❶ Israeli settlers attack northern West Bank school
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Scores of settlers and police forces defile Aqsa Mosque
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Settlers conduct land survey south of Nablus
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) Rabbi: Israeli settlement incubates worst violence against Palestinians

• Background: “Childhood: A Universalist Perspective for How Israel Is Using Child Arrest and Detention to Further Its Colonial Settler Project.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.

❷ Two boys lose eyes to Israeli fire
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Israeli occupation forces abduct 4 Palestinian children in Jenin
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) Palestinian child abducted by 21 Israeli soldiers returns home
❸ POETRY by Ibrahim Nasrallah
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  SETTLERS  ATTACK  NORTHERN  WEST  BANK  SCHOOL  
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA    
Dec. 28, 2017 ― Jewish settlers attacked on Thursday students at the Burin High School in the northern West Bank district of Nablus prompting local residents to confront them and push them back, according to the school principal Ibrahim Omran.
___Israeli soldiers, who provided protection to the settlers who came from the illegal settlement of Yitzhar, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the Palestinians causing several cases of suffocation from gas inhalation and rubber bullet injuries.
___Omran said the students were sitting for their mid-term exams when some 15 settlers attacked the school under army protection.     MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴀ)  SCORES  OF  SETTLERS  AND  POLICE  FORCES  DEFILE  AQSA  MOSQUE
The Palestinian Information Center
Dec. 28, 2017 ―  Dozens of Jewish settlers on Thursday morning desecrated the Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards under tight police guard.
___According to local media sources, about 112 settlers entered the Mosque in groups through al-Maghariba Gate, while several police troops were deployed throughout the Mosque’s plateaus and among Palestinian worshipers.  MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❶―  (ᴃ)  SETTLERS  CONDUCT  LAND  SURVEY  SOUTH  OF  NABLUS
The Palestinian Information Center 
Dec. 28, 2017 ―  A group of Jewish settlers escorted by soldiers on Wednesday surveyed a vast tract of land in an area between the towns of Duma and Qusra, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
___Local sources said that several settlers and soldiers were seen using maps in their land survey, expressing fears of Israeli intents to annex lands in their area for settlement projects.     MORE . . .  
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴄ)    RABBI:  ISRAELI  SETTLEMENT  INCUBATES  WORST  VIOLENCE  AGAINST  PALESTINIANS 
Days of Palestine 
Dec. 27, 2017 ―  Toxic environment of radical Israeli settlements incubates violence, while Israeli occupation forces has miserable record of bringing those who attack Palestinians to justice, Rabbi Arik Ascherman said. 
___In an opinion article published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday, Ascherman said he was attacked with a knife by a masked settler from the illegal settlement of Itmar in 2015 while he was leading Israeli occupation forces to a FIRE SET BY SETTLERS in a Palestinian olive grove.
___The attacker, Ascherman ironically said, was taken to court and then was sentenced, but to 150 hours of community service.   MORE . . .  

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera.
“Childhood: A Universalist Perspective for How Israel Is Using Child Arrest and Detention to Further Its Colonial Settler Project.”
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, vol. 12, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 223-244.
[. . . .] . . . the general trend of settler colonialism is based on “a sustained institutional tendency to supplant the indigenous population” and a cultural logic of elimination that “reconciles a range of historical practices that might otherwise seem distinct” (Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism. p. 396). Furthermore, settler colonialism is located in programs of control, removal, and termination, and the invasion of the world of colonized people is a structure, not an event. Children who are maltreated in such a context suffer ongoing structural violence at the hands of the colonizer. . .  In the settler colonial project, settlers regard the new territory as theirs and conceive the birth and development of native children as contributing to a “demographic threat” that compromises their dominance over the territory. . .  demographic and social modes of control are  connected to structural preconditions that dispossess land and dominate movement and life. Controlling, subjugating, and abusing children enhances such dispossession.
[. . . .] Within this context, Palestinian children are viewed as security threats and therefore thrust outside of acceptable and established human rights framework and into a discriminatory structure of analysis. Mohammed Zine al-Majid, for example, was only four years old when an arrest warrant was issued in his name . . . Mohammed’s father recalled asking the armed officers who raided his home in search of his toddler son, “Are you sure you have an arrest warrant? A legal one?” . . .  Mohammed’s father could not believe that such a young boy could be considered a threat. Although the authorities left once they realized they had made mistake, the damage was already done.
___Legally, Mohammed was not treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention or the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child . . . Mohammed’s case calls for an analysis of how, in the context of the military occupation of the Palestinian territories, arrest warrants for children are considered “legal,”“acceptable,” and “normal,” and not seen as child abuse.    SOURCE . . . 

❷ TWO  BOYS  LOSE  EYES  TO  ISRAELI  FIRE 
The Electronic Intifada     
Maureen Clare Murphy
Dec. 28, 2017 ―  With Israel’s crackdown on protests over Jerusalem has come a spike in violations of Palestinian children’s rights.
___Since 6 December, when President Donald Trump announced that the US recognized the city as Israel’s capital and pledged to move the country’s embassy there, Palestinian children have been among the hundreds injured and arrested by Israeli forces.
___Several children have suffered potentially irreversible head injuries, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.
___Two have lost eyes.
___Two boys were hit in the face with tear gas canisters fired by Israeli soldiers from a watchtower near Erez checkpoint during an 11 December protest at the Gaza-Israel boundary.   MORE . . .    ..
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴀ)  ISRAELI  OCCUPATION  FORCES  ABDUCT  4  PALESTINIAN  CHILDREN  IN  JENIN    
Days of Palestine     
Dec. 27, 2017 ―  Israeli occupation forces abducted on Wednesday evening four Palestinian children from Kafr Dan Neighbourhood in West Bank city of Jenin.
___Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli occupation forces raided a Palestinian farm in the area, attacked the farmers and abducted the four children.
___The eyewitnesses identified the four children as Hamza Sabah, Mohamed Salah, Mustafa Mer’e and Ahmed Salah.
___All of them were taken by a military jeep to the Israeli military camp in the area referred to by mass media as Salem Military Camp.    MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴃ)    PALESTINIAN  CHILD  ABDUCTED  BY  21  ISRAELI  SOLDIERS  RETURNS  HOME
Days of Palestine
Dec. 28, 2017 ― The 16-year-old Palestinian teen, Fawzi al-Juneidi, who was recently arrested by Israeli soldiers, returned to his family late Wednesday.
___The boy was abducted on December 7 in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil after being dragged on the ground and blindfolded by heavily-armed Israeli soldiers.
___A photo of the blindfolded youth quickly became a symbol of ongoing Palestinian protests sparked by US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.    MORE . . .    ..

“BROTHER,”  BY  IBRAHIM  NASRALLAH
I have a brother in the dust
who has been waiting thirty years for his toys.
How did we not wait for him, he will ask us.
How did age take us by surprise?
How did we grow up?
And how is it, just like that, we’ve never invited him to join us?
Not once did we invite him
into our games in the mirror, in our dreams,
just like that!
One of our games is:
We have a brother in the dust.
When winter comes he waves with the grass.
He beguiles us with intense whiteness―that’s his habit―
then dwells close to our father, over there, inside mother.

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