Tag: Al-Aqsa Intifada

“. . . No longer am I some firm-rooted tree . . .” (Yousef El Qedra)

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Residential street in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter with homes taken by Israelis. (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 5, 2015)

SELECTED   NEWS   OF   THE   DAY. . .

| PALESTINE  FILES  LAWSUIT  AGAINST  US  AT  THE  INTERNATIONAL  COURT  OF  JUSTICE
The State of Palestine has filed a lawsuit against the United States at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the main judicial body of the United Nations, for violating international law by moving its embassy in Israel to the occupied city of Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said on Saturday.     ___Malki added in a statement that the case was based on Palestine’s membership in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that defines a framework for diplomatic relations between independent countries, specifically the Optional Protocol concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes.     More . . .

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Commercial street in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter. (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 4, 2015)

| 7  PALESTINIANS,  INCLUDING  2  CHILDREN,  KILLED  IN  GAZA  PROTESTS 
Seven Palestinians, including two children, were shot and killed by Israeli forces during protests across the eastern borders of the besieged Gaza Strip, on Friday afternoon.   ___The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed that 7 Palestinians were killed identifying them as 14-year-old boy Muhammad Nayif al-Hum . . . 12-year-old Nasser Azmi Musbeh, and Muhammad Ali Anshashi, 18, both shot and killed in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip . . .  Spokesperson of the ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra, confirmed that some 506 Palestinians were injured during protests, 90 of whom were injured with live bullets, including 3 critical cases.   ___Thirty-five children were among the injuries, in addition to four paramedics and three journalists.    More . . .
Related . . .   Gaza  is  the  Israeli  arms  industry’s  testing  ground
Related . . .   World  Bank:  Gaza  economy  in  ‘free  fall’
| MINISTERIAL  MEETING  ON  UNRWA  RAISES  REMARKABLE  US$122  MILLION
On 27 September, the Foreign Ministers of Jordan, Sweden, Turkey, Japan and Germany, as well as the High Representative and Vice-President of the European Union, hosted a Ministerial Meeting in New York, with the aim of mobilising financial and political support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).   ___The Ministerial Meeting raised a remarkable US$122 million, with Kuwait, the European Union, Germany, Norway, France, Belgium and Ireland announcing additional funding commitments. This meeting represented a crucial step in the efforts to overcome the Agency’s remaining shortfall of US$186 million and sustain UNRWA operations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.   More . . .

COMMENTARY    AND    OPINION. . . .

| WHAT  WAS  WRONG  WITH  BOTH  UN  SPEECHES?
Samia Khoury
On Thursday,  September 27, 2018, both the Palestinian President Abbas and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations  General Assembly.  ___Every time I listen to speeches like those, I keep hoping against hope that something new or fresh might come up to uplift our morale and truly give us reason to look forward to better days.  Of course it was necessary for president Abbas to draw the attention of the assembly that the USA has not been  an honest broker to the peace process, because they turned a blind eye to the violations of Israel to all the agreements signed with Israel.  He  announced that the Palestinians are not willing to continue  committing themselves to agreements that Israel has not kept. . .   ___On the other hand, Mr. Netanyahu’s  main  emphasis,  before responding to some of the points that  Mr. Abbas referred to, was on Iran.   More . . .
| AL-AQSA  INTIFADA:  THE  REVOLUTION  IS  STILL  GOING  ON  18  YEARS  LATER  
These days coincide with the anniversary of the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, which marked a turning point in the Palestinian cause, changing many equations.    [. . . .] The spark of the intifada broke out 18 years ago, after the Israeli war criminal, the leader of the Likud Party at the time, Ariel Sharon, along with Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and tried to desecrate its yards and its symbolic place through their provocative actions.   ___The Palestinian people faced this provocation with courage with their bare chests, providing examples of sacrifice and dignity, as they always did to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem and the Palestinian cause as a whole.     More . . .
| ISRAEL’S  RETREAT  FROM  DEMOCRACY  CREATING  WIDENING  DIVISION  WITH  AMERICAN  JEWS
Allan C. Brownfeld
Israel’s steady retreat from democracy, as dramatically manifested by the Knesset passing in July a new nation-state law—and its 51-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem—is widening the division between American Jews and the self-proclaimed “Jewish state.”   ___An opinion poll published in Israel in June shows a growing gap between Israelis and American Jews. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) survey found that 77 percent of Israelis approved of President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations, while only 34 percent of American Jews did. Eighty-five percent of Israelis supported the decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, upending decades of U.S. foreign policy and an international consensus that the city’s status should be decided through peace negotiations. Only 47 percent of American Jews supported the move.    ___The poll also found that 59 percent of American Jews favor the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, compared to only 44 percent of Israelis. The two communities also differ sharply on matters of religion and state, particularly on the ultra-Orthodox monopoly over religious affairs in Israel.    More . . .

POEM  FOR  THE  DAY. . . .

“EXHAUSTION  OVERTOOK  ME,”  BY  YOUSEF  EL  QEDRA

I’ve suffered from fatigue since an early age,
And my body crumpled in the presence of sickness.
Probably, my body also fell apart.
No longer am I some firm-rooted tree,
branches mingling with the clear blue sky.
Maybe I have never been that way.
Every cell in my body was shaken.
You saw so many thorny questions grown into my skin.
You saw that my eyes hurt with tears,
and I couldn’t tell from which cascade those tears fell.

You saw clouds that appeared in the minds of my poems
heading back in disappointment toward the river;
the river reverted to its headwaters of first longing.
The sea is too salty. Meanwhile my thirst surprised me
by coming at the wrong time. My thirst was stubborn,
and I am not stubborn with anyone, except myself.

Suddenly, I wanted the world to turn into a desert
without a sun above it. Without memories of the trees
or the river or the distraught young women.
I want myself to be a dead body
smoking a rotten cigarette, watching the emptiness.
I want myself to be a line inside a neglected book,
a line upon which the dust eats and drinks.
—Trans. Yasmin Snounu and Edward Morin

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

“. . . Justice screams loudly protecting Western lands but grows silent when it visits us . . .” (Abu Salma)

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❶ Israel plans expanding illegal West Bank settlement
. . . . . ― (ᴀ) Official report: Israeli government encourages killing Palestinians
❷ Historical document reveals possible collusion with Israeli occupation pre-Six Day War
❸ How the Palestinian leadership came to accept the Partition Plan

  • Background: “The ‘Al-Aqsa Intifada’ as a Result of Politics of a Transition.” Arab Studies Quarterly.

❹ France [expresses desire] to recognize Palestine as part of European Union
❺ POETRY by Abu Salma
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  PLANS  EXPANDING  ILLEGAL  WEST  BANK  SETTLEMENT
Palestine News Network – PNN 
Dec. 3, 2017 ― Israeli occupation authorities are planning to set up new large settlement on the western borders of the occupied West Bank, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
___According to Quds Press, the Israeli news website 0404 revealed that a special committee was assigned by the Israeli interior ministry six months ago to prepare for this plan.
___The committee offered its recommendation, noting that the committee recommended bringing a number of settlements together to create a large settlement applicable for expansion.   MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ―  (ᴀ)  OFFICIAL  REPORT:  ISRAELI  GOVERNMENT  ENCOURAGES  KILLING  PALESTINIANS 
The Palestinian Information Center 
Dec. 3, 2017 ― The Palestinian national office for the defense of land and resistance of settlement accused Israeli war minister Avigdor Lieberman with inciting settlers to kill Palestinians. The office also charged the Israeli government of confiscating Palestinian lands.
___In a weekly report on Saturday, the office referred to Lieberman’s remarks in which he praised the Jewish settler who cold-bloodedly murdered martyr Mahmoud Odeh last Thursday near Qusra town to the south of Nablus.     MORE . . .
[Lieberman said, “The use of a weapon for self-defense is a moral value that is defended by every democracy.  My thanks and recognition to the armed escort who saved the hikers from a clear and present danger to their lives.”]
❷ HISTORICAL  DOCUMENT  REVEALS  POSSIBLE  COLLUSION  WITH  ISRAELI  OCCUPATION  PRE-SIX  DAY  WAR 
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO  
Dec. 1, 2017 ― A historical letter sent from the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to the then US President, Lyndon B Johnson, in 1966 reveals the monarch’s possible collusion with the US over Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula. Published by Al Motamar net news website, it has been described as “dangerous” by former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has long promised to reveal the contents of the document.
___“King Faisal’s letter to US President Lyndon Johnson said that the Egyptian forces would not withdraw from Yemen unless Israel moved to occupy Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank,” explained Saleh. The Head of the General People’s Congress urged the current Yemeni president and the rest of the Arab countries participating in the Saudi-led coalition, especially Egypt, to withdraw immediately from the alliance fighting in Yemen. “The events in Saudi Arabia, the blockade on Qatar, and the Sudanese President’s visit to Russia are all a part of the changing equations [in the Middle East],” he claimed.   MORE . . .
❸ HOW  THE  PALESTINIAN  LEADERSHIP  CAME  TO  ACCEPT  THE  PARTITION  PLAN 
+972 Magazine Blog 
Jerome M. Segal
Dec. 1, 2017 ― A few days ago, Israel and its supporters worldwide marked the 70th Anniversary of the 1947 Partition Resolution, which was passed by the UN and called for the division of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.
___Why did the Palestinians say “no” to partition? The answer is simple. They believed that it was unjust, that all of the land was rightfully theirs, and, more to the point, they believed they did not have to accept it. Everyone knew that war was imminent, and the Palestinian could not imagine that 600,000 Jews could withstand the overwhelming power of the Arab armies.
___But in their celebrations, the commemorators missed a different anniversary. It occurred, largely unnoticed, two weeks earlier: the 29th anniversary of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by the PLO on November 15, 1988.   MORE . . .

[Note: this article provides contemporaneous background for the events Segal explains in his article.]
Schulz, Helena Lindholm.
“THE  ‘AL-AQSA  INTIFADA’  AS  A  RESULT  OF  POLITICS  OF  A  TRANSITION.” 
Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 4, Fall2002, p. 21.
[. . . .] Perhaps the most substantial representation of Palestinian national identity is to ‘struggle,’ which serves as the action or the strategy through which to transcend and refute the denial, humiliation and dispossession which have served as core experiences informing Palestinian identity. . . .  Struggle through the resistance and revolution, which followed upon the 1967 war, nurtured a revolutionary political culture, promoting values related to a romanticizing discourse on heroic fights and militarism.
[. . . .] However, in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the future ‘independent’ state was defined as ‘democratic,’ based on constitutionalism, parliamentarianism and respect for civil rights. Democracy has thus not been absent from the political discourse of the PLO. . . .
[. . . .]  Both the PLO Charter of 1964/1968 and the Declaration of Independence of 1988 circle around the notion of ‘struggle’:
“___And in generation after generation, the Palestinian Arab people gave of itself unsparingly in the valiant battle for liberation and homeland. For what has been the unbroken chain of our people’s rebellions but the heroic embodiment of our will for national independence? And so the people was sustained in the struggle to stay and to prevail.”
[. . . .] The battle between elites led to different conclusions regarding the implementation of democracy as a form of governance. In abstract terms, even Arafat loyalists . . . .  adhered to democracy as the principle of governance in the long run. However, in their view the lack of sovereignty and the continuous negotiations with Israel were of overall importance and the political system had to direct itself towards securing control over land and solving the conflict with Israel. There was a need for the Authority to centralize power in order to deliver effectively in the form of tangible results of the peace process.  SOURCE . . .

❹ FRANCE  [EXPRESSES  DESIRE]  TO  RECOGNIZE  PALESTINE  AS  PART  OF  EUROPEAN  UNION
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Dec. 3, 2017 ― Ambassador of Palestine to France  Al-Harfi Sunday said the French government has expressed desire to recognize Palestine, but as part of the European Union.
___He told WAFA in a phone call that France wants to recognize a state of Palestine, but with other European countries taking part, because it will safeguard the peace process.   MORE . . .
SITUATION:  FRENCH  PARLIAMENT  VOTES  TO  RECOGNIZE  PALESTINIAN  STATE,  The Times of Israel,  Dec. 2, 2014 

“MY  COUNTRY  ON  PARTITION  DAY,”  BY  ABU  SALMA
My country! Live in safety, an Arab country,
may the jewel of your tradition keep smiling
Though they’ve partitioned your radiant heart
our honor denies partition.
We’ve woven your wedding clothes with red thread
dyed from our own blood.
We’ve raised banners on the Mountain of Fire***
marching toward our inevitable destiny!
History marches behind our footsteps
honor sings around us.

Rise, friend, see how many people
drag their chains of dented steel.
Behold the serpents slithering endlessly among them!
They’ve prohibited oppression among themselves
but for us they legalized all prohibitions!
They proclaim, “Trading with slaves is unlawful”
but isn’t the trading of free people more of a crime?
In the West man’s rights are preserved,
but the man in the East is stoned to death.
Justice screams loudly protecting Western lands
but grows silent when it visits us!
Maybe justice changes colors and shapes!
Live embers scorch our lips
so listen to our hearts speaking,
call on free men in every land
to raise the flag of justice where we stand.
――Translated by Sharif Elmusa and Naomi Shihab Nye
***The City of Nablus was called the “Mountain of Fire” because it was the seat of rebellion against the British Mandate and its Zionist policies.

Abu Salma (Abdelkarim Al-Karmi) was born in 1907 in Haifa. He studied law and worked in Haifa until April 1948 when the Israelis occupied the city. He then moved to Akka. Shortly after he moved from Akka to Damascus. Abu Salma kept the keys to his house and office in Haifa hoping to return. Abu Salma was awarded The Lotas International Reward for Literature in 1978 by The Association of Asian and African Writers. He was also given the title “The Olive of Palestine.” Abu Salma died in 1980.
From  ANTHOLOGY  OF  MODERN  PALESTINIAN  LITERATURE.  Ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Available from Columbia University Press.

“. . . they come to burn the love in our hearts . . .” (Yousef Al-Mahmoud)

Harold KnightLeave a comment

PLEASE NOTE: With this posting the form and content of this blog will slightly change. It will present fewer news items and give more background for those items. This is in hopes of providing the reader (and the blogger) with deeper understanding of the issues that shape the news. I will soon find a means to provide direct links to these articles.
Thank you. H.K.

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A Palestinian Bedouin boy feeds camels in a poverty-stricken quarter of the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis. (Photo: Getty Images, January 20, 2016)

❶ Video: Hebron settlers steal wooden furniture from Palestinian home for Lag BaOmer bonfire
❷ Israel steps up war on Palestinian culture
❸ Why camels mean more than just money to Gaza’s Bedouin
❹ Opinion/Analysis: TIME  TO  END  THE  ‘HASBARA’:  PALESTINIAN  MEDIA  AND  THE  SEARCH  FOR  A  COMMON  STORY
❺ NOTES – Writings related to above news stories
❻ POETRY by Yousef Al-Mahmoud
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ VIDEO:  HEBRON  SETTLERS  STEAL  WOODEN  FURNITURE  FROM  PALESTINIAN  HOME  FOR  LAG BAOMER  BONFIRE
Ma’an News Agency
May 24, 2016
A group of right-wing Israeli settlers broke into an uninhabited Palestinian house in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Tuesday and stole wooden furniture, presumably to be burned during bonfire celebrations for the Jewish holiday of Lag BaOmer.
___A spokesperson for Hebron-based activist group Youth Against Settlement, Issa Amro [said] the families have been banned from accessing their homes in Hebron’s Old City since Israeli forces sealed the area around al-Shuhada Street in 1994.     MORE . . .
(Note below)

❷ ISRAEL  STEPS  UP  WAR  ON  PALESTINIAN  CULTURE
The Electronic Intifada
Alia Al Ghussain
May 18, 2016
The Palestinian community in Haifa enjoyed a small victory in March when a theater successfully challenged the Israeli government to win reinstatement of official funding cut after controversy over the staging of a play about prisoners last year.
___But the reinstatement also threw into focus the constraints on Palestinian artistic expression in present-day Israel and some saw the resumption of official funding as a double-edged sword.    MORE . . .     RELATED FROM THE NEWS . . .   
(Note below)

❸ WHY  CAMELS  MEAN  MORE  THAN  JUST  MONEY  TO  GAZA’S  BEDOUIN
Al-Monitor (Palestine Pulse)
Rasha Abou Jalal
May 22, 2016
Despite the difficulties that hinder camel breeding in the Gaza Strip, such as the scarcity of green pastures and ongoing urban sprawl, Bedouin families continue to breed camels as part of their heritage. To them, camels are a source of income and livelihood [. . . .]
___ . . . Arabs used to praise camels in poetry, and the Quran gives the example of camels in Surat al-Ghashiyah, verse 17, to show the greatness of God’s creation: “Do they still not look at the camel, how it had been created?”       MORE . . .    

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The Israeli demolition of Palestinian structures in central Hebron. (Photo: Ahmed A. Rjoob, Conservation and Management of Archeological Sites 11: 3–4, 2009)

❹ Opinion/Analysis:  TIME  TO  END  THE  ‘HASBARA’:  PALESTINIAN  MEDIA  AND  THE  SEARCH  FOR  A  COMMON  STORY
Middle East Monitor
Ramzy Baroud
May 24, 2016
Merely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and other media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting experience. For many years, Palestinian media has been on the defensive, unable to articulate a coherent message, torn between factions and desperately trying to fend off the Israeli media campaign, along with its falsifications and unending propaganda or ‘hasbara’ [ . . . . ]
___ Not only are Palestinians expected to demolish many years of Israeli disinformation, predicated on a make-believe historical discourse that has been sold to the world as fact, but also to construct their own lucid narrative that is free from the whims of factions and personal gains.       MORE . . .  
(Note below)

❺ NOTES –  WRITINGS  RELATED  TO  NEWS ITEMS
(complete writings are available online through EBSCO databases from most libraries)

DEMOLITION  OF  PALESTINIAN  CULTURE  IN  HEBRON
In 2000, during the al-Aqsa Intifada, Palestinian heritage was destroyed by the military operations of the Israeli army. They deliberately demolished the historic centres of Nablus and Hebron, and subsequently constructed the separation wall inside the OPTs, causing unprecedented and irreversible damage to Palestinian heritage. The separation wall also cuts off hundreds of archaeological sites annexed to Israel or to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
__From:  Rjoob, Ahmed A. “The Impact of Israeli Occupation on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage Sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: The Case of ‘Salvage Excavations’.” Conservation & Management of Archaeological Sites 11.3/4 (2009): 214-235.

RESISTING THE WAR ON PALESTINIAN CULTURE
Writing is an act not only of preserving history and human experience, but also of resistance to intruders and colonizers. Although we do not write only because there is occupation and injustice, we write the kind of literature we do because there is occupation. . . .  We know we belong here in Palestine. We write not to beg for our rights and for a better life, but to fulfill our obligations to ourselves, to others, and to the generations to come.
__From: Alareer, Refaat R. “Gaza Writes Back: Narrating Palestine.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 37.2 (2014): 524-537.

REGARDING  THE  ‘HASBARA’
So these assumptions are reinforced. You know, the Jews are the good people; Arabs are the bad people. Jews are like us. They’re white people creating a Western-style state in a savage untamed region of the world. So after ’67, there was this move towards making uncritical support of Israel the cornerstone of being a good Jew. Being a Jew and a Zionist are now merged, and Israel is the religion. Christian Zionists marched up and embraced the idea. We all got to return so we can have an apocalypse. So they embraced this settler movement. Liberal Christians then bought the mythology. The U.S. government developed our huge military industrial complex. With this framing, the history and trauma and aspirations of Palestinians become more and more invisible.
___So this manipulation happens by controlling the message. How is that done? We have Birthright trips, which are basically brainwashing. We have students that have been recruited and, I’ve heard, paid to use social media to compliment Israel. They call this public diplomacy. There are a ton of free junkets for all kinds of people, ranging from academics to food and wine critics, to go to Israel. We have all the academic collaborations. We have our Israeli ambassadors in all sorts of Jewish settings and forcing what the message is. So there is this multimillion-dollar industry to brand Israel with pink washing, green washing, faith washing, and all those kind of things.
___From: Rothchild, Alice, and Askia Muhammad. “Silencing Voices That Question Israeli Actions.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (2015): 21-25.

“ENEMY,”  BY  YOUSEF  AL-MAHMOUD
They come from all the ends of the earth to sit among us
they come from the ends of the winds
they bring sickness and a hissing like sakes
they come from the ends of the snows
they come smelling of death
they come with blood-dipping knives
they bring panic and terror
they are utterly not-to-be-trusted
they are utterly murderous
they are proud of their murders, they are drinkers of blood
proud of tooth and nail
even more proud of guns and treachery
they come to burn the love in our hearts
and turn it to torture and bitterness
they bring sorrow, terror, sickness. . .
How have they come to sit among 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.