Category: Jabaliya Refugee Camp Gaza

“. . .hate is not love and love is freedom . . .” (Ramzy Baroud)

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Sunrise, The Great March of Return. (Photo: Palestinian Information Center, December 7, 2018)

SELECTED   NEWS   OF   THE   DAY. . .
|   ON  37TH    FRIDAY  OF  GREAT  MARCH  OF  RETURN  AND  BREAKING  SIEGE,  ISRAELI  FORCES  WOUND  72  CIVILIANS,  INCLUDING  11  CHILDREN,  1  WOMAN  AND  2  PARAMEDICS
On Friday evening, 07 December 2018, Israeli forces wounded 72 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children, 1 woman and 2 paramedics in the peaceful demonstrations in the eastern Gaza Strip despite the decreasing intensity of the demonstrations there for the sixth week consecutively and absence of most means usually used during the demonstrations since the beginning of the Return and Breaking the Siege March 7 months ago.    ___According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, for the fifth week since the beginning of the Return March on 30 March 2018, the demonstrators abstained from burning tires while the attempts to cross the border fence and throw stones and incendiary balloons were completely absent.     More . . .
. . . . Related   Palestinian Forced to Demolish his Home in East Jerusalem
. . . . Related   Child injured in settler attack on Palestinian family
. . . . Related   Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (29 November – 05 December 2018)
. . . . Related   41 violations committed against Palestinian content on social media
| PALESTINE  SIGNS  10  COOPERATION  AGREEMENTS  WITH  FRANCE;  PREMIER  APPRECIATES  FRENCH  SUPPORT
Palestine and France signed 10 cooperation agreements on Friday during a visit for Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to Paris and his meeting with his French counterpart Edouard Philippe.    ___Hamdallah thanked France during a joint press conference with Philippe for its support for Palestine on all levels and its support for the two-state solution.    ___”As I expressed in our discussions with Prime Minister Philippe today, we are grateful for the French positions which demonstrate strong commitments to deepen and develop our partnership and cooperation and I would like to emphasize that this is also our commitment,” said Hamdallah.    More . . .
. . . . Related  FM Malki: France agreed in principle to cooperate in opening of the Paris Economic Protocol …
. . . . Related  One year on: The political and human impact of Trump’s Jerusalem decision
|  DECEMBER  9  MARKS  31ST  ANNIVERSARY  FOR  OUTBREAK  OF  FIRST  UPRISING  –  THE  STONES  INTIFADA
On DECEMBER 8, 1987, an Israeli settler identified as Herzel Boukiza rammed his vehicle into Palestinian workers returning home through Erez/Beit Hanoun checkpoint between Israel and Gaza. Four workers from Jabalya and Maghazi in Gaza were killed.    ___The next day, and following the funerals of the four, angry Palestinians took to the streets in Jabalya to protest the premeditated attack. The protests then quickly spread to the rest of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank where thousands of Palestinians took to the streets and engaged the heavily armed Israeli soldiers with stones in what has become to be known as the stones uprising or Intifada.   [. . . .] a total of 1550 Palestinians were killed, over 70,000 injured more than half of them suffered permanent disabilities, between 100,000 to 200,000 were detained. . .      More . . .

COMMENTARY    AND    OPINION. . . .
| ISRAEL  DISPLACES,  LOCKS  UP  AND  KILLS  PALESTINIAN  CHILDREN
By Mohammad Balawi
What does it take to make someone wield a screwdriver and attack a fully armed, well-trained, well-protected soldier, knowing that if he got injured no ambulance would take him to hospital, and if he is lucky he will spend the best years of his life behind bars?    [. . . .] Consider a 16-year-old who has lived all his life under occupation. . . Given how he has grown up, would it make sense for him to attack a fully grown man armed to his teeth with a screwdriver or a kitchen knife, or throw a stone at his tormentors?    ___Israeli occupiers have a peculiar way of explaining this situation. These teens, according to them, are no more than terrorists . . .  lured by money, instigated by terror organisations and encouraged by the leniency of Israeli democracy and the judiciary system, even though Israeli authorities demolish the attacker’s family home and in many cases leave him on the ground bleeding to death.    More . . .

POEM  FOR  THE  DAY. . . .   

“MY  NAME  IS  HERMAN  WALLACE,”  BY  RAMZY  BAROUD

I am a black Palestinian,
South African,
Vietnamese . . .
My name is Mohammed,
Fatima,
Wallace,
Mandela,
Durra,
King . . .
Resistance is my creed.
Prophets found their sanctuary when
they were shot on my soil.
By Israeli bullets
In the Battle of Dien Bien Phu
And just when you think I am defeated,
My fist will rise from the charred earth,
In a painting by Naji Ali,
Through the thick walls of Louisiana State Penitentiary
In the streets of Hanoi,
Amid the rubble of a Gaza mosque.
Even on my dying bed.
I speak many tongues,
And have many names.
But my face is always my face.
On my forehead stitched the memory of pain.
I smile still.
And teach my son never to hate
Because hate is not love
And love is freedom.
I am a Palestinian.
My name is Herman Wallace
And I will always die free.

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

“. . . Descendants of Ole Abe! My voice has become hoarse . . .” (Samih al-Qasim)

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triplets
Gazan names triplets ‘Quds’, ‘Assima’ and ‘Falisteen’ which means Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine. (Photo: MEMO, Dec. 22, 2017)

❶ Christian leaders say there can never be peace without Jerusalem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Palestinian in Gaza names triplets Jerusalem, Capital and Palestine

  • Background: “Mobile Cartographies and Mobilized Ideologies: The Visual Management of Jerusalem.”  Antipode.

❷ 2 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces during protests along Gaza border
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Palestinian Dies From Wounds Suffered A Week Earlier In Gaza
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) Israeli forces detain elderly man for owning two air, plastic guns
❸ Opinion/Analysis: Free at last:  a UN without US diplomatic blackmail
❹ POETRY by Samih al-Qasim
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ CHRISTIAN  LEADERS  SAY  THERE  CAN  NEVER  BE  PEACE  WITHOUT  JERUSALEM 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA 
Dec. 23, 2017    Christian leaders stressed on Saturday the centrality of Jerusalem to all three monotheistic religions, denouncing the United States for declaring it capital of Israel.
[. . . .] “Those who want peace in Jerusalem should know that power will not bring peace,” said former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabah. “Peace starts with Jerusalem. Power cannot impose unjust peace.”
[. . . .] Attallah Hanna, a Greek Orthodox archbishop, said that the Christians reject the US declaration on Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. . . .   Hanna vowed to protect the Christian property in Palestine, “and this way we will defeat (US President Donald) Trump’s project that aims to abolish the Palestinian cause and not only the issue of Jerusalem.”
___Bishop Munib Younan of the Lutheran Church said the Christian leaders wrote Trump before he announced his decision on Jerusalem on December 6 urging him not to take any action that would prejudice the status of Jerusalem . . .
___He said that “there cannot be peace in the Middle East without peace in Jerusalem. It is time that our people gain their legitimate right in a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”   MORE . . .  
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴀ)  PALESTINIAN  IN  GAZA  NAMES  TRIPLETS  JERUSALEM,  CAPITAL  AND  PALESTINE 
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
Dec. 22, 2017 ― A Palestinian from the besieged Gaza Strip’s southern village of Khan Yunis has named his three newborn triplets “Quds”, “Asima” and “Filisteen” – meaning “Jerusalem”, “Capital” and “Palestine” in Arabic – in protest against the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
___Nidal Al-Siqli, 30, told the Anadolu Agency that he chose the names “to emphasise Jerusalem’s Palestinian, Arab and Muslim character”.   MORE . . . 

Hercbergs, Dana and Chaim Noy.
“MOBILE  CARTOGRAPHIES  AND  MOBILIZED  IDEOLOGIES  THE  VISUAL  MANAGEMENT  OF  JERUSALEM.”
ANTIPODE. Vol. 47 no. 4, Sep2015, pp. 942-962.
[. . . .] As the focus of religious and political yearnings throughout the ages, Jerusalem has been an object of changing depictions and gazes. The visual representation of the Old City —where the holy places of the Jewish prayer site of the Western Wall (“Wailing Wall”) and the Muslim Noble Sanctuary (Haram ash-Sharif, including al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock) are adjacently located—is central to today’s political struggles between Israel and the Palestinians.
___In this article we are interested in illustrating a particular turning point that . . . concerns a shift in the spatial and visual regimes of, and perspectives in, Jerusalem; namely from portraying the city for decades via a number of sites, most prominently the dual Western Wall/Dome of the Rock image—to promoting an exclusively Jewish-Israeli city . . .
[. . . .] Recent neoliberal policies augment and dovetail practices of urban ethnocracy in Jerusalem, amplifying social and economic divisions through further processes of spatial separation that are occurring in West Bank settlements and in other Israeli towns . . .  affluent gated urban communities have been cropping in Jerusalem since the 1990s . . .   These developments present a departure from the government-subsidized settlements built since 1967 on confiscated Palestinian land in and around Jerusalem, and a move towards a government–private sector partnership associated with neoliberal regimes and exclusionary forms of development . . . directed respectively at wealthy, diaspora Jewish visitors and/or buyers of properties in Jerusalem. . .
[. . . .]  What we have in this case is a twofold movement consisting of the denial of the Palestinian presence and history of Jerusalem, coupled with appropriation of its architectural, artistic and cultural motifs . . .  A surprising contradiction appears in relation to the traditional Jewish longing for Jerusalem: the contemporary Jewish viewer is still viewing the Old City from the pre-1967 position. This distance strikes us as a final warning against short-sighted attempts to actualize divine plan, the utopia-in-the now of ethnocratic urban planning.   FULL ARTICLE . . . 

❷  2  PALESTINIANS  SHOT  DEAD  BY  ISRAELI  FORCES  DURING  PROTESTS  ALONG  GAZA  BORDER
Ma’an News Agency 
Dec. 22, 2017 ― Israeli forces have shot and killed two Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip during clashes along the border fence with Israel, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
___The first Palestinian was identified as 24-year-old Zakariya al-Kafarne, who was killed after being shot with live ammunition by Israeli forces during clashes in eastern Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip.
[. . . .] Protesters had marched following Friday prayers and protested near the border fence in response to calls from Palestinian factions for a third “Friday of Rage” in protest of US President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.   MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴀ)  PALESTINIAN  DIES  FROM  WOUNDS  SUFFERED  A  WEEK  EARLIER  IN  GAZA 
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC    
Dec. 23, 2017 ― The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that a Palestinian man died, Saturday, from wounds he suffered a week earlier, east of Jabalia, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
___The Ministry said the young man, Sharif al-‘Abed Shalashel, 28, suffered a serious injury after the soldiers shot him with live fire, and remained in a critical condition until he succumbed to his wounds.
___He was injured on the same day when the soldiers killed four Palestinians, and wounded at least 367 others, in the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.   MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴃ)  ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  ELDERLY  MAN  FOR  OWNING  TWO  AIR,  PLASTIC  GUNS 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA   
Dec. 23, 2017 ― December 22, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Friday detained a 67-year-old Palestinian man from the village of Ya’bad, in Jenin district, for owning an air gun and another gun made of plastic belonging to his grandchild.
___The Detainees Affairs Commission said Mahmoud Hamdan, 67, was detained by Israeli army after a military raid into his home.
___Israeli forces wreaked havoc into Hamdan’s home, destroying its contents and furniture, before detaining him and his son Hadi, 30.     MORE . . . 
❸ Opinion/Analysis: FREE  AT  LAST:  A  UN  WITHOUT  US  DIPLOMATIC  BLACKMAIL 
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO   
Dr Daud Abdullah     ..
Dec. 22, 2017 ― Not for the first time, the free world has stood up for truth and justice in Palestine. The General Assembly’s vote against President Trump’s decision on Jerusalem was a victory for the rule of law over the law of the jungle. It now leaves both the US and Israel isolated, disgraced and humiliated.
___Washington’s threat to cut aid to countries that voted not to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was an insult to the UN and a vicious assault on the sovereign rights of its members. In their customary delusional manner, Israelis believed the US threat was enough to force compliance. They were mistaken; people around the world are simply tired of their arrogance and unethical conduct.
___As it stands, Trump’s threat is consistent with a long-standing policy of US blackmail and intimidation exerted within the UN to further Israel’s illegal claims. It was no different from the threats issued to impoverished nations to extract the controversial UN Partition Resolution 181 in 1947.
[. . . .] Where does this crushing defeat leave Israel and its mercurial Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu? For sure, Israel will become more isolated among the community of nations. Instead of countries moving their embassies to Jerusalem many will now consider severing or curtailing diplomatic contact with the Zionist state. South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has taken the lead by adopting a resolution at its national conference to downgrade the South African embassy in Israel to a liaison office.   MORE . . .  

“THE  UNKNOWN  CONTINENT,”  BY  SAMIH  AL-QASIM
How do we reach you
Slums of Chicago?
How is the spark to reach you?
How is the fire to be born?
Skyscrapers!
Stacked huts!
Stretch your arms out of the darkness―
For the big banner
Spreads its warmth, its light
Forever
Into the depths of night
And the big banner is
Forever
A sail for the drowning.

How are the storms to reach you
Jazzband Club in New York?
The black man is hungry and fearful
The wolves of the KKK roam the forest
―the current overpowering
And the conscience of the statue shaken
And the heart of night.
The wind is frozen,
And the waves of the sea unmoving?
How is the message to reach you
Deaf Washington,
With the humming of the machine?
In Vietnam you slaughter
And you export
Cokes and medicine to the sad moon!
And you sweep over the blood of victims.
How is the message to reach you?

Descendants of Ole Abe!
My voice has become hoarse
And the wind
Has become tired of my shouts!
Descendants of Old Abe!
Shake the marble of history,
Rise to the sky,
Rise above the band of stupid maggis
And halt ―for
The earth grumbles
Rivers of blood.

From: Aruri, Naseer and Edmund Ghareeb, eds. ENEMY  OF  THE  SUN:  POETRY  OF  THE  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE. Washington, DC: Drum and Spear Press, 1970.
Available from Amazon.
About Samih Al-Qasim

“. . . they say the wild birds ferried his blood to his family. . .” (Zuhair Abu Shaib)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
1-grieving mother
Disbelief: Pictured is the grieving mother of one of the four Palestinian children from the same family killed in a naval strike on the port of Gaza 17 July 2014. (Photo: Reuters)

❶ Child killed, brother injured by leftover Israeli ordnance
❷ Al-Qiq ends 94-day hunger strike after deal struck with Israel
❸ Amnesty International: Palestinians protest in Hebron against decades of severe restrictions
. . . . . ❸― (ᴀ) 22 years after the Ibrahimi mosque massacre, Palestinians still suffer consequences
❹ Distributing administrative demolition orders in the village of Esawyeh
❺ Opinion/Analysis: Frozen in Their Grief: On the Bereavement of Palestinian Families
❻ Poetry by Zuhair Abu Shaib
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ THE PALESTINIAN INFORMATION CENTER
CHILD  KILLED,  BROTHER  INJURED  BY  LEFTOVER  ISRAELI  ORDNANCE
Feb. 26, 2016
Five-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and his six-year-old brother was badly injured in an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday night. The blast in Jabaliya refugee camp was caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance from the 2014 Gaza war.     More . . .
❷ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
AL-QIQ  ENDS  94-DAY  HUNGER  STRIKE  AFTER  DEAL  STRUCK  WITH  ISRAEL
Feb. 26, 2016
Killian Redden
Imprisoned Palestinian hunger-striker Muhammad al-Qiq on Friday ended a grueling 94-day hunger strike that has brought him close to death after his lawyers struck an eleventh hour deal with the Israeli authorities.
___Israel’s six-month administrative detention sentence against al-Qiq will not be renewed, while his lawyers managed to push the date of his release back to May 21, he said.     More . . .

hebron
Israeli soldiers arrest Professor Gadi Algazi at a demonstration in Hebron calling on the army to ”open the Hebron Ghetto,’ Hebron, West Bank, February 20, 2016. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

❸ PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
AMNESTY  INTERNATIONAL:  PALESTINIANS  PROTEST  IN  HEBRON  AGAINST  DECADES  OF  SEVERE  RESTRICTIONS
Today, February 26, Palestinian residents and activists in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron are holding demonstrations marking 22 years since the Israeli authorities first closed al-Shuhada Street, formerly the city’s commercial centre.
___They are protesting against illegal Israeli settlements and demanding the removal of the restrictions on their movement, which are applied only to Palestinians and not to Israeli settlers. . . . October 2015, the Israeli [occupation] forces (ÎOF) intensified the long-standing restrictions, declaring parts of Hebron’s Old City a “closed military zone”    More . . .
. . . . . ❸― (ᴀ) INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
22  YEARS  AFTER  THE  IBRAHIMI  MOSQUE  MASSACRE,  PALESTINIANS  STILL  SUFFER  CONSEQUENCES
Feb. 25, 2016
On the 25th of February 1994, a US citizen residing in the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement entered the Ibrahimi mosque . . . opened fire on the Palestinians that were crammed inside for the prayer. He killed 29 men and boys and injured dozens . . . .
___In 1997, a protocol was signed between Israel and the PLO, dividing Hebron into two areas: “H1”, controlled by Israeli forces, and “H2”, under Palestinian control
___22 years later, all measures that were declared in Hebron on the 25th of February, 1994 are still enforced, except for the curfew. And settlers are more than ever taking over the city, with the compliance of the Israeli government.      More . . .
❹ WADI HILWEH INFORMATION CENTER – SILWAN
DISTRIBUTING  ADMINISTRATIVE  DEMOLITION  ORDERS  IN  THE  VILLAGE  OF  ESAWYEH
Feb. 25, 2016
Joint crews of occupation municipality and Special Forces hung administrative demolition orders on several residential establishments in the village of Esawyeh on Wednesday.
___Mohammad Abu Hummos, member of follow-up committee in the village of Esawyeh, explained that occupation municipality’s crews raided Abu Rayaleh neighborhood in the village and took pictures of the entire neighborhood before hanging administrative demolition orders on 9 houses.    More . . .
❺ Opinion/Analysis
PALESTINE CHRONICLE
FROZEN  IN  THEIR  GRIEF:  ON  THE  BEREAVEMENT  OF  PALESTINIAN  FAMILIES
Dr. Samah Jabr
Feb. 25, 2016
While the world was celebrating New Year’s Eve in 2015, with all of its promise for the coming year, dozens of Palestinian families were receiving the frozen bodies of their Shaheeds (martyrs): children killed by Israelis in the recent political upheaval.
___. . . this article is an attempt to explore the experience of grief among victims of our political reality- not an essay on the meaning of martyrdom . . . . [Palestinians glorify] the individuals who have been killed resisting the occupation and use the term “Shaheed” to draw attention to the circumstances of their death. . . .
___Much silence surrounds the grief of the families of Palestinian fighters. The Palestinians perceive the Israeli authorities as taking sadistic satisfaction in our suffering.   More . . .

“MARTYR,”  BY  ZUHAIR  ABU  SHAIB
When they found him
he had become an emerald flame;
as when they lifted his arms they found
sheaves of wheat where a heart should be;
and they say those sheaves were whispering
beneath his shirt; and they say the wild birds
ferried his blood to his family, drop by drop;
and they say he will come back, suspended
in the hidden tree at the burning heart of volcanoes
and that his mother will fold him in her arms.
But when they found him he was an emerald flame,
so they stitched together rose petals for a shroud
and smoothed out the sky to keep him warm
and for a pillows, they lifted down the sun
and laid it beneath his head.
—Trans. By John Glenday

Zuhair Abu Shaib was born in Deir al-Ghusun and studied at Yarmouk University. She was a teacher and journalist in Yemen, and a book designer. She was also editor of the journal Awarq.
From A  BIRD  IS  NOT  A  STONE:  AN  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available from Amazon.com.