❶ Israeli settlers erect 29 mobile homes in Nablus, Tulkarem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israel is razing a Bedouin village to build a Jewish-only town on its ruins

• Background: “The Biopolitics of Israeli Settler Colonialism: Palestinian Bedouin Children Theorise the Present.” Journal of Holy Land & Palestine Studies.

. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Palestinians perform prayers at Jerusalem home threatened by settler takeover
❷ 9th anniversary of the passing of Mahmoud Darwish
❸ POETRY by Mahmoud Darwish
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  SETTLERS  ERECT  29  MOBILE  HOMES  IN  NABLUS,  TULKAREM
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 12, 2017.   Israeli settlers installed 29 mobiles homes in and near several illegal Israeli settlements in the Nablus and Tulkarem districts of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official told Ma’an on Saturday.
___Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that Israeli settlers from the infamous Yitzhar settlement . . .    installed 11 mobile homes inside the settlement, located south of Burin village.
___Another nine houses were erected by settlers near the village of Qusin . . . .  settlers from the Einav settlement in the eastern part of Tulkarem district erected nine homes . . .
[. . . .] There are some 196 government recognized Israeli settlements scattered across the Palestinian territory, all considered illegal under international law, while hundreds of unauthorized Israeli settler outposts — considered illegal even under Israeli law — also dot the Palestinian landscape.
[. . . .] Meanwhile, in June, Israeli authorities broke ground on the first official new Israeli settlement in 25 years amid fierce condemnation from the international community and rights groups.   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) ISRAEL  IS RAZING  A  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE  TO  BUILD  A  JEWISH-ONLY  TOWN  ON  ITS  RUINS
+972 Magazine
By Edo Konrad     August 10, 2017.   Despite assurances made to Israel’s High Court of Justice, a new town being built on the ruins of a Bedouin village in southern Israel is intended for Jews only, according to the bylaws of the future town’s cooperative association.
___Israel first notified the residents of Umm al-Hiran, Bedouin citizens of Israel, that it plans to demolish their entire village and build another community in its place 15 years ago. A legal battle has been taking place ever since, although Israel’s top court ultimately approved the plan — partially based on assurances that the current Bedouin residents would have the option of living in the new community.     
___ According to the bylaws of Hiran, the future Jewish town, which were uncovered by “Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel,” acceptance into the community will be open only to “Jewish Israeli citizens or permanent residents who observe the Torah and the commandments according to the values of Orthodox Judaism.”    MORE . . .    RELATED . . .

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera.
“THE  BIOPOLITICS  OF  ISRAELI  SETTLER  COLONIALISM:  PALESTINIAN  BEDOUIN  CHILDREN  THEORISE  THE  PRESENT.”
Journal of Holy Land & Palestine Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, May 2016, pp. 7-29.
[. . . .] nearly half of the 192,000 Bedouin live in ‘unrecognised villages’. Closely examining the context of the Naqab Bedouin and how, specifically, the children who live under conditions of unrecognisability conceptualise their place within a wider system of dispossession and elimination can enhance our framework and sharpen our lens of analysis in our attempts to interrogate Israeli  settler colonialism . . .
___ Interviews, conversations, and reflections led me to understand that within settler colonial contexts, children and childhood become political and politicised sites. . .  settler states attempt to turn children into instruments and targets that assist in the project’s need to eliminate and efface Native communities and people. . .
[. . . .]  Forced removal and ‘modernisation’ efforts were (and are) driven by the Zionist leaders’ perceptions of Native inferiority and threat. These depictions of the Palestinian Bedouin, as uncivilised, pre-modern, and Other, have contributed to their construction as an inherent threat to Israel’s modern and civilised way of life. Additionally, the state’s treatment of the Bedouins as a minority population, rather than a native community, allows for further erasure. . .   discourse around Bedouin primitivism begins to emphasise race/ethnicity and gender, but works to deny collective and historical belonging.
[. . . .]  . . . In a study of 250 Bedouin teenagers from 32 unrecognised villages that sought to include the children’s own reflections, over 95 percent of the participants met the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder, with over 57 percent suffering from severe PTSD.
[. . . .] In many ways, the foundational violence of the Jewish state remains sacred and untouchable. But we must begin to unravel the centrality of Jewish supremacy – as the primary constituent of being Israeli – which has come to shape and define the fabric of Palestinian life and society. The structural violence embedded in the various colonial technologies of dispossession and colonial distractions makes it difficult to overcome the racialised barriers inscribed on children’s bodies and lives. Each component is interrelated and interlocked with the other, and they all reveal how childhood, and children’s lives, are political questions that demand thorough and complex political discussion. The eviction of Palestinian children from childhood, from humanity to zones of unrecognisability, especially in sickness, arrest, evacuation, and state terror, plays a major role in narrating the settler’s story of needing to fear the colonised child, who, in the case of Israeli settler colonialism, is always already a terrorist other.   FULL ARTICLE . . .

. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) PALESTINIANS  PERFORM  PRAYERS  AT  JERUSALEM  HOME  THREATENED  BY  SETTLER  TAKEOVER  
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 11, 2017.   Tens of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem performed prayers outside the Shamasna home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Friday in a show of solidarity with the family, who is facing imminent evacuation from their home of 53 years to make room for Israeli settlers claiming they own the family’s home.
___Ekrima Sabri, head of the High Islamic Committee, said during the Friday khutbah — Islamic sermon — that “the land that the Shamasna family home is built on belongs to the family, and not to Jews.” He said that the Shamasna family had rented the house from its “original owners” since before 1948 — the year Israel was established.
___However, Sabri’s claims contradict reports that the family patriarch, Ayoub Shamasna, moved into the house in 1964.   MORE . . .

(Note: the anniversary of Mahmoud Darwish’s death was August 9, 2017.)
❷ 9TH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  PASSING  OF  MAHMOUD  DARWISH     
Palestine News Network – PNN
August 11, 2017.   PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi on the 9th anniversary of the passing of Mahmoud Darwish said :”On behalf of the Palestinian leadership and the people of Palestine, we mark with great sorrow the 9th anniversary of the death of Palestine’s greatest poet and national literary figure, Mahmoud Darwish, whose passing continues to be felt in Palestine and throughout the world.     ___Darwish was not just a national poet; he was a poet of humanity and creativity who forged a new language and awareness for Palestine and beyond. He humanized Palestinian reality during its darkest hours, and he generated an undeniable energy to legitimize hope and affirmation, as well as resistance.   MORE . . .

“THE  ROSES  AND  THE  DICTIONARY,”  BY  MAHMOUD  DARWISH
Be that as it may,
I must . . .
The poet must have a new toast
And new anthems.
Traversing a tunnel of incense
And pepper and ancient summer,
I carry the key to legends and ruined monuments of slaves.
I see history and old man
Tossing dice and gathering the stars.

Be that as it may,
I must refuse death
Even though my legends die.
In the rubble I rummage for light and new poetry.
Did you realize before today, my love,
That a letter in the dictionary is dull?
How do they live, all these words?
How do they grow?
How do they spread?
We still water them with the tears of memories
And metaphors and sugar.

Be that as it may,
I must reject the roses that spring
From a dictionary or a diwan.
Roses grow on the arms of a peasant, on the fists of a laborer,
Roses grow over the wounds of a warrior
And on the face of a rock.

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.