Category: Gaza Cbildren

“. . . the silent majority watch water go on fire . . .” (Jehan Bseiso)

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❶ How long can Gaza survive with no water?

  • Background: “A cross sectional study of the relationship between the exposure of pregnant women to military attacks in 2014 in Gaza and the load of heavy metal contaminants in the hair of mothers and newborns.” BMJ Open.

❷ Israel bans Palestinian mother of six from her Jerusalem home
❸ Israel to close Al Jazeera, mouthpiece of Palestine’s cause
. . . . . ❸ ― (ᴀ) Opinion/Analysis: What is behind Israel’s attempt to ban Al Jazeera?

  • Daily Report: Israeli Violations Activities in the oPt

❹ POETRY by Jehan Bseiso
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ HOW  LONG  CAN  GAZA  SURVIVE  WITH  NO  WATER?
Al-Monitor (Palestine Pulse)      
Rasha Abou Jalal
August 6, 2017.   The water crisis caused by ongoing power outages of more than 20 hours a day has pushed Gaza Strip residents to dig unlicensed wells, disregarding the ensuing serious threats to the already scarce aquifer water stock.
___ At the request of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel reduced its power supply to Gaza on June 19 from 120 megawatts to 48 megawatts, causing the current water crises.
___Omar Hamid, the head of a family of nine, told Al-Monitor, “The municipality is delivering water to the citizens’ homes for only two hours every two or three days. This is not sufficient to meet a household’s minimum basic water needs.”
___He said, “There’s no electricity to operate the water pumps and fill our water tanks. Gaza has been living with barely four hours of power supply a day. This scarce supply of electricity often does not coincide with the supply hours of water pumped from the various municipality wells to the citizens’ homes.”   MORE . . .

Paola Manduca, Safwat Y Diab, et al. “A  CROSS  SECTIONAL  STUDY  OF  THE  RELATIONSHIP  BETWEEN  THE  EXPOSURE  OF  PREGNANT  WOMEN  TO  MILITARY  ATTACKS  IN  2014  IN  GAZA  AND  THE  LOAD  OF  HEAVY  METAL  CONTAMINANTS  IN  THE  HAIR  OF  MOTHERS  AND  NEWBORNS.” BMJ Open. Bmjopen.bmj.com. July, 2017.
ABSTRACT: Metal contamination of humans in war areas has rarely been investigated. Weaponry’s heavy metals become environmentally stable war remnants and accumulate in living things. They also pose health risks in terms of prenatal intake, with potential long term risks for reproductive and children’s health. We studied the contribution of military attacks to the load of 23 metals in the hair of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, who were pregnant at the time of the military attacks in 2014, and their newborns. We compared the metal load in the mothers with values for adult hair from outside the war area (RHS) as the reference. We investigated heavy metals trans-passing in utero, and assessed if the heavy metal intake could derive from sources unrelated to the war.   FULL ARTICLE . . .

❷ ISRAEL  BANS  PALESTINIAN  MOTHER  OF  SIX  FROM  HER  JERUSALEM  HOME Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA 
Aug. 7, 2017.   After spending 12 months in prison, the Israeli authorities Monday banned Dalal Said Abu al-Hawa, 39, from her East Jerusalem home and sent her into exile in the West Bank, according to her family.
___Abu al-Hawa, a mother of six, was detained one year ago and charged with transferring money to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including her son Omar, 17, who is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence for throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli police.
___She was also charged with being in Jerusalem without a permit.
___Abu al-Hawa, who is originally a West Bank resident, moved to East Jerusalem’s al-Tur neighborhood after marrying an East Jerusalem resident and getting family reunification.
[. . . .] Exiling Abu al-Hawa is part of Israeli policy aimed at punishing families of Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation of their homeland.   MORE . . .
❸ ISRAEL  TO  CLOSE  AL JAZEERA,  MOUTHPIECE  OF  PALESTINE’S  CAUSE   
Days of Palestine
Aug. 7, 2017.  Israeli Communication Minister Ayoob Kara said on Sunday that Israel is preparing to close Al Jazeera’s office in Jerusalem.
___Kara said he had requested that the government press office revoke press credentials of Al Jazeera’s journalists.
___He said that he would join the Gulf countries, adding: “These countries say the channel [Al Jazeera] is a tool of Daesh, Hezbollah and Iran; we are supporting this.”   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❸ ― (ᴀ)  OPINION/ANALYSIS:  WHAT  IS  BEHIND  ISRAEL’S  ATTEMPT  TO  BAN  AL JAZEERA?
Al Jazeera English 
Mark LeVine (professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine)
Aug. 7, 2017.   The present attempt by the government of Israel to close down Al Jazeera‘s offices in Jerusalem reflects a potentially far-reaching shift in the perceived power and role of critical media, not just in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but across the Arab world and larger Middle East and North Africa.
___The move is particularly odd since Al Jazeera and Israel have long had a symbiotic, if often adversarial, relationship. Despite long-standing and often harsh criticism of the Israeli occupation and its policies, Israel has afforded the channel relatively wide latitude in its coverage. There have been repeated grumblings over the years, and threats to close down its bureaus, but it hasn’t prevented coverage and commentary by Al Jazeera‘s staff and contributing writers.    MORE . . .

  • (Daily Report)  ISRAELI  VIOLATIONS  ACTIVITIES  IN  THE  OPT
    The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (on POICA – Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities in the Palestinian Territories)
    Aug. 6, 2017.  The daily report highlights the violations behind Israeli home demolitions and demolition threats in the occupied Palestinian territory, the confiscation and razing of lands, the uprooting and destruction of fruit trees, the expansion of settlements and erection of outposts, the brutality of the Israeli Occupation Army, the Israeli settlers violence against Palestinian civilians and properties, the erection of checkpoints, the construction of the Israeli segregation wall and the issuance of military orders for the various Israeli purposes.   MORE . . .   (Note: the complete report is available daily at ARIJ .)

“GAZA, 2009,” BY JEHAN BSEISO
No matter flag.
No matter medicine.
No matter civilian.
No matter international community.
No matter your international waters.
No matter your sanctions, no matter your rhetoric and foreign policy.
Only 62 years status quo,
Everyday Nakba,
Subsidized settlements,
Even more walls-
Matter.
Children on the ICRC bus, visiting their Baba’s in your prisons―
Matter.
Food and medicine rotting at every border―
Matter
From the shadows, the silent majority watch water go on fire.

Jehan Bseiso
From: I  REMEMBER  MY  NAME:  POETRY  BY  SAMAH  SABAWI,  RAMZY  BAROUD,  JEHAN  BSEISO.  Vacy Vlazna, editor. London: Novum Publishing, 2016. Available from publisher.

“. . . You may impose a nightmare of your terror on my village. . .” (Samih al-Qasim)

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2014CRD_Gaza_Schools_0-001
A damaged classroom in the school in Gaza bombed by Israel, July 30, 2014, while more than 3,200 people were sheltering there. The attack killed 20 people. (Photo: Anne Paq/Human Rights Watch)

❶ Palestinian murdered after buying candies for his disabled kids
❷  UN responds to Israel closing case into airstrike near UNRWA school during 2014 Gaza war

  • Background: British Journal of Psychotherapy 

❸ 4 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in critical condition, handcuffed to hospital beds
❹ POETRY by Samih al-Qasim
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❶ PALESTINIAN  MURDERED  AFTER  BUYING  CANDIES  FOR  HIS  DISABLED  KIDS
Days of Palestine
Aug 27, 201
Israeli occupation forces murdered on Friday Palestinian citizen in West Bank city of Silwad after buying some candies for his disabled children.
___At first, the Israeli occupation forces and the Israeli parrot media claimed that his approached an Israeli military post with his car near the illegal settlement of Ofra. ___Palestinian eyewitnesses insisted that the Israeli narrative about the incident was false as the Palestinian did not plan to harm any Israelis.
[. . . .]  Official Palestinian medical sources identified the Palestinian as Iyad Hamed, a resident of Silwad who was married and had three disabled children.
___Later on, when a video showed the man buying the candies for his disabled children went viral on the internet, the Israeli occupation admitted that its soldiers had shot the Palestinian mistakenly.   MORE . . .   

❷ UN  RESPONDS  TO  ISRAEL  CLOSING  CASE  INTO  AIRSTRIKE  NEAR  UNRWA  SCHOOL  DURING  2014  GAZA  WAR
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 26, 2016
The United Nations Friday responded in a statement to Israel’s announcement Wednesday that the military had exonerated itself from any wrongdoing in a missile attack near an UNRWA-run school in Rafah during the 2014 Gaza war, which killed 15 people. . . .   ___According to the statement released by UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, on August 3, 2014 . . . Israeli forces launched a missile at a road outside of an UNRWA school, which was designated as an emergency shelter for displaced Palestinians on July 18 and was at the time sheltering at least 2,900 Palestinians.
___The strike resulted in the killings of 15 civilians, while at least another 30 were injured.
___ “This raises serious questions about the conduct of military operations in relation to obligations under international humanitarian law and respect for the inviolability and sanctity of United Nations premises under international law,” Gunness said in the statement.     MORE . . .   

  • Kemp, Martin. “DEHUMANIZATION,  GUILT  AND  LARGE  GROUP  DYNAMICS  WITH  REFERENCE  TO  THE  WEST,  ISRAEL  AND  THE  PALESTINIANS.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 27.4 (2011): 383-405.  SOURCE.

[. . . .]
Central to the defensive ends served by the denigration of the Palestinians is the avoidance of a profound depression that would follow from the acknowledgement of Israel’s responsibility for the Naqba . . .  [That drives] the Israelis to dehumanize the Palestinians, [but] breaking with this necessity and embracing their humanity is a requirement for both peace and for Israel’s survival. . . . Israel’s ‘large group tent’ is in large part held together by the projection of Israel’s profound and unresolved conflicts onto the Palestinians, and that dehumanization of the latter is . . .  difficult to reverse. One conclusion might be that political Zionism has not offered an escape from the dynamics of oppression, merely a reversal of roles.
[. . . . ]
. . . it could be imagined that the collective psyches of the West and Israel are each grappling with a crippling burden of culpability. I suggest this, and that each engages the other in their efforts to minimize the consequences. The West, aware of the pain that guilt would occasion for itself achieves distance by reassuring Israel – identified with the fate of ‘the Jews’ – that it has no need to feel guilty. The West has regularly upheld Israel’s position that it is the Palestinians who need to make up for something, and that it is their failure to do so that explains the protracted stalemate. For the West to concern itself with the lived experience of the Palestinians would be to challenge an Israeli psyche in part held together by its refusal to acknowledge those realities.
[. . . .]
Responding to [the] suggestion that we attend to the moment when the terrorist decides to ‘abandon their species decency’, G. Awad writes: “Less dramatic, but also lethal, is the slow and cumulative abandonment of a deeply ingrained species decency where there is no defining moment: this can be seen in the increasingly destructive actions of the Israelis against the Palestinians. A powerful oppressor can, more often than not, afford to wait things out and take his time; an occupation or an embargo can slowly yet effectively destroy the soul and the body of ‘the others’. The powerful can kill without dirtying their hands or exposing themselves to imminent danger . . . many Arabs and Muslims, even if they are horrified by the nature of the suicide bomber’s attacks on innocent civilians, do not see such attacks as being any more horrible than the slow, methodological killing of their innocents by the powerful” (Awad, G. “The minds and perceptions of ‘the others.’” 2003).

❸ 4  HUNGER-STRIKING  PALESTINIAN  PRISONERS  IN  CRITICAL  CONDITION,  HANDCUFFED  TO  HOSPITAL  BEDS 
Ma’an News Agency  
Aug. 27, 2016
Four Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners are reportedly in critical condition at Israel’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital, according to a statement released Saturday by the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, as 120 other Palestinian prisoners continued hunger strikes in a mass solidarity movement.
[. . . .]  
___ each of the prisoners declared a hunger strike in protest of being placed in administrative detention — an Israeli policy of detention without charge or trial almost exclusively used against Palestinians.
___The committee said in the statement that the hunger strikers were in “dire health conditions,” as they have lost a significant amount of weight and have been suffering from pains and numbing in their bodies.      MORE . . .   

“I  MAY  LOSE  MY  DAILY  BREAD,”  BY  SAMIH  AL-QASIM
I may lose my daily bread, if you wish
I may hawk my clothes and bed
I may become a stonecutter, or a porter
Or a street sweeper
I may search in animal dung for food
I may collapse, naked and starved
Enemy of light
I will not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.
You may rob me of the last span of my land
You may ditch my youth in prison holes
Steal what my grandfather left me behind:
Some furniture or clothes and jars,
You may burn my poems and books
You may feed your dog on my flesh
You may impose a nightmare of your terror
On my village
Enemy of light
I shall not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.

“Poems of Resistance: 7 Poems for Palestine.” SCOOP  WORLD  INDEPENDENT  NEWS. January 2011. Web. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1101/S00522/poems-of-resistance-7-poems-for-palestine.htm
About Samih Al-Qasim

“. . . the concordance between aggressive development and external reality. . .” (Samir Qouta)

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Muhammad abu Khdeir
Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Palestinian teenager who was burned alive by Israeli settlers in 2014; his cousins are charged stone throwing (Photo: Times of Israel, July 31, 2016)

❶ Relatives of Muhammad Abu Khdeir detained for throwing stones, Molotov cocktails

  • Background from Aggressive Behavior

❷ My daughter sends joy to Gaza
❸ House of Lords debate on Palestinian children 21 July 2016
❹ Irish public figures’ statement in support of Israel boycott
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❶ RELATIVES  OF  MUHAMMAD  ABU  KHDEIR  DETAINED  FOR  THROWING  STONES,  MOLOTOV  COCKTAILS
Ma’an News Agency
July 31, 2016
Two young Palestinians related to Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager who was burned alive by Israeli settlers in 2014, have been indicted by a Jerusalem court over a number of charges in the wake of their cousin’s brutal murder, Israeli police said on Sunday.
___Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said in a statement that Nasser Abu Khdeir, 19, and Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 21 — who shares a name with his slain cousin — had been detained on June 26.
___The two youths have been accused of breaking the law following Abu Khdeir’s death, with al-Samri noting that they stood accused of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli security forces . . .
___A 16-year-old from Shufat in occupied East Jerusalem, Muhammad Abu Khdeir was kidnapped and murdered by three Israeli extremists on July 2, 2014.       MORE . . .

From Aggressive Behavior
War and military violence signify a shattering and nightmarish reality for children: life threat, loss of home, killing and detention of family members, and witnessing humiliation of trusted and admired adults. According to psychoanalytical view, human beings have two possibilities to deal with pain and bewilderment that overwhelms their cognitive-emotional processing capacity: to turn them inside and suffer subsequently from depression and anxiety or target them outside in the form of aggression and acting out. Contemporary conceptualization of children’s psychiatric distress as internalizing and externalizing symptoms concurs with these alternatives given for humans when facing devastating events.
[. . . .]
Society at war sends double messages to children who until early adolescence face difficulties in interpreting them: the aggression, defiance and revenge are encouraged toward the enemy, but discouraged or even punished when directed toward own family and peers.  Similarly, research on children’s war attitudes and moral development point out dilemmas and conflicts: children learn that war is generally bad and immoral, but our own war is heroic, legitimate and moral and our fighters are pure and honorable, whereas enemy soldiers are cruel and coward-like.

  • Qouta, Samir, et al. “Does War Beget Child Aggression? Military Violence, Gender, Age And Aggressive Behavior In Two Palestinian Samples.” Aggressive Behavior 34.3 (2008): 231-244.       SOURCE  

❷ MY  DAUGHTER  SENDS  JOY  TO  GAZA
The Electronic Intifada
Rami Almeghari
July 25, 2016
It has been a long time since my family has had reason to celebrate.
___For nine years my wife Faten and I have been intermittently separated from our school-age children as we traveled back and forth between our home in Gaza and Cairo as Faten needed brain surgery and radiotherapy treatment unavailable here.
[. . . ]  my wife and I returned to Gaza in mid-February of this year. By then, Aseel had already been in school for five months without us present. The pressure on her mounted as summer neared and the time to sit for exams grew closer. Whether or not she would succeed became a matter of concern for our extended family.
___After she finished her exams in mid-June, we waited anxiously for the results. Is this a good result, Dad?” Aseel asked, her eyes tearing up. She had scored 86 percent.
___“Of course it is, my dear daughter. It is even great,” I replied, to Aseel’s relief.  MORE . . . 

granddaughter-001
The granddaughter of Um Hani, killed May 5, 2016, as she worked in a field in Gaza, displays a photo of her grandmother (Photo: Shadi Alqarra)

❸ HOUSE OF LORDS DEBATE ON PALESTINIAN CHILDREN 21 JULY 2016
Caabu
On 21 July, a two-and-a-half-hour long debate was held in the House of Lords on the situation of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories and the impact of the occupation on their mental health. This was the second debate on the issue this year following a Commons debate on 6 January.
The Lords debate was put forward by Lord Norman Warner. Lord Warner was part of a Caabu and Medical Aid for Palestinians delegation to the West Bank in April 2016 and  to Gaza in 2010.
___WATCH Lord Warner’s speech in his debate in the House of Lords on the situation of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza.

❹ IRISH  PUBLIC  FIGURES’  STATEMENT  IN  SUPPORT  OF  ISRAEL  BOYCOTT
The Palestinian Information Center
July 27, 2016
In an open letter published recently in the Irish Times and Irish Independent, thirteen of Ireland’s best-known musicians, writers, artists and sports stars have called on the Irish government to join them in supporting the growing worldwide boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The statement has been welcomed by Palestinian and Irish human rights campaigners.
[. . . .]
The letter welcomes Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan’s support for BDS as a legitimate political standpoint, but also outlines their disappointment that the Irish government does not go further and support the BDS movement. . .      MORE . . .  

“. . . tired of minds that have become hotels . . .” (Rashid Hussein)

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Caption: Father Ramiz Baker, with Muntaser [left] and Sayid [right] (Photo, The Middle East Monitor)
Father Ramiz Baker, with Muntaser [left] and Sayid [right] (Photo, The Middle East Monitor)
❶ From THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
ISRAEL APPROVES 800 NEW SETTLEMENT UNITS IN BETHLEHEM
July 15, 2015
Israeli Public Prosecution has revealed an Israeli settlement plan consisting of 800 new settlement units in Bethlehem, south of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian newspaper Al-Resalah reported yesterday.
____The plan was approved by the Israeli Housing and Construction Minister Ori Ariel, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous government at the end of last year.
(More. . .)

❷ From INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER (IMEMC)
ISRAELI EXTREMISTS UPROOT VEGETABLE CROPS IN BETHLEHEM
July 19, 2015
Several fanatic Israeli settlers invaded, on Saturday evening, Palestinian farmlands in the town of al-Khader, south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and uprooted hundreds of tomato and cauliflower plants and seedlings, in addition to destroying an entire field planted with Okra.
____Ahmad Salah, coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in al-Khader, said the Israeli extremists came from the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat, built on stolen Palestinian lands.
(More. . .)
(Background)
(Background)

Caption: Israeli settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees from the lands of al-Khader village, south of Bethlehem, March 20, 2013 (Photo flotillahyves.com).
Israeli settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees from the lands of al-Khader village, south of Bethlehem, March 20, 2013 (Photo flotillahyves.com).

❸ From THE PALESTINIAN INFORMATION CENTER
ISRAELI VANDALS ATTACK PALESTINIANS IN AL-KHALIL
July 19, 2015
AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– A horde of Israeli extremist settlers, residing in the illegal Ma’un settlement, attacked on Saturday Palestinian passers-by and shepherds in al-Khalil’s town of Yatta, in the southern West Bank.
____ . . . the Israeli settlers, ESCORTED BY ARMY OFFICERS, attacked shepherds and unarmed citizens.
(More . . .)

❹ From AL-MONITOR: THE PULSE OF THE MIDDLE EAST
WEST BANK COMMUNITY WELCOMES KHADER ADNAN HOME FROM ISRAELI PRISON
Aziza Nofal
July 17, 2015
JENIN, West Bank — Cries of joy were heard at the home of administrative detainee Sheikh Khader Adnan after he was released and carried on the shoulders of supporters into his town of Arraba, near Jenin . . . .
____After his release July 12, Adnan stepped out to the rostrum in front of his house and addressed hundreds of people who came from the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem to welcome him. He said Israel made a mistake by detaining him and has paid a high price.
(More. . .)

❺ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
PALESTINIAN YOUTHS STUCK AT CAIRO AIRPORT
July 18, 2015
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Several Palestinian youths from the Gaza Strip heading to Saudi Arabia and European countries have been stuck at the Cairo International Airport for a month.
_____Three young men and two young women were reportedly taken by Egyptian authorities from the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to the airport where they were prevented from travelling due to expired residency permits for their destination countries.
(More. . .)

❻ OPINION
From THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
ONE YEAR ON FROM THE ISRAELI OFFENSIVE, GAZA’S CHILDREN ARE UNABLE TO FORGET
Motasem A Dalloul
July 16, 2015
During the 51-day Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip . . . a group of Palestinian children fled to the beach to escape from the harsh and extensive bombing of houses, hospitals, healthcare centres and playgrounds; they went there to play football.
____They thought that the beach, an open area, was a safe place because it has never been used by the Palestinian resistance. Although the seven of them arrived on the beach safely, minutes later, four had been killed and three were wounded after being targeted by shells apparently fired from an Israeli warship.
(More. . .)

“WITHOUT A PASSPORT,” BY RASHID HUSSEIN (1936-1977)

I was born without a passport
I grew up
and saw my country
become prisons
without a passport

So I raised a country
a sun
and wheat
in every house
I tended to the trees therein
I learned how to write poetry
to make the people of my village happy
without a passport

I learned that he whose land is stolen
does not like the rain
If he were ever to return to it, he will
without a passport

But I am tired of minds
that have become hotels
for wishes that never give birth
except with a passport

Without a passport
I came to you
and revolted against you
so slaughter me
perhaps I will then feel that I am dying
without a passport

From Rashid Hussein, Al-A`mal al-Shi`riyya (al-Taybe: Markaz Ihya’ al-Turath al-`Arabi, 1990), Translated by Sinan Antoon.
Rashid Hussein (1936-1977) was born in Musmus, Palestine. He published his first collection in 1957 and established himself as a major Palestinian poet and orator. He was the first celebrity poet to appear on the Arab-Israeli stage; other poets called him “the star“. He showed them it was possible to write about “human things“ – bread, hunger, anger.
(More. . .)
(Another poem by Rashid Hussein)

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