SELECTED NEWS OF THE DAY

PCHR Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (22 – 28 August 2019)

Palestinian Center for Human Rights
August 30, 2019

• Great March of Return in Eastern Gaza Strip: 155 civilians injured, including 60 children, 2 women, and 7 paramedics.
• West Bank: 4 civilians injured.   During 82 incursions into the West Bank: 79 civilians, including 9 children and a woman, arrested.
• Notices to confiscate 1186 dunums in eastern Qalqiliyah for settlement expansion; a house and restaurant demolished in Bethlehem, and a Palestinian forced to self-demolish his house in occupied East Jerusalem.
• 4 shooting incidents reported against Palestinian fishing boats off Gaza shores in addition to a limited incursion into eastern Gaza Strip.  Details . . . .    

China to donate $15 m for several projects in Palestine

WAFA
August 29, 2019
Guo Wei, ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the State of Palestine, and Amjad Ghanem, Secretary General of Palestinian Council of Ministers, signed yesterday an agreement under which China will be donating $15 million to implement over a dozen projects in different fields in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ These fields include infrastructure, youth and entrepreneurship, women and energy, but on top of which is a project on donating $500,000 to buy school bags for Palestinian children.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ “We named it the School Bag Project,” Ghanem said, adding that about 15,000 to 20,000 new school bags bought with the Chinese donation will be offered next week to Palestinian school children in remote and poor areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the start of the new school year.  More . . . .

Hamas seeks ties with other factions, Palestinian families

Palestine Pulse
Entsar Abu Jahal
August 28, 2019
The two main Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip are growing closer, and they want the world to know. Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader in Gaza, revealed Aug. 14 a recent high-level meeting between Hamas and Islamic Jihad political and military leaders.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ Sinwar said the six-hour meeting focused on details of the factions’ resistance project and included preparations to deter Israeli aggression and discussions about developing a national action plan, the marches of return and lifting the blockade by Israel. More . . . .

Opinion: The plight of the Palestinian people is to face racism, anywhere and everywhere

The Middle East Monitor
Asa Winstanley
August 30, 2019
Seventeen-year-old Ismail Ajjawi must have been giddy with excitement when he, a Palestinian refugee living in southern Lebanon, won a major scholarship to Harvard University. . . .  Flying into Boston’s Logan International Airport, Ajjawi was detained, interrogated for hours on his political and religious beliefs, screamed at and eventually deported. . . .  After invading his privacy by forcing their way into his social media account, border officials determined that some of his online “friends” had posted “political” views which were critical of the US. This apparently made him “inadmissible” to the country, despite having been already granted a visa. . . .
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ Such unjust restrictions on movement, migration, travel, study and employment frequently target many different peoples from the global south. . . . the Palestinians are an almost unique example of a particularly vulnerable, stateless population, which is subject to frequent and arbitrary global movement restrictions. . . .
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ If anything, though, Israel is a product of western imperialism, racism and anti-Semitism; the anti-Semitic view that Jewish people do not “really” belong in Europe is shared by the Zionist movement, as well as by fascists.  More . . . .

POEM OF THE DAY 

“ANY  REFUGEES  IN  THE  WORLD,”  BY  LAHAB  ASSEF  AL-JUNDI

what is the first thing that comes to mind
when you hear of refugees?
what terror trove them out of their homes?
are they getting help?
what is being done for their safe return?

are Palestinians any different from any other refugees?
is it not their simple right
to return to the land they were driven from?

why are they being asked to settle
for money?
who designated the Palestinians as the chosen people
to carry the cross for a guilt-ridden West?
why do politicians tell them
too much time has passed
when their grievance
is with people who went back after 2000 years?

between continued warfare and annihilation
coexistence beckons
as the only
honorable
demographic.

time for peace
now.

From BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE ISRAEL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012.  Available from B&N.