❶ Pushing Gaza to suicide: The politics of humiliation

Background: “The 2014 War on Gaza: Engineering Trauma and Mass Torture to Break Palestinian Resilience.”

. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israeli jets target resistance sites across Gaza Strip
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Al-Hayya calls on Arabs not to mix between resistance and terrorism
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) Haneyya reaches out to Arab League Secretary General, Tunisia’s Sibsi
❷ Israel refuses entry to UNESCO group expected to visit Hebron’s Old City
❸ POETRY by Basem El-Nabres
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❶ PUSHING  GAZA  TO  SUICIDE:  THE  POLITICS  OF  HUMILIATION  
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO  
Ramzy Baroud
June 25, 2017.   Mohammed Abed is a 28-year-old taxi driver from the village of Qarara, near the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He has no teeth.     ___Lack of medical care and proper dentistry work cost him all of his teeth, which rotted and decayed at a very young age. Yet, his dire financial needs prevented him from acquiring dentures. His community eventually pitched in, collecting the few hundred dollars needed for Mohammed to finally being able to eat.
[. . . .]  An Israeli military siege on Gaza has extended for over 10 years, and the situation continues to deteriorate.
___A Red Cross report last May warned of another ‘looming crisis’ in the public health sector, due to the lack of electricity.
___The energy crisis has extended from electricity supplies to even cooking gas. Last February Israel cut cooking gas supplies to the Strip to a half.
[. . . .]  With no access to the West Bank due to the Israeli siege, and with severe restrictions on movement via the Rafah-Egypt border, Gaza is living through its darkest days. Literally. Starting June 11, Israel began reducing the electricity supply to the impoverished Strip, as per the request of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.
___The results are devastating. Gaza households now receive 2 to 3 hours of electricity per day, and not even at fixed hours.   MORE . . .

Shehadeh, Said. “THE  2014  WAR  ON  GAZA:  ENGINEERING  TRAUMA  AND  MASS  TORTURE  TO  BREAK  PALESTINIAN  RESILIENCE.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, vol. 12, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 278-294.
[. . . .] In his insightful analysis, Darryl Li suggests understanding the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as “representing two different phases of a common process of segregation, confinement, and surveillance produced by the Zionist project”. He argues that the Gaza Strip has historically been used by the Israeli occupation as a laboratory, in which colonial policies of confinement, management and control of the Palestinian population are tested and refined, to be later replicated in the West Bank. The overarching principle of the Israeli colonial policies against the Palestinians, as Li puts it, is “continuously experimenting in search of an optimal balance between maximum control over the territory and minimum responsibility for its non-Jewish population”. Following the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2006, and the suffocating siege that followed, this policy appears to have been highly successful. In effect, 25 percent of the global Palestinian population currently lives under Israeli control, while confined to 1.4 percent of the territory of (Mandatory) Palestine (Li, 2006).
___The Gaza Strip enclosure was initially described as the world’s largest prison, but this metaphor no longer applies. As Li writes, Israel now treats the Strip more like a zoo. For running a prison is about constraining or repressing freedom; in a zoo, the question is rather how to keep those held inside alive, with an eye to how outsiders might see them. The question of freedom is never raised.
___Similarly, Jeff Halper describes the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as that of “warehousing,” which he claims is “worse than apartheid.” He adds, “It does not even pretend to find a political framework for ‘separate development,’ it simply jails the oppressed and robs them of all their collective and individual rights. It is the ultimate form of oppression before actual genocide”.     SOURCE . . .

. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) ISRAELI  JETS  TARGET  RESISTANCE  SITES  ACROSS  GAZA  STRIP
The Palestinian Information Center
June 27, 2017.   Israeli fighter jets have carried out multiple airstrikes overnight on a number of resistance sites throughout the Gaza Strip.    ___According to the PIC field reporter, several of the early Tuesday raids targeted Bader site belonging to the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas Movement, located to the west of the Strip.     ___No injuries were reported during the air raid; however, material damage was caused to the neighboring houses.   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) AL-HAYYA  CALLS  ON  ARABS  NOT  TO  MIX  BETWEEN  RESISTANCE  AND  TERRORISM    
The Palestinian Information Center    
June 27, 2017.   Khalil Al-Hayya, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), has called on the “Arab brothers” to end their differences and not to confuse Palestinian resistance with terrorism.
___Al-Hayya said during the Eid prayer at Al-Saraya Square in Gaza on Sunday, “We hope that all differences between Arab brothers will end, on the basis of brotherhood and contrary to what the Zionist enemy wants,” stressing the need to unite to defend Al-Aqsa Mosque.
___Al-Hayya denounced Hamas’s designation as a terrorist organization, noting that “the Palestinian resistance is neither terrorism nor violence, but a legitimate right to resist the occupation, which all peoples have done before.”     MORE . . . 
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) HANEYYA  REACHES  OUT  TO  ARAB  LEAGUE  SECRETARY   GENERAL,  TUNISIA’S  SIBSI 
The Palestinian Information Center      
June 27, 2017.   Political bureau chairman of Hamas Ismail Haneyya on Monday evening extended his warmest wishes to the Secretary General of the Arab League and the Tunisian President on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr.
___Reaching out to the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Ahmad Abu al-Ghait, and the Tunisian President, al-Baji Kaed al-Sibsi, Haneyya congratulated his addressees on the advent of Eid and briefed them on the latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and Jerusalem.
___Speaking to Abu al-Ghait, Haneyya stressed Hamas’s commitment to boost fraternity ties with Egypt and the other Arab states.   MORE . . .    

❷ ISRAEL  REFUSES  ENTRY  TO  UNESCO  GROUP  EXPECTED  TO  VISIT  HEBRON’S  OLD  CITY
Ma’an News Agency  
June 26, 2017.   Israeli authorities have refused to grant entry visas for a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) investigative team scheduled to conduct a field visit to the Old City in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron in advance of an upcoming vote next month to consider the area an endangered world heritage site, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
___While Palestinian authorities had planned to introduce the site for consideration on UNESCO’s World Heritage List for 2018, they decided to fast track the site’s application owing to routine Israeli violence in the Old City, which Palestinians have claimed threatens the integrity of the site, and instead propose the area as an endangered site.
___A Palestinian delegation to UNESCO had reportedly expressed the “alarming details about the Israeli violations in Al-Khalil/ Hebron, including the continuous acts of vandalism, property damage, and other attacks,” in a letter to the World Heritage Center.  MORE . . .

Excerpt  from  “HOUSE,”  BY  BASEM  EL-NABRES

Oh, father . . .   they went into the clouds, and I remained to
remember them. Neither women nor fortune smile to let me
forget, to take me out of the house of memories. Nothing.
Their things, within a breath’s reach. I almost feel them with
my hand, with my fingertips. I almost fill myself with them,
but am empty myself. Here they were. Here they lived. Here
the last died, leaving half a breakfast egg, leaving a rumpled
bed, leaving the door ajar and the air muted. I can almost
touch them, one by one, those who died a century ago in this
ancient house, those who died a year ago. Ah, how hard it is to
live, in good faith, in the house of memories.

Those who write after two o’clock each night, those who walk
among people occupied with an idea of being killed in Gaza
suddenly, those for whom an hour of music is enough to make
their tears fall, enough to let them know they are shadows
walking on a land unsafe for them or the waste collectors.
—Translated by John Peate
About Basem El-Nabres.  
From BANIPAL: MAGAZINE  OF  MODERN  ARAB  LITERATURE  45.  Winter 2012.