Category: Beit Ummar

“. . . the bark of artillery came near to the flowers . . .” (Yousef Al-Mahmoud)

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❶ Israel closes Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) EU’s security committee discussed secret report on Israel, says official

  • Background: “State-Sponsored Vigilantism: Jewish Settlers’ Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Sociology.
    “. . . the Israeli state itself, assisted by its agents, works in collusion with the settlers, and maintains the structural preconditions for this provisional political activity. . .”

❷ UN report says at least 206 international companies tied to Israeli settlements
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Haley slams UN anti-settlement report: It is a “waste of time”
❸ Israeli settlers attack Palestinian farmers north of Hebron
. . . . . ❸ ― (ᴀ) ‘Construction terror’ Israel’s metaphor for Palestinian displacement
❹ POETRY by Yousef Al-Mahmoud
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❶ ISRAEL  CLOSES  PALESTINIAN  INSTITUTIONS  IN  JERUSALEM
Al Hourriah Magazine (Freedom)
Feb. 3, 2018 — Israel Hayom newspaper on Friday said that the Israeli authorities have decided to close a number of Palestinian institutions in Occupied Jerusalem.
___According to the Hebrew newspaper, the Israeli Minister of Public Security, Gilad Erdan, on Thursday issued a decision to close the Palestine Chamber of Commerce, the Higher Council of Tourism, the Palestinian Center for Studies, the Palestinian Prisoner Society and the Office of Social Studies and Statistics.
___Erdan’s decision was based on an Israeli law issued in 1994 preventing the Palestinian Authority from opening offices or carrying out activities in “Israeli areas”. The same law grants the minister the authority to issue decisions prohibiting such activities.
___The paper said, quoting Erdan, that efforts will continue to impose Israeli sovereignty over every part of Jerusalem. . . following the US president Donald Trump’s recognition . . . .  MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴀ)  EU’S  SECURITY  COMMITTEE  DISCUSSED  SECRET  REPORT  ON  ISRAEL,  SAYS  OFFICIAL
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Feb. 3, 2018 ― The European Union’s (EU) Political and Security Committee (PSC) discussed in its session on Wednesday a secret report that strongly criticized Israel and its policies, Palestine’s ambassador to the EU, Abdul Rahim al-Farra, said on Saturday.
___He said in an interview with the official Palestine TV that the PSC, which is composed of ambassadors from the 28 EU member states, also discussed the situation in occupied East Jerusalem in particular and came out with recommendations that will be presented to the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council when it meets on February 25 and 26 in Brussels.
___He said the PSC recommended that the EU plays a primary and active role in the Middle East peace process in order to salvage the two-state solution.      MORE . . .

Gazit, Nir.
“STATE-SPONSORED  VIGILANTISM:  JEWISH  SETTLERS’  VIOLENCE  IN  THE  OCCUPIED  PALESTINIAN  TERRITORIES.”
SOCIOLOGY, vol. 49, no. 3, June 2015, pp. 438-454.
[. . . .] Civilian violence often disrupts government authority and undermines its exclusive sovereignty. However, it may also operate as an extra-juridical force that reproduces governmental power through unofficial channels. This dynamic is salient in situations of contested and fragmented sovereignty, when state power is discontinuous and lacks international and local legitimacy . . .  provisional violence by state forces and ordinary civilians becomes an important mechanism of political power and control.
[. . . .] These trends . . .  suggest a correlation between the two forms of Israeli violence – institutional military violence and non-institutional civilian violence. In times and places of low military presence and violence, unofficial civilian political mechanisms come into play. These reproduce Israeli dominance through direct violence or through initiating Palestinian hostility resulting in provisional active military involvement. The dialectical relationship between the two forms of violence is not trivial . . .  Hence, it is important to analyse the relationship between Israeli ground-level state agents and settlers, and consider how the two sides manage this tension.
[. . . .] . . . the ambiguity surrounding the formal status of the Israeli state in the OTP creates a governmental void. This void is filled, inter alia, by greater freedom of action of the settlers, who, in effect, act as informal agents of the state, behaving as vigilantes and taking the law into their own hands. The settlers’ violence contributes to the manifestation of Israeli rule in two significant ways. First, it brings Israeli dominance to areas with a scarce presence of military forces, generating ad hoc ‘effective control’ over Palestinian territory and population even in the absence of state officials. . .  While the state has limited direct influence over these domains, they undoubtedly contribute to the overall Israeli dominance in the region. The second and complementary mode of support these acts provide to the overall control system is when the Israeli security forces intervene and prevent the settlers from harassing the Palestinians. Such interventions paradoxically demonstrate and reproduce the Israeli power in the region – this time as protectors of the local civilian population. The elusive political and legal structural frameworks of the Israeli occupation are important factors of this phenomenon, generating the necessary ‘degrees of freedom’, so to speak, that allow, and even support, a proliferation of settlers’ violence against Palestinian civilians. In other words, the Israeli state itself, assisted by its agents, works in collusion with the settlers, and maintains the structural preconditions for this provisional political activity, even if it challenges its exclusive jurisdiction.     SOURCE . . .

❷ UN  REPORT  SAYS  AT  LEAST  206  INTERNATIONAL  COMPANIES  TIED  TO  ISRAELI  SETTLEMENTS
Ma’an News Agency
Feb. 1, 2018 ― The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on Wednesday identifying 206 companies from around the world that are doing business linked to Israeli settlements, which are built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.
___The long-delayed report was initially intended to include the names of companies, but reportedly after intense pressure from the US and Israel, the published report included only the number of companies from each country, rather than naming them.
___”Businesses play a central role in furthering the establishment, maintenance and expansion of Israeli settlements,” the UN report said.    MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴀ)  HALEY  SLAMS  UN  ANTI-SETTLEMENT  REPORT:  IT  IS  A  “WASTE  OF  TIME”
Palestine News Network – PNN 
Feb. 1, 2018 ― US Ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday slammed a UN report on 206 companies tied to Israeli settlements as “a waste of time and resources” that showed an “anti-Israeli obsession.”
___The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights released the report that did not name the companies but could pave the way to a “blacklist” of businesses that Israeli officials fear would be targeted for an international boycott.
___“This whole issue is outside the bounds of the High Commissioner for Human Rights office’s mandate and is a waste of time and resources,” Haley said.   MORE . . . 
❸ ISRAELI  SETTLERS  ATTACK  PALESTINIAN  FARMERS  NORTH  OF HEBRON
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA   
Feb. 3, 2018 ― Israeli settlers attacked on Saturday Palestinian farmers in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, according to Yousef Abu Maria, a local activist.
___He told WAFA that a group of settlers from the illegal settlement of Karmi Tsur and settlement security guards threw rocks at farmers, cursed them and prevented them from cultivating their land. The settlement is built on seized Palestinian land that belong to Beit Ummar and other area villages.   MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❸  ―  (ᴀ)  ‘CONSTRUCTION  TERROR’  ISRAEL’S  METAPHOR  FOR  PALESTINIAN  DISPLACEMENT
The Palestinian Information Center
Feb. 1, 2018 ― Israel’s construction of its politics on contrasting levels which echo its colonial agenda knows no limits. Now that the international community is largely reluctant to do more than refer to previous statements of colonial expansion as illegal, Israel is more explicit in promoting its state and settler narratives in its appropriation of land ownership.
___A news report published on Monday in Haaretz quotes Jewish Home Party MK Moti Yogev: “Our goal is to protect state lands, consistent with decisions by the state not letting their status be determined by construction terror guided by the Palestinian Authority with the intervention of international elements such as the European Union.” He also suggested legal recourse against Palestinians opposing demolition orders.
___This is not the first time that such rhetoric has been used. In April 2016 a press release titled “Re-evaluate state’s handling of EU-funded construction in Area C” described Palestinian dwellings in similar terms, accusing the EU of financing “construction and infrastructure terror”.     MORE . . . 

“ABOVE  THE  CARNATIONS,”  BY  YOUSEF  AL-MAHMOUD
Her house is above the carnations
on the path to the wind-swept hills. . .
At evening we sought refuge there
watching out for the guns and the aeroplanes.

The crack of bullets followed our coffee
and smashed into our conversation.
The crack of bullets and the bark of artillery
came near to the flowers inside the windows
came near to the warmth and the water jug
debris clattered down the outside stairway
and fell towards the marble pavement.

Her house is above the carnations
there we were in it
we had sought refuge there
and so we moved to where the Jewish soldiers could no longer see us.

—Translated by DM Black
—Yousef Al-Mahmoud is a prominent broadcaster and poet, and former head of the Ministry of Culture in his native Jenin.
—From A  BIRD  IS  NOT  A  STONE:  AN  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available from Amazon.com.

“. . . to locate Palestinians within multiple spaces of dispossession and oppression, imprisonment and separation continually remade . . .” (Annie Pfingst)

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bilin
Israeli forces disperse weekly march against Israeli occupation in Bilin, Nov. 25, 2016 (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

❶ . Funerals held for slain Palestinians draw large crowds, spark clashes in Beit Ummar

  • Background: “Militarised Violence In The Service Of State-Imposed Emergencies Over Palestine And Kenya.” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

❷ . Israeli forces shoot tear gas, rubber bullets at protesters in Kafr Qaddum
❸ . Israeli forces suppress weekly Bilin march, dozens suffer tear gas inhalation
❹ . Opinion/Analysis:  Legacies of State Violence and Black-Palestinian Solidarity
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❶ . FUNERALS  HELD  FOR  SLAIN  PALESTINIANS  DRAW  LARGE  CROWDS,  SPARK  CLASHES  IN  BEIT  UMMAR     
Ma’an News Agency 
Dec. 17, 2016       After Israel returned on Friday the bodies of seven Palestinians that were killed by Israeli forces in recent months, funerals held in their hometowns across the occupied West Bank drew large crowds, with clashes erupting in Beit Ummar during the Saturday morning funeral for 15-year-year old Khalid Bahr.
[. . . .]  Israeli forces killed the 15-year-old boy on Oct. 20 in the village, when Israeli authorities claimed a soldier shot Khalid for throwing rocks at Israeli forces. An internal Israeli army investigation later revealed that the lives of Israeli soldiers were not at risk when Khalid was killed.
___Following Khalid’s funeral, clashes erupted between Palestinian youth and Israeli forces at the entrance of Beit Ummar.     More . . .  

  • Pfingst, Annie. “Militarised Violence In The Service Of State-Imposed Emergencies Over Palestine And Kenya.” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6.3 (2014): 6-37.   ARTICLE.

[. . . .] Legal provisions based on racial separation/segregation . . .   continue to be applied by Israel over Palestine. Having detained and deported Arabs during the Arab uprising of the 1930s . . . .  on the 21st May 1948, [Israel] declared a state of emergency over Palestine, only days after the declaration of the establishment of the Israeli state on the lands, villages and cities lost to Palestinians through the war of 1948, al Nakba. The state of emergency – promulgated for the defence of the state, the maintenance of public order, supplies and essential services, and the suppression of mutiny, rebellion, or riot – has been renewed in the Israeli Knesset every year since 1948. In 2012 the Supreme Court [ruled that] that (Israel) ‘is not a normal country in that its existential threats have yet to be quelled.’
[. . . .]  The . . .  practices enabled through Emergency regulations are intensified forms of instrumentalised colonial governmentality and violence, part of the structure of settler colonialism – of settlement, dispossession, repression, expulsion and containment . . .  unquestioned by either the colonial administration or the settlement project. The state of emergency as an oppressive regime is characterised by surveillance, arrest and detention, screening, secret evidence and torture, and the workings of secret services and militarised violence – characteristics evident in Israeli daily practices over Palestine . . .
[. . . .]  The British Mandate over Palestine introduced land mapping, registration and appropriation; laws on citizenship and collective and individual rights; mapped state borders and movement; and constructed settlement practices and militarized landscapes of control. The assemblage of Israel over Palestine is always in flux, continuing to locate Palestinians within multiple spaces of dispossession and oppression, imprisonment and separation continually remade, constantly assembling spatial arrangements across fluid zones of militarized control. Spatial disintegration and fragmentation . . .   assemble landscapes of emergency and re-assemble multiple geographies of resistance. Every location becomes the site for the confrontation between the agency of resistance and the agents of sovereign power and control [. . . .]

❷ . ISRAELI  FORCES  SHOOT  TEAR  GAS,  RUBBER  BULLETS  AT  PROTESTERS  IN  KAFR  QADDUM
Ma’an News Agency 
Dec. 16, 2016       Israeli forces Friday suppressed a weekly march in the village of Kafr Qaddum in the occupied West Bank district of Qalqiliya, shooting rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters at tens of Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli peace activists.
___Popular resistance coordinator Murad Shteiwi told Ma’an that Israeli forces attacked the protesters and fired tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets at the crowd, causing many to suffer tear gas inhalation.
___Shteiwi added that the protest was launched with wide participation of the village’s local residents and internationals, despite the cold weather and rain on Friday.  More . . .

kafr-qaddum-demo
People of Kafr Qaddum gathering for the weekly demonstration. Jun. 29, 2012. (Photo: T. Mayr)

❸ . ISRAELI  FORCES  SUPPRESS  WEEKLY  BILIN  MARCH,  DOZENS  SUFFER  TEAR  GAS  INHALATION 
Ma’an News Agency
Dec. 16, 2016       Israeli forces Friday suppressed a weekly march in the village of Bilin in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, as dozens of demonstrators suffered tear gas inhalation and Israeli forces briefly held an Australian solidarity protester.      ___The march, which was organized by the popular committee against the separation wall, set off after Friday prayers, as protesters marched through the village, chanting slogans calling for Palestinians to support Jerusalem, urged for the immediate release of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners Anas Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah, and the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the illegal Amona settler outpost.       More . . .           Related . . .

❹ Opinion/Analysis:  LEGACIES  OF  STATE  VIOLENCE  AND  BLACK-PALESTINIAN  SOLIDARITY   
The Jerusalem Fund. 
Jada Bullen and Marie Helmy
Dec. 16, 2016   In the wake of Trump’s victory, the world waits with trepidation for what 2017 will bring to U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The future is uncertain for Palestinians and Black Americans, whose parallel struggles have become increasingly highlighted in the last few years.
___Four weeks into Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2014, protesters in Ferguson held signs claiming solidarity with Palestine. In turn, Palestinians took to Twitter to advise Ferguson protesters on how to deal with tear gas, underscoring the similarities in their struggles. This past August, the Movement 4 Black Lives published a platform stance that calls for the U.S. to cut military expenditures in Israel and explicitly demands divestment from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation. Such acts of solidarity have made vital inroads. But now with Trump at the helm, we have yet to see how this will deter the progress we have collectively made in altering the discourse.        More . . .

“. . . nonviolence is a mix of the pragmatic and principled, tragic, and comic styles . . .” (Matthew Eddy)

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bilin-01
Protesters in Bil’in, the West Bank, mark Palestinian Prisoners Day, Friday April 17, 2015. (Photo: Allison Deger, Mondoweiss)

❶ Israeli forces detain Palestinian, Israeli activist during Bilin protest

  • Background: “‘We Have To Bring Something Different To This Place’: Principled And Pragmatic Nonviolence Among Accompaniment Workers.” Social Movement Studies.

❷ Israeli forces raid home of slain Palestinian, clash with youth in Beit Ummar
❸ Take Action: Demand release of detained Palestinian human rights defender and BDS leader Salah Khawaja
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❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  PALESTINIAN,  ISRAELI  ACTIVIST  DURING  BILIN  PROTEST   
Ma’an News Agency
Nov. 4, 2016
Israeli forces detained a Palestinian and an Israeli activist during the weekly protests in the Ramallah-area village of Bilin in the central occupied West Bank on Friday.   ___Protesters marched in condemnation of the 99th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration — the first ever explicit commitment made by Britain, and the West in general, to establish a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine.
___Israeli forces detained Ahmad Abu Rahmeh, a member of the popular committee in the town, and Israeli activist Mikha Rachman.
[. . . .] Bilin is one of the most active Palestinian villages in peaceful organized opposition against Israeli policies, as residents have protested every Friday for 11 consecutive years, and have often been met with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and stun grenades from Israeli forces.        More . . .      

  • Eddy, Matthew P. “‘We Have To Bring Something Different To This Place’: Principled And Pragmatic Nonviolence Among Accompaniment Workers.” Social Movement Studies 13.4 (2014): 443-464.  Full article.

[. . . . ] As an ISM [International Solidarity Movement] volunteer in the summer of 2006, I joined the weekly protest in Bilin, a village in the Israeli-occupied territory of the West Bank, Palestine. Most of Bilin’s protests follow a theme chosen by Bilin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. At times, Bilin activists have carried large pictures of Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and King, conferring a ‘universal character upon their struggle over the barrier.’
[. . . .]    Arriving at the wall, we were confronted by about 25 Israeli Border Police and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers. Village elders asked for permission to pass through the gate . . . . The commander stood above us on the hood of a jeep, surveying the protest. He quickly denied the request. Drumming, traditional Palestinian chants, and hand clapping ensued, as the bridal party engaged in circle dances. ___Suddenly, four Palestinian boys under the age of 12 years, standing far to the side, began throwing stones at the soldiers from a distance of about 30 yards. One of the stones struck the commander in the face. Immediately, the commander issued an order and his soldiers began firing rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and tear gas into the throng of nonviolent protesters, while ignoring the boys now running away.
[. . . .]   [One of ISM’s Palestinian leaders] Mansour admitted, ‘That boy will be a hero in the village tonight.’ Mansour’s commitment to pragmatic nonviolence (confirmed in interviews), rather than the principled nonviolence of a Gandhi and King who invoked love for the enemy, is illustrated by the ambiguity in his final comment at the debriefing:

“We don’t like throwing stones, but somehow, we are happy that this commander
gets hit. Since he was humiliating us, was insulting us, was trying to disrupt the
demonstration by any means. This commander has been with us for at least three
months and – his craziness or his madness about the power and authority he has
enforcing his orders! He was showing his power, that he was the man of the
situation here.”

[. . . .]   Such is the complexity of stone throwing and nonviolence in a place like Bilin, suggesting that the performance of nonviolence is a mix of the pragmatic and principled, tragic, and comic styles.
[. . . .]   A few thousand pragmatic nonviolent adherents from a handful of Western nations – primarily young ISMers – have been virtually the only members of the international community willing to risk engaging in accompaniment in this context. They deserve to be commended for their courage and their solidarity activism, which by even the strictest measures, has been relatively nonviolent. Of course, the courage and creativity of Palestinian nonviolent activists in places like Bilin is even more worthy of recognition and analysis.

bilin
A demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during the weekly protest against the wall  in the West Bank village of Bil’in, January 4, 2012. (Photo: Hamde Abu Rahma/ Activestills.org)

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  RAID  HOME  OF  SLAIN  PALESTINIAN,  CLASH  WITH  YOUTH  IN  BEIT  UMMAR   
Ma’an News Agency
Nov. 5, 2016
Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian youth during a predawn raid in the village of Beit Ummar in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.
___Local activist Muhammad Awad told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the family home of Khalid Ahmad Elayyan Ikhlayyil, 23, who was killed by Israeli forces on Sunday after he allegedly attempted to commit a car-ramming attack near the village.
___Soldiers searched Ikhlayyil’s home and questioned his father before leaving.   ___Awad highlighted that Ikhlayyil’s body remained in Israeli custody in accordance with the Israeli government’s practice of holding the bodies of slain Palestinians accused of committing attacks against Israelis.
[. . . . ]   According to Awad, clashes broke out between local youth and Israeli soldiers after the soldiers removed and stepped on a memorial poster of Ikhlayyil.   More . . .

❸ TAKE  ACTION:  DEMAND  RELEASE  OF  DETAINED  PALESTINIAN  HUMAN  RIGHTS  DEFENDER  AND  BDS  LEADER  SALAH  KHAWAJA  #FreeSalahalestinian    
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network      
Nov. 5, 2016
Human rights defender and Secretary of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee Salah Khawaja remains imprisoned and denied access to a lawyer at the Petah Tikva interrogation center.
___Khawaja, 46, a leading member of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall) and BDS leader, has been detained under interrogation since 26 October, when he was seized in a violent pre-dawn military raid on his home. As occupation forces raided his home, they sprayed tear gas in the area entering many neighborhood homes in an attempt to quell protests against the seizure of this popular activist. The Palestinian BDS National Committee, of which Khawaja serves as secretary, is the broadest Palestinian civil society coalition that works to lead and support the BDS movement, the growing international movement for the boycott of Israel.      More . . .   

ism-bilin
International Solidarity Movement activists, Bilin, April 2, 2016 (Photo: ISM)

“. . .accept these rinses, they are tedious / they will come again. . .” (Naomi Shihab Nye)

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Rizka Abu Rujeila, 70 years old, holds her grandson outside the hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on 24 July.
Rizka Abu Rujeila, 70 years old, holds her grandson outside the hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on 24 July.

❶ From THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
GAZA’S GRANDPARENTS ENDURE ONE TRAUMA AFTER ANOTHER
Anne Paq
June 4, 2015
Most of Gaza’s population is very young: the median age is 18, and nearly 45 percent of the Strip’s 1.8 million residents are 14 years old or younger.
____Attention was rightly paid to the plight of Gaza’s children during Israel’s 51 days of bombing last summer. But elderly Palestinians are also among the population’s most vulnerable, and have been subjected to repeated trauma during their lifetime.
____The eldest among them survived the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, when they were forced from their homes and into refugee camps. The Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) was followed by Israeli invasions and massacres in the 1950s, military conquest and occupation in 1967, the imposition of settlement colonies, two popular uprisings and their subsequent crackdowns. And, most recently, nearly a decade of siege and closure and three major military offensives in the span of six years.
____Gaza’s elderly have been subjected to destruction of homes and businesses — the destruction of a life’s work. In some cases they have had to become caretakers again, taking in grandchildren orphaned by Israeli violence and playing a crucial role in keeping families together following profound loss.
(More. . .)

❷ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAEL CLOSES GAZA BORDER CROSSINGS FOR ‘SECURITY REASONS’
June 7, 2015
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) –The Israeli authorities closed the Erez and Kerem Shalom border crossings into Gaza on Sunday morning citing “security reasons.”
____Only a limited supply of humanitarian aid and medical cases will be allowed to cross through, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.
____The closure came shortly after Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas military targets in the coastal enclave, following a rocket attack on Saturday night that a Salafist group claimed responsibility for. No injuries were reported on either side.
(More. . .)

❸ From HA’ARETZ
LET THE PEOPLE OF GAZA GO
Haaretz Editorial
May 28, 2015
Some 15,000 people who have asked to leave the Gaza Strip are still trapped there since last summer’s war. These people are imprisoned in the Strip without being able to return to their work or family abroad. Thousands of them need medical treatment and more than 1,000 others are students who couldn’t leave for their studies overseas and stand to lose their visas and scholarships and miss a year’s studies (as reported by Jack Khoury on Wednesday). . .
____“We feel like cattle in a pen. But even cattle are allowed sometimes to go out into an open space. In Gaza we’re forbidden to do so and we don’t even know why,” Mayasem Abu-Mer, a 25-year-old Gazan resident, said Tuesday. Abu-Mer was denied passage through the Erez checkpoint to the West Bank and from there to the Allenby checkpoint.
(More. . .)

❹ From IMEMC-INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER
SOLDIERS KIDNAP A PALESTINIAN FROM BEIT UMMAR
IMEMC & Agencies
June 06, 2015
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Saturday morning, a young Palestinian man from Beit Ummar town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, after stopping him on the Tunnel Roadblock; soldiers also handed a resident of Hebron a military order for interrogation, and installed roadblocks.
____ In addition, soldiers invaded Hebron city, searched and ransacked several homes, and handed Samer Yosri a military order for interrogation in the Gush Etzion base.
(More. . .)

A demolished Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, march 14, 2009
A demolished Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, march 14, 2009

❺ From MONDOWEISS
TWO PALESTINIAN FAMILIES ARE BRUTALLY ATTACKED IN JERUSALEM AS THEIR HOMES ARE TAKEN FROM THEM
Kate
June 6, 2015
Video: Israeli forces attack Palestinian elder while demolishing Jerusalem homes
Electronic Intifada 3 June by Charlotte Silver — This video shows Israeli occupation police and border guards brutally attacking members of the family of Nidal Abu Khalid early Tuesday morning, as they arrived to demolish two homes in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.
(More. . .)

“THE CLEAN RINSE,” BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Each time you go through this
you lose a little less color

the water is less
pink, blue, or gray

this is what i try to say:
don’t let them wring it out of you

because they like starch,
don’t let that apply to your neck

you are real, 100% cotton
you can wrinkle, accept that as gift

and accept these rinses,
they are tedious

they will come
again and again

after awhile, you will have
nothing more they can take

From Nye, Naomi Shihab. 19 Varieties of Gazelle. New York: GREENWILLOW/Harper (2005).
Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her BA in English and world religions from Trinity University.
(More. . .)

The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip (photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov)
The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip (photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov)