[Note: Please see the page “Other Sources” for a list of the sources used that are not specifically “news” sites, the location of many of the opinion pieces here.]

SELECTED  NEWS  OF  THE  DAY

2  PALESTINIANS  KILLED,  270  OTHERS  INJURED  DURING  GAZA  PROTESTS.
Two Palestinians were killed and 270 others were injured by Israeli forces alongside the eastern borders of the besieged Gaza Strip during the 21st Friday of “The Great March of Return” under the slogan “Revolution for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa.”  More.
ISRAELI  FORCES  KILL  PALESTINIAN  IN  EAST  JERUSALEM. A Palestinian youth was killed after being shot by Israeli forces under the pretext of attempting to carry out a stabbing attack in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem.  More.
ISRAELI  FORCES  SHUT  DOWN  AL-AQSA  MOSQUE  COMPOUND.  Israeli forces have shut down the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound following an alleged stabbing attempt by a Palestinian on a group of Israeli policemen in Jerusalem’s Old City.   ___The attacker, a 30-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from the town of Umm al-Faham, was shot dead by the Israeli forces. . . .  More.

OPINION AND COMMENTARY

AS  ISRAEL  ENSHRINES  JEWISH  SUPERIORITY,  WHAT’S  NEXT  FOR  ITS  PALESTINIAN  CITIZENS?
Henriette Chacar (August 15, 2018)
. . . the Jewish Nation-State Law, which enshrined a superior set of rights for Jewish Israelis last month, and the direction in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government is headed.  . . . . ___ Members of the Palestinian community in Israel launched a campaign to repeal the law — headed by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee — an umbrella organization that represents the country’s Arabs, which make up 20 percent of Israel’s population. Tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens, together with Jewish supporters, demonstrated against the law in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square over the weekend, a week after the Druze community held their own mass protest in the same square.  More.

THE  DRUZE  AND  THE  NATION-STATE  BILL.
Yara Hawari (August 16, 2018)
The passing of the “nation-state” bill last month, affirming the Israeli state’s Jewish character and downgrading the Arabic language, has reignited a conversation among the Palestinian citizens of Israel especially with regards to their precarious position within the state. In particular, it has sparked intense conversations among the Palestinian Druze community in Israel. In addition to several resignations from Druze officers currently serving in the Israeli military.   More.

ONE  STATE:  A  VIEW  FROM  GAZA
Ahmed Abu Artema  (August 17, 2018)
There are those who believe that Israel’s recently-passed Nation-State Law represents a failure of the one-state option, as it formalizes the exclusively Jewish nature of the dominant state in Palestine and with it, the disenfranchisement of the non-Jewish population.   ___The new law could also be viewed, however, as betraying a fear on the part of the occupying power that the de facto imposition of one state on the ground holds within it the seeds of the dismantling of the colonial project from the inside. Seen in this way, all of the decisions, laws and actions taken by the occupying power to insist upon the specifically Jewish character of the state are but desperate attempts to go against history and legitimize an order that is both unfair and unsustainable.  More.

INTERVIEW:  BENJAMIN  LADRAA:  ‘YOU  DON’T  HAVE  TO  BE  PALESTINIAN  TO  CARE  ABOUT  THE  INJUSTICE  IN  PALESTINE’.
(August 18, 2018)
Benjamin Ladraa is a Swedish human rights activist, who walked 4,800 km through 13 countries over a span of 11 months to raise awareness about the Palestinian cause.   ___Ma’an News Agency interviewed Ladraa after Israeli authorities banned him from entering Palestine upon his arrival at the Allenby Bridge, the Jordanian-Palestinian borders, in July.   Video.

“CEASEFIRE,” by  Jehan Bseiso.

Little men, cross legged, trade war stories like boys trade baseball cards.

These are times ripe and full with want and promise never fulfilled.

This much is true:
Lost boys become lost men.

Too much water, too much blood dilutes history and
We always end up with less than what we started.

In Gaza,
There is no legacy under the rubble, no pride in long fires
Burning.

There is a face at the window, sallow.

One woman sighing, her body bears the marks of all their trudging,
thighs transformed to gallows and trenches.

Her hair shrouds the dead from both sides and her lap
cradles aporias generations can’t understand.

—from I Remember My Name. Novum Pro Publishers. 2016.