❶ Palestinians prepare to mark 100 years for Balfour Declaration

• Background: “Tracing Concrete.” Virginia Quarterly Review 

❷ Israeli air forces shell alleged Hamas military post in northern Gaza Strip
. . . ❷― (a) UNRWA disburses $1.7 million to 242 Gaza families to rebuild war damaged homes
❸ Israeli settlers establish new ‘outpost’ in the Jordan Valley
. . . ❸― (a) Palestinians Security forces freed four Palestinian men after settlement visit
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❶ PALESTINIANS PREPARE TO MARK 100 YEARS FOR BALFOUR DECLARATION     Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA      
Oct. 24, 2016
Palestinian officials and activists decided Monday to hold year-long activities in Palestine and around the world marking 100 years for the Balfour Declaration.
___The campaign will be launched on November 2, the date marking 100 years since then British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, had promised in a letter to Zionist leaders a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. The letter triggered the century-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict and many wars in the Middle East.
___“The Balfour Declaration is in its essence a colonialist project,” Taysir Khalid, member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told the meeting held at the PLO’s Ramallah headquarters.      More . . .     

• Lagerquist, Peter. “Tracing Concrete.” Virginia Quarterly Review 85.3 (2009): 54-71.  Full article . . . 

[. . . .] Long after the spring of 1936, when news of a general strike and unrest in Palestine began to creep into the London headlines, government correspondences would speak interminably of events forever on the brink—of growing disturbances, ambushes on colonial troops, a complete absence of rule of law—yet hesitate to put a name to what was happening. General Bernard Montgomery, who was sent to suppress the “riots” . . .  famously dismissed the main protagonists as “bandits.” Throughout, the government blamed the unrest on excitable elements within the native population, at odds with its best own interests. At home as well as abroad, newspapers absorbed interchangeable tales of rampant criminality, religious fanaticism, and still more nefarious influences. “Italian Propaganda Campaign Renewed—Thought to Blame for Most Trouble,” declared a New York Times headline in 1937, divining a new fascism at work in the East. But while the Axis powers were happy to publicize Britain’s troubles in the region, the Times, not for the last had it wrong.
___In 1917, the British government had published a document known as the Balfour Declaration, which promised the distant land of Palestine as a national home for the Zionist movement. Its adherents, a mélange of European Utopians, ideologues, and refugees from the pale of settlement, had been arriving over the preceding decades—at first establishing plantation-model estates with land acquired from semi-feudal landholders, later buying smaller parcels of land, or appropriating communal village and urban lands with governmental connivance, and, with growing frequency, evicting those peasants who worked it.
___By the end of the 1930s, an estimated 120,000 Palestinians had been made landless.. . .  As the term “revolt” began creeping into press coverage, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of much of the country.
[. . . .] 

❷ ISRAELI AIR FORCES SHELL ALLEGED HAMAS MILITARY POST IN NORTHERN GAZA STRIP  
Ma’an News Agency
Oct. 24, 2016
Israeli air forces shelled a military post allegedly belonging to the Hamas movement in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday morning, according to Israeli army and local Palestinian sources.
___Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses told Ma’an that at least one Israeli artillery shell hit a military post belonging to what they called the “Palestinian resistance,” east of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, next to the border with Israel.     ___The shelling caused material damages, though no human injuries or casualties were reported.
___An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that early Monday morning, sirens went off in the Shaar Hanegev area of southern Israel — which borders the northeastern Gaza Strip — alerting the residents of the area that a rocket had been fired in their direction.
___No rockets hit Israeli territory . . .        More . . . 

. . . ❷― (A) UNRWA DISBURSES $1.7 MILLION TO 242 GAZA FAMILIES TO REBUILD WAR DAMAGED HOMES  
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA      
Oct. 24, 2016
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said Monday that it was able to disburse over $1.7 million for reconstruction and repair work of Gaza homes damaged from Israel’s last war on the coastal enclave.
___The funds reached a total of 242 refugee families across Gaza, it said in a statement.     ___Over $951,000 will go for homes that need reconstruction and over $759,000 to severe repair works.
___ UNRWA’s assessment confirmed 142,071 Palestine refugee houses as impacted during the 2014 war; 9,117 of them are considered totally destroyed.      More . . .  

❸ ISRAELI SETTLERS ESTABLISH NEW ‘OUTPOST’ IN THE JORDAN VALLEY       Al-Hourriah
Oct. 24, 2016
Israeli settlers are establishing a new outpost in the northern Jordan Valley on privately owned Palestinian land.
___According to the Haaretz report, although Israeli authorities have not authorized its construction, and are aware of its existence, construction is currently continuing unimpeded.
___The outpost is close to another unauthorized outpost, Givat Salit, established in 2001.
___Israeli occupation authorities claimed that a stop-work order had been issued at the outpost. However, a visit by Haaretz showed that the settlers have continued regardless.     More . . .
. . . ❸― (A) PALESTINIANS SECURITY FORCES FREED FOUR PALESTINIAN MEN AFTER SETTLEMENT VISIT    
Al-Hourriah
Oct. 24, 2016
Security forces in the West Bank have released four Palestinian men detained last week after visiting a Jewish settlement during a religious festival, a security official said Monday.
___The men were among about 30 Palestinians who visited the West Bank settlement of Efrat on Wednesday during the annual Jewish festival of Sukkot, Oded Revivi of the Yesha council for settlements.
___Palestinians are forbidden from “normalizing” relations with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.      More . . .