❶ Israel advances more than 2,000 settlement housing units in one week

• “Apartheid, SETTLER COLONIALISM and the Palestinian State 50 Years On.” The Palestine-Israel Journal.

❷ Israeli forces demolish structures in Masafer Yatta
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Germany says settlement construction a path to one state devoid of Palestinian rights
❸ Analysis: The real reasons Trump is quitting UNESCO
❹ POETRY by Tawfiq Zayyad
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❶ ISRAEL  ADVANCES  MORE  THAN  2,000  SETTLEMENT  HOUSING  UNITS  IN  ONE  WEEK. 
Ma’an News Agency
Oct. 18, 2017   The Israeli Civil Administration’s High Planning Committee convened on Tuesday and Thursday, and advanced plans for 2,615 housing units in illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now.
___Peace Now released a statement on Thursday detailing the committee’s decisions, saying that over the course of two days of meetings, the civil administration promoted 2,615 housing units, bringing the total number of units promoted through plans this week to 2,646, after 31 construction permits were approved for settlers in Hebron on October 16th.
___Of the 2,615 housing units promoted, 1,508 were approved for depositing, while 1,323 were approved for validation.   MORE . . . 

Salem, Walid.
“APARTHEID,  SETTLER  COLONIALISM  AND  THE  PALESTINIAN  STATE  50  YEARS  ON.”
The Palestine-Israel Journal Vol.22 No.2 & 3, 2017.
[. . . .] The Israeli researcher Ariel Handel described these processes as creating a “geography of catastrophe”, while the Palestinian scholar Sari Hanafi gives it the name “spacio-cide”. The latter of these descriptions reflects the elimination of both the space and the people who populate it. This is exemplified in the external dispossession of refugees and the internal dispossession of the occupants of Area C and East Jerusalem, both of which will be considered.
___A further problem is that these dispossessions of the Palestinians are followed by the establishment of military camps and, in most cases, Israeli settlements. In the literature of political science and international relations, this combined process of displacement and replacement is called “Settler Colonialism.”  In the Israeli-Palestinian case, this process is also planned and supported by the Israeli governments, while being protected by the Israeli occupying Army. What complicated such a situation even more is the denial of such a process at both the official and public levels of the State of Israel [. . . .]   SOURCE.

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISH  STRUCTURES  IN  MASAFER  YATTA   
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Oct. 19, 2017   Israeli forces demolished on Thursday several residential structures and tents in Khirbet Halaweh, in Masafer Yatta area to the south of Hebron in the West Bank, according Rateb Jabour, coordinator of the Anti-Settlement Commission.
___He told WAFA that staff from the Israeli so-called Civil Administration, an arm of the military government, accompanied by soldiers raided the Bedouin village and demolished structures and tents used to shelter the residents.
___Israeli authorities have demolished dozens of residential structures and animal barns in the area, citing construction without a permit as a pretext.
___Many of the structures were donated by the European Union (EU). . . .   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) GERMANY  SAYS  SETTLEMENT  CONSTRUCTION  A  PATH  TO  ONE  STATE  DEVOID  OF  PALESTINIAN  RIGHTS 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA  
Oct. 19, 2017  Israeli settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territory is going to lead to a one-state solution where Palestinians will be deprived of political rights, a statement by the German Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
___The statement was issued following reports that Israel has stepped up plans to build almost 3000 new housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
___“The Federal Government takes this opportunity to reaffirm that it will recognize only such changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, which all the parties have agreed on through negotiations,” said a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry.
___“Settlement construction, illegal under international law, is not the only obstacle to a two-state solution, but each new housing unit consolidates a one-state reality in which the Palestinians are denied the full exercise of their political rights.”   MORE . . .
❸ ANALYSIS:  THE  REAL  REASONS  TRUMP  IS  QUITTING  UNESCO
Mondoweiss   
Jonathan Cook
Oct. 17, 2017   At first glance, the decision last week by the Trump administration, followed immediately by Israel, to quit the United Nation’s cultural agency seems strange. Why penalise a body that promotes clean water, literacy, heritage preservation and women’s rights?
___Washington’s claim that the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is biased against Israel obscures the real crimes the agency has committed in US eyes.
___The first is that in 2011 UNESCO became the first UN agency to accept Palestine as a member. That set the Palestinians on the path to upgrading their status at the General Assembly a year later.
___It should be recalled that in 1993, as Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, the watching world assumed the aim was to create a Palestinian state.
___But it seems most US politicians never received that memo. Under pressure from Israel’s powerful lobbyists, the US Congress hurriedly passed legislation to pre-empt the peace process. One such law compels the United States to cancel funding to any UN body that admits the Palestinians. . . .
___The agency’s second crime relates to its role selecting world heritage sites. That power has proved more than an irritant to Israel and the US.   MORE . . .

“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, in a dreadful car crash while on his way to meet Yasser Arafat in Jericho after the Oslo agreements. He participated in Palestinian political life in occupied Palestine, was elected mayor of Nazareth, and served as a member of the Israeli Knesset.     (More. . .)