❶ Video: Masar Ibrahim al Khalil launches the Thru-Hike program

• Background: “A study of the late antique and early medieval pottery of Palestinian sites.” Palestine Exploration Quarterly.

❷ 15 new Israeli police centers to be established in Jerusalem
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Israel to delay demolition of Susiya due to diplomatic pressure
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) Israeli arrests of Palestinians
❸ “A century on from Balfour, I challenge Britain to finally do the right thing” – Hanan Ashrawi
❹ POETRY by Ibrahim Nasrallah
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(Note: The first two items are the beginning of a series of news items and articles about tourism and archaeology in Palestine.)

❶ VIDEO:  MASAR  IBRAHIM  AL KHALIL  LAUNCHES  THE  THRU-HIKE  PROGRAM 
Palestine News Network – PNN      Nov. 5, 2017 ― Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil launched a new hiking trip which includes introducing the participants to Palestinian nature and environment, as well as many historical sites.
___The participants have the chance to visit houses of Palestinian families and learn about their life and culture through this journey which began on Saturday and continues for twenty-one days from the north to the West Bank.
___Executive Director of Masar Ibrahim, George Rishmawi, said the hike started in the Rummaneh village in Jenin, north of the West Bank within the program of walking non-stop known known as the Thru-HIKE. It includes a walking for 330 kilometers to the village of Beit Marsam in Hebron in the south of the West Bank, where participants will pass in about fifty-three villages and cities.   MORE . . .       YOUTUBE

Lopez, Jose Carvajal.  REPORT:  “A  STUDY  OF  THE  LATE  ANTIQUE  AND  EARLY  MEDIEVAL  POTTERY  OF  PALESTINIAN  SITES.”
Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 144, no. 2, July 2012, pp. 134-139.    This project was conceived as a way of establishing links between production centres at the two extremes of the Mediterranean during the period of the Islamic expansion. Additionally, my knowledge of the early Islamic pottery of Spain (7th to 11th centuries CE) could be tested against the productions of the Levant, specifically that of Palestine, where many of the Arab settlers of the West (supposedly those who transmitted the basics of Islamic culture) had their roots.
___The project did not assume a straightforward relationship of between the pottery of a homeland (the Levant) and that of a colony (al-Andalus). There is no doubt that a sense of the centrality of Arabia and the Levant is paramount all over the Islamic culture, but this centrality is more a shared topological conception that binds together all the people and lands of Islam rather than an essentially political and economic core-periphery relation. In Gosden’s proposed model of colonialism, this relationship should be understood in between the middle ground and the shared cultural milieu (Gosden 2005, 30–33). Research in Spain shows that only a minority of Arabs chose to settle in al-Andalus in comparison with a larger influx of Berbers from North Africa and a considerable native pre-conquest population (Chalmeta 1994). However, there was a marked cultural change towards an Islamic society after the conquest of al-Andalus and the Arab influence must have played an important role in this (without dismissing other influences as well). A way to study this may be the comparison of material culture from areas with a documented strong Arab settlement with that from well-contextualised assemblages in the Levant.    SOURCE . . .

❷ 15  NEW  ISRAELI  POLICE  CENTERS  TO  BE  ESTABLISHED  IN  JERUSALEM
The Palestinian Information Center  
Nov. 4, 2017 ― Hebrew media sources on Saturday revealed further details about the Israeli decision to launch a special police unit in Occupied Jerusalem following the tension that broke out recently at al-Aqsa Mosque.
___They added that the plan also includes establishing 15 police centers and recruiting hundreds of new officers to work in the city.
___Speaking at a ceremony honoring Israeli officers last week, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Public Security Minister, announced that the job of this special unit, which will include more than 100 policemen, is to maintain “public order” at al-Aqsa Mosque.   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) ISRAEL  TO  DELAY  DEMOLITION  OF  SUSYA  DUE  TO  DIPLOMATIC  PRESSURE
The Palestinian Information Center 
Nov. 4, 2017 ― Haaretz newspaper on Saturday reported that the Israeli authorities on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court for a two-week delay in announcing its position on Susya village despite the fact the Israel’s war minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has declared that there will be no more delays in the demolition decision.
___The paper said that the request was made after senior European and British diplomats pressured Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lieberman not to demolish the village.    MORE . . .
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) INTERNATIONAL  MIDDLE  EAST  MEDIA  CENTER – IMEMC 
Nov. 5, 2017
Israeli Soldiers Abduct A Palestinian Near Jenin.
Army Abducts Three Palestinians in Hebron and Jerusalem, Injures Several Others.
Israeli Soldiers Abduct Seven Palestinians, Detain Schoolteachers, In West Bank, Detain Schoolteachers, In West Bank.
❸ “A  CENTURY  ON  FROM  BALFOUR,  I  CHALLENGE  BRITAIN  TO  FINALLY  DO  THE  RIGHT THING”  – HANAN ASHRAWI   
The Guardian
Nov. 2, 2017 ―
“Today we mark the centenary of the calamitous Balfour declaration. In 1917, with a few paragraphs and a stroke of his pen, the British foreign minister, Lord Balfour, unleashed historic forces that changed the fate of an entire people and a whole region. He committed a grave sin: promising the homeland of one people to another.
___A century on, every Palestinian is still plagued by the consequences of that decision – whether it is the refugees yearning to return, still clutching the keys to their homes, Palestinians suffering under an occupation that has lasted 50 years, Jerusalemites experiencing the fraudulent transformation of the character, demography, culture and landscape of their city before their eyes, or Palestinian citizens of Israel who are undergoing an intricate and cruel system of discrimination and exclusion in a country that claims to be democratic.
___A veneer of ‘religious conflict’ has been superimposed on what are political, legal, moral and human rights violations.
___The Balfour declaration was quintessentially a colonial decision emanating from the myth of the “white man’s burden”, the idea that “advanced nations” needed to administer the territories of “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves” – in the words of the covenant of the League of Nations – an inherently problematic and racist notion in itself.
___The land was neither Balfour’s nor Britain’s to give away, but, as is always the case with colonialism, a diktat made in a capital far away is meant to supersede the collective rights and aspirations of a people. . .”   MORE . . .

“OUR  SONGS,”  BY  IBRAHIM  NASRALLAH
Who are these songs for?
When they break the silence of the night
spreading warmth and life over the snow,
when they fall on the jasmine and carry it to water,
when they pass by a dim window, secretly embracing a lover,
when they spread over the grass, wrapped in clouds?
Who are these songs for
when they free the flowers
and the hidden flame of passion in women,
when they come to you with their flowers,
when they come to me with their secrets,
when they embrace the sun or a bouquet of flowers
or anything abandoned on the road?
When they send a pulse into the ground
and the pulse blossoms into a flower
in the space between two deaths,
or in a cloud, or in fire?
Who are these songs for
when they laugh,
who are these songs for when they rise?
And who are these songs for
when they open the doors to our houses
and embrace us one by one,
returning us to our lore?
When they carry our bodies in weddings
and cushion us with a lovely homeland
and then pick the most delicious fruit
and the farthest star
and hide them from the eyes of soldiers
to carry them―like our mother―home to us?

From Nasrallah, Ibrahim. RAIN  INSIDE:  SELECTED  POEMS. Trans. Omnia Amin and Rick London. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2009. Available from Amazon.
About Ibrahim Nazrallah.