❶ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAEL  PREVENTS  GAZA  FOOTBALL  TEAM  FROM  ENTERING  WEST  BANK
Aug. 7, 2015
GAZA CITY―Israeli authorities on Friday prevented Gaza’s Ittihad al-Shujaiyeh football team from leaving the besieged enclave to face West Bank rivals Ahli al-Khalil in the second leg of a cup game, a spokesperson for the club said.
____The Gaza-based team was scheduled to leave the coastal territory together with Hebron’s Ahli al-Khalil after having played an historic game a day earlier at the Yarmouk stadium.
____But four of the players and three of the team’s staff were refused travel permits, spokesperson Alaa Shamali said. . . .
____The second leg of the cup game, scheduled for Sunday, has now been postponed and the next 24 hours will prove crucial as to whether talks with FIFA can lift Israel’s travel restrictions.
More . . .
Background. . . WEST  BANK  FOOTBALL  TEAM  PLAYS  HISTORIC  GAZA  MATCH.

❷ From: THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
ONE  YEAR  AFTER  SHELLING  GAZA’S  HOSPITALS,  ISRAEL  STARVES  THEM  OF  POWER
Isra Saleh el-Namey
August 7, 2015
Nabeel Muhammad’s job would be demanding under any circumstances. He is a nurse working with seriously ill patients. The difficulties that he faces have been multiplied by a power crisis in the Gaza Strip. . . .
____The problems besetting this hospital illustrate how it has been under constant attack by one means or another for many years. In July 2014, it was shelled during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 51-day bombardment of Gaza. The power cuts that imperil the provision of basic services across Gaza have occurred repeatedly since Israel bombed the Strip’s only power plant in 2006. . . .
____The crisis has been especially acute since Egypt closed tunnels between it and Gaza in 2013. Those tunnels were used to smuggle fuel on which the people of Gaza depended. . . .
____Emad Saleem, a doctor at the European Hospital in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, said that everyday activities like checking heart rates, blood pressure and body temperatures can be a major ordeal.
More. . .

❸ From: JADALIYYA (ARAB STUDIES INSTITUTE)
SNAPSHOT:  PALESTINIAN  OLIVE  TREES
Bryony Dunne and Elle Kurancid
July 31, 2015
Olive tree felling is a longtime strategy of Israel’s occupation regime in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, an estimated 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli authorities and settlers.
____In February 2015, Irish-born filmmaker and photographer Bryony Dunne traveled across the West Bank and encountered evidentiary support for such activity (in tree stumps and civilian stories). Over the course of one week, she moved through Israeli checkpoints, and around Israeli settlements and military bases, while heading north to the Palestinian city of Jenin, staying with five Palestinian families along the way. These families earn their livelihood farming either olives or almonds as members of Canaan Fair Trade, a cooperative that supports approximately 1,700 small farmers throughout the occupied West Bank in the sale of produce to international markets. . .
More. . .

❹ From: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR (MEM)
ISRAELI  “TEMPLE”  ORGANISATIONS  CALL  FOR  MARCH  INTO  AL-AQSA  MOSQUE
August 7, 2015
Israeli “Temple” organisations have called for an Israeli flag march on Sunday to Al-Aqsa mosque.
____The organisations of the Temple Mount Faithful and Students for the Temple said the march will reach Al-Aqsa Mosque’s gates at 8:00 am carrying Israeli flags.
More. . .
Background. . .  THE  BATTLE  FOR  AL-AQSA:  ‘THIS  IS  NOT  ABOUT  PRAYER’ 

❺ Opinion
From: +972 MAGAZINE
POLITICAL  DEATH  NOTICES  MOURN  PALESTINIAN  BABY,  ISRAELI  TEEN
Mairav Zonszein
August 7, 2015
It has been a week since Palestinian infant Ali Dawabshe was burned alive when his West Bank home was set on fire by Jewish Israelis, and five days since 16-year old Israeli Shira Banki — who was stabbed at the Jerusalem Pride Parade — died of her wounds.
____Dawabshe’s parents are still in critical condition in an Israeli hospital, while their house is still in ashes . . . . on the streets of West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, death notices in Hebrew and English have been plastered in recent days to mark the two murders.
____Mourning notices are a common practice in Israel to notify of a death in the community. But these notices, initiated, composed and hung by writer Ilana Sichel and artist Romy Achituv, not only mourn the deaths of these two minors — they also call on Jews in Israel to assume a collective, moral responsibility for them.
More. . .

“THE  LAST  KNOCK,”  BY  FADWA  TUQAN
Will you not open this door for me?
My hand is exhausted from knocking at Your door.
I have come to Your vastness to beg
Some tranquility and peace of mind
But Your door is closed in my face,
Drowned in silence.
Lord of the house,
The door was open here,
A refuge for all burdened with grief.
The door was open here,
And the green olive tree rose high
Embracing the house.
The oil lamb kindling without fire,
Guiding steps of one walking at night,
Relieving those crushed by the burden of Earth,
Flooding them with satisfaction and ease.
Do you hear me, O Lord of the house,
After my loss in the deserts;
Away from You I have returned to You
But Your door is closed
In my face, drowned in silence.
Your house is shrouded
With the dust of death.
You are here. Open, then, the door.
Do not veil Your face.
See my orphanhood, my loss,
Amid the ruins of a collapsing world,
The grief of the world on my shoulders
And terrors of a tyrant destiny
To be undone.

From: A Lover From Palestine and Other Poems: An Anthology of Palestinian Poetry. Ed. Abdul Wahab Al-Messiri. Washington, DC: Free Palestine Press, 1970. Available from Amazon.
Fadwa Tuqan obituary.