ARTICLE . . . . 

“TWENTY  COMRADES,”  BY  FOUZI  EL ASMAR  (1970)
Beloved, you ask me
Of life in this prison, this cell
what of the chains
chafing my wrists
what of my food and drink
and the comrades of my cell?

Beloved, let me tell you:
Our clouds are indeed heavy
But our being here
is a smile of spring,
The shock of thunder
in autumn, after draught.
We are not defeated
Like our jailers.

Life in this prison, this cell
is a palm tree impregnated
at the dawn.
My chains are the round
echo of a muezzin,
Their clank is the ringing
of my people’s bells.

Beloved, you as me
of the meaning of my food
Here beloved
we grow like the wild flowers.

And what of
my comrades in this cell? You ask
They are the twenty candles
lighting the darkness of this cell
The twenty songs
shaking the walls of this cell
The twenty revolutions
that will eternalize this cell
And we, beloved
we shall not be stopped.  (June, 1970)

El Asmar, Fouzi. POEMS  FROM  AN  ISRAELI  PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.
Available from Amazon.
About Fouzi El Asmar.

“. . . Don’t ask me to abandon . . . the memory of my childhood . . .” (Fouzi El Asmar)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
settlers
Settlers break into Palestinian apartments in Hebron (Photo: Elisha Ben Kimon)

❶ Palestinian family of 7 in Hebron Hills faces imminent displacement by Israel
. . . ❶― (ᴀ) Israeli court rejects appeal against [Hebron district] home demolition of Palestinian attacker’s family

  • Background: “The Last Colonialist: Israel In The Occupied Territories Since 1967.” Independent Review

❷ Israeli occupation plans to build new settlement units in Hebron
❸ POETRY by Fouzi El Asmar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PALESTINIAN FAMILY OF 7 IN HEBRON HILLS FACES IMMINENT DISPLACEMENT BY ISRAEL
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 21, 2016
Seven Palestinians face imminent displacement after Israeli forces delivered a demolition warrant for their home on Sunday, which is located inside the official village limits of al-Tuwani in the vulnerable Southern Hebron Hills region of the occupied West Bank. ___Al-Tuwani village council head Nasser al-Adra told Ma’an that Israeli forces notified Kamil Mousa al-Rabai and his family for a second time that their 120-square-meter house would be demolished [. . . .]
___“This would be the first time Israeli forces demolish a house located within the official community master plan,” al-Adra told Ma’an. “This new policy is a dangerous escalation against al-Tuwani and its neighboring villages and hamlets.”       MORE . . .    

. . . ❶― (ᴀ) ISRAELI COURT REJECTS APPEAL AGAINST [Hebron district] HOME DEMOLITION OF PALESTINIAN ATTACKER’S FAMILY 
Ma’an News Agency 
Aug. 22, 2016
The family of Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Abd al-Majid Omaireh, who Israel accused of being an accomplice in a shooting attack last month which left one Israeli settler dead, said on Monday that an Israeli court decided to demolish their family home in the village of Dura in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.      MORE . . .  

❷ ISRAELI OCCUPATION PLANS TO BUILD NEW SETTLEMENT UNITS IN HEBRON 
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 22, 2016
The Israeli occupation authorities (IOF) plan to build new settlement units in the Jewish settlement amid Hebron southern the West Bank, Haartez newspaper reported.  ___The newspaper reported on Monday that the plan is scheduled to be ended these days, noting that the former Army Minister, Moshe Yaalon, has issued a statement to build the settlement unit on h2 area under Israeli sovereignty.      MORE . . .       RELATED . . .

  • Reuveny, Rafael. “The Last Colonialist: Israel In The Occupied Territories Since 1967.” Independent Review 12.3 (2008): 325-374.  FULL ARTICLE.  

During the past five hundred years, three primary types of colonies have been established: colonies of exploitation, colonies of settlement, and colonies of contested settlement. Colonies of exploitation, the large majority, overworked natives in labor intensive sectors and did not include many settlers. In colonies of settlement, the settlers became the majority and gained full control. In Spanish America, for example, settlers intermarried with the local elites, killed many natives, and enslaved others, and in British North America and Australia, settlers ousted the natives and decimated them demographically, turning them into a small minority in the land they had previously inhabited. Some of these settler societies also imported slaves from Africa. In colonies of contested settlement in Africa and Asia, many settlers went to live in the colonized lands, but they remained a minority rejected by the natives.
[. . . .]
Recent settler actions in the West Bank city of Hebron and the former settlement of Homesh provide additional insight. Seeking to gain control over Hebron’s old city, settlers have attacked Palestinians since 2001, playing a key role in driving out 15,000 to 20,000 Palestinian residents and 1,500 to 1,700 Palestinian businesses from the city. Settlers also have often attacked verbally and physically the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel sent to enforce order. In early 2007, settlers took over a large Palestinian house in Hebron and returned to Homesh, from which the government had removed them during 2005. Because they had done so without approval. Defense Minister Amir Peretz from the Labor Party sought to evacuate them, but the World Council tor Saving the People and the Land of Israel, a settler body, warned him not to intervene. IDF evacuated the settlers from Homesh, but they have since returned several times. In Hebron, the settlers reportedly presented forged documents to prove their ownership of the house and have refused to leave.
[. . . .]
In line with historical colonial examples, Israeli settlers have often built settlements, so-called outposts, without state approval. By 2007, some two thousand settlers lived in about one hundred outposts, seizing 75 percent of their lands from Palestinians. Some Israeli governments have promised to remove outposts and have even removed a few, but all the governments have essentially accepted them after the fact.

kelly-demolition
Homes Demolished in the South Hebron Hills, Feb. 12, 2016 (Photo: Cassandra Dixon/antiwar.com blog)

“TO  A  JEWISH  FRIEND,”  BY  FOUZI  EL-ASMAR
Don’t ask me
the impossible
Don’t’ ask me
to hunt stars,
walk to the sun.
Don’t ask me
to empty the sea
to erase the day’s light
I am nothing but a man.

Don’t ask me
to abandon my eyes, my love,
the memory of my childhood.

I was raised
under an olive tree,
I ate the figs
of my orchard
drank wine from
the sloping vineyards
Tasted Cactus fruit
in the valleys
more, more.

The nightingale has sung
in my ears
The free winds of fields and cities
always tickled me
My friend
You cannot ask me
to leave my own country.  (March 1971)

El Azmar, Fouzi. POEMS  FROM  AN  ISRAELI  PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.
Available from Amazon.
About Fouzi El Asmar.

“. . . For the tragedy I live Is but my share in your larger tragedy. . .” (Tawfiq Ziad)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
Khan-Al-Ahmar-810x608
Khan Al Ahmar Primary School, West Bank (Photo: James Mollison, 2015)

❶ UN: 46 areas in West Bank ‘at risk of forcible transfer’
❷ Israel opens construction tenders for the expansion of illegal Maale Adumim settlement
❸ PCHR Weekly Report: One civilian killed, 33 wounded, 73 abducted by Israeli forces this week

  • Background:“Israel’s Palestinian Minority in the Two-State Solution: The Missing Dimension.” Middle East Policy 

❹ POETRY by Tawfiq Ziad
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ UN: 46 AREAS IN WEST BANK ‘AT RISK OF FORCIBLE TRANSFER’
Days of Palestine
Aug. 20, 2016
United Nations warned that 46 Palestinian residential areas in Central West Bank are “at risk of forcible transfer” due to increasing Israeli settlements.
___David Carden, Head OCHA oPt, delivered a speech on the occasion of the opening the school year in Khan al-Ahmar, one of the ‎Palestinian community at risk of forcible transfer in Central West Bank, and launched his warning.
___Carden delivered the speech on behalf of the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities Robert Piper.
___“We come here today to express our solidarity with the people of Khan al-Ahmar, long identified as a community at risk of forcible transfer and with whom the international community has worked closely for many years,” he said.
___”As we know, Khan al-Ahmar is one of 46 residential areas in the Central West Bank identified as being at risk of forcible transfer due to Israeli relocation (settlement) plans,” he said.    MORE . . .

❷ ISRAEL OPENS CONSTRUCTION TENDERS FOR THE EXPANSION OF ILLEGAL MAALE ADUMIM SETTLEMENT
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 20, 2016
The Israeli Land Authority (ILA) and the Maale Adumim Economic Development Company Saturday opened four tenders for leasing land, establishing a hotel, and constructing a park in the illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, according to Israeli media.
___Two tenders were published to lease land for renewable 49 year contracts, while the others were for building a hotel and park near the industrial zone of the settlement, according the Israeli newspaper Kol Hair.
___The six-story hotel will reportedly be the first in the settlement, and is planned to be built over 2,300 square meters. It will also be located near the mall.     MORE . . .

maale adumin
Apartments in Maale Adumim near Jerusalem, in this June 7, 2012 file picture. Picture taken June 7, 2012. (Reuters)

❸ PCHR WEEKLY REPORT: ONE CIVILIAN KILLED, 33 WOUNDED, 73 ABDUCTED BY ISRAELI FORCES THIS WEEK
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
August 20, 2016
In its Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the week of 11– 17 August 2016, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) found that Israeli forces continued systematic crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
___A Palestinian civilian was killed while 32 others were wounded in al-Fawar refugee camp, south of Hebron. A Palestinian civilian was wounded in the eastern side of al-Bureij in the Central Gaza Strip.      MORE . . .

BACKGROUND: Waxman, Dov. “Israel’s Palestinian Minority in the Two-State Solution: The Missing Dimension.” Middle East Policy 18.4 (2011): 68-82.  FULL ARTICLE.

[. . . .]
Thus, if Palestinians in the territories abandon their demand for an independent state and instead demand equal rights within Israel, Palestinians in Israel could easily join them in demanding a single bi-national state within the whole territory of Israel/Palestine. As long as the occupation continues and the Palestinian minority in Israel is completely marginalized; the chance of this happening — a “nightmare scenario” for Israel — steadily increase. There are already signs of growing support for the one-state solution among Palestinians in the territories, and, although most Palestinian citizens of Israel are currently opposed to this, some prominent individuals have voiced support for it. One thing is certain: there is absolutely no way Israeli Jews will accept a one-state solution. They will staunchly resist it, even at the cost of war.
[. . . .]
Respecting the rights of all parties to the conflict — Jewish citizens of Israel, Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora — is the only way to eventually achieve peace and reconciliation.

[Note: In this blogger’s opinion some of the conclusions the above article are faulty, but they are based in sound reasoning and are, therefore, ideas worth considering.]

“I  CLASP  YOUR  HANDS,”  BY  TAWFIQ  ZAYYAD
I call upon you
And clasp your hands.
I kiss the dust under your shoe
And say: I’ll lay down my life for you,
Grant you the gift of eyesight in my eyes.
The warm love in my heart I give to you,
For the tragedy I live
Is but my share in your larger tragedy.

I call upon you
And clasp your hands.
I never stooped in my country
Nor will I ever be humbled.
Orphaned, naked and barefoot
I confronted my oppressors,
Carrying my blood in my palms.
I have never lowered my flags,
And have always tended the grass over my ancestors’ graves.
I call upon you, and clasp your hands!

From THE  PALESTINIAN  WEDDING:  A  BILINGUAL  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE  POETRY. Ed. and Trans. A. M. Elmessiri. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011. Reprint from Three Continents Press, Inc., 1982. Available from Palestine Online Store.
Tawfik Zayyad (Tawfiq Ziad) was a Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and politician. He was born in Nazareth in 1929 and died on July 5, 1994.   (More. . .)

“. . . I am the son of the land and for that I find goodness . . .” (Fouzi El Asmar)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
ibrahimi
Image showing proposed Israeli corruption of Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron (Photo: Palestine News Network, Aug. 19, 2016)

❶ Islamic Christian Committee: Israel Planning Jerusalem Entrance Project to Obliterate Muslim Christian Spirit

  • Background:  Journal Of Islamic Studies

❷ Urgent Intervention Needed to Prevent Permanent Damage to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron’s Old City
❸ Lieberman to Launch Online Channel Directed at Palestinians
❹ POETRY by Fouzi El Asmar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISLAMIC CHRISTIAN COMMITTEE: ISRAEL PLANNING JERUSALEM ENTRANCE PROJECT TO OBLITERATE MUSLIM CHRISTIAN SPIRIT
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
August 19, 2016
The Islamic Christian Committee to Defend Jerusalem and Holy Sites warned, on Thursday, against an Israeli project called the “New Face of Modern Jerusalem,” which targets the main western entrance of the city.
___The committee said, in a press release, that the plan aims to give Jerusalem a Jewish character, obliterate its Arab Muslim and Christian identity, deface its history and create a new face that doesn’t relate to the original Arab Jerusalem.
___Secretary General of the Committee Hanna Isaa said, according to WAFA correspondence, that the plan is proposed on around 720,000 meter square of land and would cost 1.4 billion shekels ($370 million USD).      MORE . . .

  • Rosmer, Tilde. “Resisting ‘Israelization’: The Islamic Movement In Israel And The Realization Of Islamization, Palestinization And Arabization.” Journal Of Islamic Studies 23.3 (2012): 325-358.  SOURCE. . .  

[. . . .]  Islamic Movement activists continuously structure their activism with the intention of preserving and reinforcing the Palestinian and Muslim identity of Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel, despite their presence in what is now a Jewish state. Interviewees were aware of the balancing act this predicament necessitates and were willing to discuss it openly.
[. . . .] The process of Israelization can be viewed from two perspectives. Measures taken by the state towards its Palestinian citizens intended to weaken their Palestinian identity and strengthen their identity as acquiescent, Hebrew-speaking ‘Israeli Arabs’, enforced through controlling their education and economic and political opportunities. Israelization is also an effect of the expected influences on Palestinian citizens’ identity, culture and lifestyle derived from living and working in Israel and the resulting exposure to, and to a degree participation in, Hebrew and Israeli media and mainstream culture.
[. . . .] In common with other Islamic movements in the region, the Islamic Movement in Israel shares the approach of Islamization from below through its network of local institutions and mosques and through the emphasis it places on da’wa. The main difference between this Movement and other regional movements is due to its political context in Israel. This context has produced the paradoxical predicament wherein Palestinian citizens are able to establish and run their Islamic Movement openly and lawfully, including enjoying representation in the Knesset, as long as their activism is not perceived to threaten the Zionist identity or national goals of the state. However, members and supporters of the Islamic Movement are discriminated against as non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state and particularly as members of an indigenous national group with which Israel remains in conflict.
[. . . .] . . . the interrelated processes of Islamization, Palestinization and Arabization are responses to the processes of Israelization, which refers to the adjustments of identity and life-style and to limitations in political and social activism in accordance with their minority status.
[. . . .] . . .  the activism of the Islamic Movement in Israel focuses on creating local institutions that provide services the State does not provide for this constituency and promoting its Muslim, Palestinian and Arab identity. Both the goals articulated by the Islamic Movement in Israel’s leaders and its activism portray a pragmatic appreciation of the limitations of their context while simultaneously struggling to cater to the social, spiritual and communal needs of the Palestinian citizens of the Jewish State.

❷ URGENT INTERVENTION NEEDED TO PREVENT PERMANENT DAMAGE TO THE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE IN HEBRON’S OLD CITY
Palestine News Network – PNN
Aug. 19,2016
For more than one month the Israeli Government and Occupation Authorities have planned and have worked on installing a new permanent checkpoint structure and other permanent buildings on the historic grounds of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City. Their plans (as seen below) reveal vast damage will be done to the historic grounds of this cultural heritage site. The Israeli plans include remove stones from the Mosque’s site which is more than 2000 years old. These plans will permanently damage the historical Ibrahimi mosque and the aesthetic fabric of the area.    MORE . . .  

❸ LIEBERMAN TO LAUNCH ONLINE CHANNEL DIRECTED AT PALESTINIANS
Palestine Chronicle
Aug 18 2016
Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, announced during a meeting with military reporters at the headquarters of the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv yesterday, a plan to launch a 10-million shekel online channel directed at Palestinians in the West Bank.
___Lieberman said the plan would include “treating Palestinians who are ready to co-exist with Israeli settlers in the West Bank well, and imposing restrictions on those who do not.”    More . . .  

“I  AM  THE  SON  OF  THE  LAND,”  BY  FOUZI  EL  ASMAR
You may take my hands
and lock them in your chains
You may also blindfold me.

You bereaved me
from the light
and I marched
You robbed me
of the bread
and I ate.
You plundered the land
from me
and I ploughed.

I am the son of the land
and for that
I find goodness in this earth
anywhere I happen to be:
The ants of this land
feed me
The branches of this land
foster me
The eagles of this land
will shield my open revolt

Yes
You may take my hands
And lock them in your chains
You may also blindfold me
But here I will stand tall
And here I shall remain
until the very end. (April, 1970) 

From: El Azmar, Fouzi. POEMS  FROM  AN  ISRAELI  PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.
Available from Amazon
About Fouzi El Asmar 

“. . . I shall carve the record of my sufferings . . . On an olive tree. . .” (Tawfiq Zayyad)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
uproot
Suspended in space: uprooting of olive trees for the expansion of Zufin, Jewish settlement in the Tulkarm district (Photo: B’Tselem/ Christoph Gocke – EAPPI)

❶ Israeli forces demolish Palestinian-owned structures in Nablus
. . . ―❶ (ᴀ) Israeli Occupation uproots 300 trees west of Hebron
. . . ―❶ (ᴃ) Israel demolishes multiple Palestinian structures in Jerusalem area
. . . ―❶ (ᴄ) Israeli forces uproot 50 olive trees as Palestinian farmer awaits court date to appeal

  • Background: “Uprooting Identities: The Regulation of Olive Trees in the Occupied West Bank.”

❷ Gaza Strip: Attacks in the Border Areas and their Consequences
❸ POETRY by Tawfiq Zayyad
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISH  PALESTINIAN-OWNED  STRUCTURES  IN  NABLUS
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 17, 2016
Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished two rooms used for agricultural purposes and leveled stone walls in the villages of Khirbet al-Marajim and Qusra in the southern part of the occupied West Bank district of Nablus.
___Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that Israeli bulldozers, escorted by Israeli forces, demolished a room belonging to Tariq Dirawi in Khirbet al-Marajim.    MORE . . .  

. . . ―❶ (ᴀ) ISRAELI  OCCUPATION  UPROOTS  300  TREES  WEST  OF  HEBRON
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 17, 2016
Hebron. ALRAY. Israeli military bulldozers uprooted about 300 olives trees on Wednesday morning and swept lands in Oula town, West of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.
___Isa Al Omla, the activist in the wall and settlements resistance, said that the Israeli bulldozers broke into Al- Najar Valley area, near the apartheid wall, and swept away some lands ( 15 acres) owned by the family of Mohammed Khalil Abdul Aziz Al Omla.  MORE . . .

. . . ―❶ (ᴃ) ISRAEL  DEMOLISHES  MULTIPLE  PALESTINIAN  STRUCTURES  IN  JERUSALEM  AREA
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
Israeli forces demolished multiple Palestinian structures in the Jerusalem area on Tuesday, the same morning that Israeli-enforced demolitions left more than 70 Palestinians homeless in the Hebron and Bethlehem districts of the occupied West Bank.
___In the Jabal al-Mukabbir neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, bulldozers escorted by Israeli police officers and Jerusalem municipality inspectors demolished a single-room house and several outdoor walls, because the structures were built without licenses issued by the Jerusalem municipality.     MORE . . .  

Event marking Rachel Corrie's death, Qariyut, West Bank, 15.3.2
Israeli soldiers attack Palestinians during an olive tree planting commemorating (March, 2015). Corrie, an American, was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003, blocking the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip (Photo: Activestills.org)

. . . ―❶ (ᴄ ) ISRAELI  FORCES  UPROOT  50  OLIVE  TREES  AS  PALESTINIAN  FARMER  AWAITS  COURT  DATE  TO  APPEAL
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
Israeli bulldozers uprooted more than 50 olive trees on Tuesday morning in the Palestinian village of Shufa in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tulkarem, Palestinian farmers told Ma’an, two weeks before a court hearing was scheduled to be held to appeal the Israeli-ordered confiscation of the land.
___One of the farmers, Abed Hamid, said he received a phone call from a neighbor notifying him that Israeli forces brought bulldozers to his olive tree orchard and started to uproot the trees, which were planted between 15 and 20 years ago.
___After Hamid rushed to his land, he said he witnessed Israeli forces “stealing” the majority of his trees, which were left intact.    MORE . . .    

  • Braverman, Irus. “UPROOTING IDENTITIES: THE REGULATION OF OLIVE TREES IN THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK.” Polar: Political & Legal Anthropology Review 32.2 (2009): 237-264.    FULL ARTICLE.   

Trees in general, and olive and pine trees in particular, perform a pivotal role in both the Zionist and the Palestinian national narratives. Since 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) . . . has planted over 240 million trees in Israel, most of which are pines. This massive enterprise has fundamentally transformed the Israeli/Palestinian landscape. Indeed, over the years, the pine has come to be perceived as the quintessential symbol of the Zionist project . . .  If the Jewish tree is the pine, the Palestinian tree is the olive. As Ismat Shbeta, a refugee from the depopulated Palestinian village Miske, tells me in an Interview, “The olive is the Palestinian tree . . . . That’s the olive’s nationality”
[. . . .]  A fusion of humans and trees is thereby constructed: the olive embodies the Palestinian people, the green of its foliage is perceived as interchangeable with the red of their blood. However, the olive is not only a proxy witness; it also provides a model of survival for the Palestinian people. In this sense, the olive not only stands for but also speaks for the mute and uprooted Palestinian . . .
[. . . .]  Since its inception, and increasingly in the last two decades, Israel has been uprooting Palestinian olive trees. . . . . Israel’s central rationale for uprooting olive trees in the occupied territories has not been framed as punitive, or at least not explicitly so. Israel explains these uprootings, rather, as essential for its national security. First, Israel has been uprooting olives to make way for the recently built Separation Barrier. In the same vein, Israel’s Defense Forces have uprooted thousands of olive . . .  to secure roads, increase visibility, and make way for watchtowers, checkpoints. . . .
[. . . .]  In addition to the uprooting of Palestinian olive trees by the State of Israel, for the last decade or so Jewish settlers have also been targeting Palestinian trees. . . . The tree warfare conducted by the New Settlers adds another layer of meaning to the relationship between humans and trees in the occupied West Bank. . . .  the sabotage of olive trees is still an everyday occurrence in the West Bank. As a result, Palestinian access to agricultural land is frequently jeopardized.
[. . . .]   Although both the New Settlers and the human rights activists interviewed here have insisted that the Israeli/Palestinian war is not really about trees but about land, it is nonetheless clear that the emotional, cultural, ritualistic, and economic significance of the tree has been at the forefront of their actions. [Palestinians] would never have claimed that trees are unimportant in this battle. However, they also see clearly the connection between the trees and the overall power struggle over land, autonomy, identity, and power . . . .

❷ GAZA  STRIP:  ATTACKS  IN  THE  BORDER  AREAS  AND  THEIR  CONSEQUENCES
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
Aug. 16, 2016
Following disengagement from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, Israel unilaterally and illegally established a so-called “buffer zone”, an area prohibited to Palestinians along the land and sea borders of the Gaza Strip.
[. . . .]
Preventing Palestinians from accessing their lands and fishing areas violates numerous provisions of international human rights law, including the right to work, the right to an adequate standard of living, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Enforcing the “buffer zone” through the use of live fire often results in, inter alia, the direct targeting of civilians and/or indiscriminate attacks, both of which constitute war crimes.     MORE . . .

“ON  THE  TRUNK  OF  AN  OLIVE  TREE,”  BY  TAWFIQ  ZAYYAD
Because I do not weave wool,
And daily am in danger of detention,
And my house is the object of police visits
To search and “to cleanse,”
Because I cannot buy paper,
I shall carve the record of my sufferings,
And all my secrets
On an olive tree
In the courtyard
Of my house.

I shall carve my story and the chapters of my tragedy,
I shall carve my sighs
On my grove and on the tombs of my dead;
I shall carve
All the bitterness I have tasted,
To be blotted out by some of the happiness to come

I shall carve the number of each deed
Of our usurped land
The location of my village and its boundaries.
The demolished houses of its peoples,
My uprooted trees,
And each crushed wild blossom.
And the names of those master torturers
Who rattled my nerves and caused my misery.
The names of all the prisons,
And every type of handcuff
That closed around my wrists,
The files of my jailers,
Every curse
Poured upon my head.
I shall carve:
Kafr Qasim, I shall not forget!
And I shall carve:
Deir Yassin, it’s rooted in my memory.
I shall carve:
We have reached the peak of our tragedy.
It has absorbed us and we have absorbed it,
But we have finally reached it.

I shall carve all that the sun tells me,
And what the moon whispers,
And what the skylark relates,
Near the well
Forsaken by lovers.

And to remember it all,
I shall continue to carve
All the chapters of my tragedy,
And all the stages of the disaster,
From beginning
To end,
On the olive tree
In the courtyard
Of the house.

From  THE  PALESTINIAN  WEDDING:  A  BILINGUAL  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE  POETRY.  Ed. and Trans. A. M. Elmessiri. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011. Reprint from Three Continents Press, Inc., 1982. Available from Palestine Online Store.
About Tafiq Zayyad. 

“. . . I am a child who lives under the ruins of constant Israeli violence . . . the bombs . . .” (Riham Mansour Hasanat – age 14)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
children al-fawwar
Children from Hebron Excellence Center in Al-Fawar Refugee Camp painting a roadside mural. Jan. 24, 2015 (Photo: Hebron Excellence Center)

❶ Israeli forces storm Hebron area refugee camp, injure 35 with live fire, tear gas, rubber bullets
RELATED: Israel detains 22 Palestinians overnight, including family of teen accused of stabbing

  • Background: “Ongoing Exile: Palestinian Children Write Their Ongoing Nakba.”

❷ Israel refuses to give building permits, demolishes Palestinian homes.
❸ EU logo no shield from Israel’s bulldozers
❹ Opinion/Analysis:  “PALESTINE BESIEGED: WHY PALESTINIANS NEED AN INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION FORCE”
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` 
❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  STORM  HEBRON  AREA  REFUGEE  CAMP,  INJURE  35  WITH  LIVE  FIRE,  TEAR  GAS,  RUBBER  BULLETS
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
35 Palestinians were injured, one seriously, early Tuesday morning during clashes when Israeli forces stormed the al-Fawwar refugee camp in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.
___Locals told Ma’an that large numbers of Israeli troops surrounded the camp around dawn on Tuesday, when they began ransacking homes and interrogating residents in the streets.
___Local youth reportedly reacted to the forces, sparking clashes with the soldiers who fired live gunshots, tear gas, and rubber-coated steel bullets at the youth.    MORE . . .       RELATED:   ISRAEL  DETAINS  22  PALESTINIANS  OVERNIGHT,  INCLUDING  FAMILY  OF  TEEN  ACCUSED  OF  STABBING  

  • Background: “Ongoing Exile: Palestinian Children Write Their Ongoing Nakba.” Palestine-Israel Journal Of Politics, Economics & Culture 15/16.4/1 (2008): 159-164.
    SOURCE.

“My Nakba”
Lalifa al-Wawi (15).
Palestine Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp – Occupied West Bank
My Nakba separated me from my family and my land. I live in a place far from the past, but the past will be the present with my return to my homeland… the land I dream of every night. I often look at the stars in the sky and wonder why I am here… in a camp that has nothing for my present and nothing of my past. In it I live as a stranger amongst the rubble and the ruins.
[. . . .] My cousin completed his studies in Sudan and worked in Saudi Arabia. He decided to leave everything to come to find us and live here as long as he could. It was here that the Israeli soldiers killed him. Perhaps it was his fate after being separated from his land and family all his life; it would be from here, after his return, that he would ascend to heaven.

“I Am a Child of This World”
Riham Mansour Hasanat (14).
Deir al-Dubhan Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp – Occupied West Bank
I am one of the children of this world; I live in a refugee camp, and I say to anyone who will listen that I am a child, and that I will be free like the other happy people living in their homes, on their land, in their country. I am a child who lives under the ruins of constant Israeli violence, the bullets and the bombs. Every day I hear that someone in our camp has been killed or injured or imprisoned. I wake up to the sound of the tanks and the sounds of the planes hovering in the skies above our houses, our homes. They search these homes; they kill and imprison children and old people; they injure and kill those who have committed no crime, and then they call us terrorists. I am a child, and I know that one day I will be free like the other happy people, but that this day will only come after I return to our real homes, the place where we can return happiness to the hearts of the children, the women, and all those who have committed no crime.

❷ ISRAEL  REFUSES  TO  GIVE  BUILDING  PERMITS,  DEMOLISHES  PALESTINIAN  HOMES
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
Israeli occupation forces destroyed Tuesday morning eight homes and two stores in Sa’ir town east of Hebron.
___Local sources reported that the houses which were demolished are inhabited. Israeli occupation had handed the Palestinian homeowners demolition orders before two years, so they have tried to get building permits but the occupation refused to give them building permits.
___It added that a large military force raided with bulldozers Ein Aljawza town and forced the Palestinian residents to evacuate their homes in order to destroy them.     MORE . . .  

eu
Soldiers from Israel’s Civil Administration demolish structures donated by the European Union in the southern Hebron Hills on February 2, 2016. (Photo: Nasser Nawaja/B’Tselem)

❸ EU LOGO  NO  SHIELD  FROM  ISRAEL’S  BULLDOZERS
The Electronic Intifada
Silvia Boarini
Aug. 16, 2016
Bilal Hammadin looks beyond the tin shacks in the occupied West Bank village of Abu Nuwwar, home to approximately 600 Palestinians, to the red-roofed homes in Maaleh Adumim, an Israeli settlement where nearly 40,000 people live.
___“As I was growing up, I could see the settlement getting bigger. I guess you can say that we grew up together,” he says, laughing at the irony.
[. . . .] In February [in Abu Nuwwar], the Israeli army demolished two trailers which were to serve as a new school for first- and second-graders. The cabins, donated by a French nongovernmental organization and funded by the European Union, bore visible EU logos. MORE . . .

❹ Opinion/Analysis: “PALESTINE  BESIEGED:  WHY  PALESTINIANS  NEED  AN  INTERNATIONAL  PROTECTION  FORCE”
Nation
Buttu, Diana, and Nadia Hijab
Oct. 22, 2015
[. . . .] Palestinians have taken to the streets to demonstrate against nearly 50 years of military rule and the denial of their freedom at the hands of Israel. These protests come after the death of the peace process, the election of a rightwing Israeli government that has stated it has no intention of granting Palestinians their rights, and growing discontent with the unelected Palestinian Authority (PA).
___The protests have also been fueled by repeated Israeli announcements of settlement expansion; settler attacks on Palestinian lives, property, and holy places; and the Israeli government’s decision to allow right-wing extremists who seek the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to enter the Haram al-Sharif compound while simultaneously denying Palestinians access to their holy sites.
[. . . .]  First, as the occupying party, Israel is required under international law to ensure the protection of the civilians under its rule. Instead, Israel has, during its 48-year occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, done exactly the opposite.
___Two Palestinian generations have grown up entirely under Israel’s military control. By 2014, more than 800,000 Palestinians had been imprisoned by Israel, including 8,000 children under the age of 18 arrested since 2000. Currently, there are 5,621 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
[. . . .] Things have reached such a pass that even PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been compelled to call on the UN “to provide international protection for the Palestinian people,” as he did in his September 30 speech to the General Assembly.    MORE . . .

 

“. . . I had no address. I am a man in transit . . .” (Rashid Hussein)

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khuzaa
Palestinian women walk past a mosque and water tower damaged by Israeli air strikes and shelling in KHUZAA near ABU RIDA GATE in the southern Gaza Strip. Aug. 3, 2014. (Photo: The Irish Times)

❶ Israel surveys vast tract of land southeast of J’lem to declare it state land

  • Background: “Settlements and Ethnic Cleansing In the Jordan Valley.”

❷ Israeli forces level lands in southern Gaza Strip

  • Background: “Perils of Parity: Palestine’s Permanent Transition.”

❸ Palestinian human rights groups ‘gravely concerned’ over ongoing death threats to staff
❹ POETRY by Rashid Hussein
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  SURVEYS  VAST  TRACT  OF  LAND  SOUTHEAST  OF  J’LEM  TO  DECLARE  IT  STATE  LAND
The Palestinian Information Center
Aug. 15, 2016
The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has embarked recently on conducting a land survey between the settlement of Efrat (southeast Jerusalem) and the area to its east with the intention of annexing it and declaring it state land, according to a report published by Haaretz newspaper on Sunday.
___Efrat is in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the southern West Bank, and the area to its east is called Givat Eitam.    MORE . . .  

  • Tofakji, Khalil. “Settlements And Ethnic Cleansing In The Jordan Valley.” Palestine-Israel Journal Of Politics, Economics & Culture 21.3 (2016): 81-87.

[. . . .] The Israeli government utilized two main methods in order to construct and expand its settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).The first method involved setting legal and bureaucratic procedures enabling the government to confiscate lands. By using the following justifications: seizure for military purposes, declaration of state lands, seizure of absentee property, confiscation for public needs, and initial registration, Israel has managed to take over about 50% of the lands in the West Bank, barring the local Palestinian public from using them. The second method is by evicting Palestinians from these lands, with the declared objective of controlling maximum land with a minimum number of Palestinian Arabs. The Israeli daily Haaretz on 21 May 2014 revealed in a report the methods the IDF uses to remove the Palestinians from Area C, and quoted Israeli army officer col. Einav Shalev as saying the Israeli army practices daily confinement, harassment and attacks on Palestinians through the sabotage of their crops and lands, as well as preventing them from obtaining building licenses, water and electricity. These “tools” are used to place pressure on and eventually force the Palestinian inhabitants of these areas to leave their houses and lands. Shalev added that the army also increased its military training in the Jordan Valley in an attempt to force the Palestinians to leave the land.
___These methods are viewed by Palestinians as systematic ethnic cleansing policy and have also been also implemented in the Jordan Valley.
[. . . .] With security considerations no longer being the primary motivation, the continued expansion into and occupation of the West Bank is a strategic move for Israel serving its economic interests. Through the restrictions on movement of people and goods, Israel is able to control the Palestinian economy and constrain growth to limited designated areas, or via immigration into neighboring countries. These methods, combined with the Bahrain Canal Project linking the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, which would primarily benefit the Israelis, the continued demolition of Palestinian homes, and the eviction of Bedouins, aim at attaining the undeclared goal of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the OPT.    SOURCE.

efrat
Illustrative photo of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, December 17, 2014 (Photo: Times of Israel/Miriam Alster/Flash90)

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  LEVEL  LANDS  IN  SOUTHERN  GAZA  STRIP
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 15, 2016
Israeli military vehicles staged a limited incursion across the borderline of the besieged Gaza Strip to level land on Monday morning, locals said.
___Locals told Ma’an that six Israeli military vehicles crossed the Abu Rida gate at the border east of the town of Khuzaa in the southern Gaza Strip and leveled Palestinian land in the area.
___Israeli military incursions inside the besieged Gaza Strip and near the “buffer zone” which lies on both land and sea sides of Gaza, have long been a near-daily occurrence.    MORE . . .  

  • Miller, Zinaida. “Perils of Parity: Palestine’s Permanent Transition.” Cornell International Law Journal 47.2 (2014): 331-415.

[. . . . ]  Rather than understanding the situation in terms of occupation—a framework that seeks to protect a vulnerable people from a militarily strong sovereign—the Oslo regime suggests two warring parties. In the process, Israeli, international, and even Palestinian discourse has gradually reduced or eliminated the use of the term ‘occupation’ while focusing on the achievement of ‘peace.’
___The Oslo regime has also affected Palestinian resistance. While the PLO in the past sought to end the occupation, current iterations have focused on the achievement of statehood. In the process, the goal of equality . . .  may at times be undermined by a process predicated on parity . . . . Relations of parity resulted in part from the Palestinian belief that mutual recognition or formal status would alter the terms of the conflict; in the end, however, the conception— and perception—of equivalence largely overtook the reality of asymmetry, making it harder rather than easier to address the structural inequality between the players. The focus of the international community (and the PLO) on establishing a state has oriented the Palestinian national movement away from earlier approaches rooted in rhetoric of emancipation and liberation.   [. . . . ]    No longer simply occupier and occupied, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been transformed into putative equals engaged in perpetual negotiation [. . . .]
___These changes came about in no small part because of the unexpectedly enduring presence of international actors. The Accords reassigned responsibility for the Palestinian population to the newly created Palestinian Authority while leaving control over territory largely in the hands of the Israeli government. With the nascent Authority severely lacking capacity, the arrangement was tenable only because of international support in the form of money and expertise [. . . . ]
___Over the course of the following two decades, international actors and organizations provided aid . . .  facilitated peacebuilding, development, and post-conflict reconstruction, and supported negotiations between the parties. International actors, however, brought more than money or institutional blueprints: their ideas about how to make peace and reconstruct territories after conflict reshaped the form and conceptualization of governance and peace in the Occupied Territories.  FULL ARTICLE.

❸ PALESTINIAN  HUMAN  RIGHTS  GROUPS  ‘GRAVELY  CONCERNED’  OVER  ONGOING  DEATH  THREATS  TO  STAFF
Al-Hourriah
Aug. 15, 2016
The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) said in a press release on Sunday that they were “gravely concerned” over an ongoing smear campaign and mounting threats by Israeli authorities and associated groups directed at employees of PHROC member organizations. ___The statement came after reports emerged that human rights lawyer Nada Kiswanson, who represents Palestinian NGO Al-Haq before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, had been receiving death threats since February, Dutch newspaper NRC reported on Wednesday. ___The report revealed the threats referred specifically to Kiswanson’s work with the ICC, rousing suspicions that Israeli security services may have been involved in the attack, according to the newspaper.    MORE . . .          RELATED . . .

“AN  ADDRESS,”  BY  RASHID  HUSSEIN
―1―
Hairs as short as my life is
And a mouth as sensuous as my dreams
And fire is her voice
And so is the music
Yet she wants me to rest
On an easy chair
And keep my thoughts clean.

Oh my dear hunter!
What you ask is much more
Than all that I can give . . .
For the angels are dead,
And I am not with them.

―2―
A wine was her perfume
Generous was her bed
But her hopes were stronger,
And the strongest of all:
She wanted my address.
She asked: “Where lives the ‘Prince’?”
Then, I stood silenced
For I had no address.
I am a man in transit,
Twenty years in transit
A man who was even deprived
The right of having an address.

Rashid Hussein  
See also  
From: Aruri, Naseer and Edmund Ghareeb, eds. ENEMY  OF  THE  SUN:  POETRY  OF  THE  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE. Washington, DC: Drum and Spear Press, 1970. Available from Amazon.