❶ From: MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ABBAS  RESIGNS  AS  HEAD  OF  PLO  EXECUTIVE  COMMITTEE
Aug. 22, 2015
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — President Mahmoud Abbas resigned as head of the PLO Executive Committee Saturday and several others are set to step down, according to local sources.
____Tayseer Qubaa, deputy Palestinian parliament speaker, said that the the Executive Committee will hold a meeting Saturday night in order to set a date for the Palestinian National Council (PNC) to discuss plans for filling the upcoming political vacuum.
____Qubaa said: “As of now, there are six resigning members: President Mahmoud Abbas, Hanan Ashrawi, Ahmad Majdalani, Saeb Erekat, Ghassan al-Shakaa, and Mahmoud Ismae.”
____Palestinian official Wassel Abu Yussef later said that more than half of the 18-member committee had also stepped down.
____”The resignation of the president of the executive committee Mahmud Abbas and more than half of its members has created a legal vacuum, and therefore the Palestine National Council has been asked to meet in one month to elect a new executive committee,” Yussef told AFP.
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❷ From: MONDOWEISS
PALESTINIANS  STRUGGLE  TO  LEAVE  GAZA  AS  EGYPT  OPENS  RAFAH  CROSSING  FOR  FOUR  DAYS
Isra Saleh El-Namy
August 21, 2015
Fatigue and stress was apparent on the face of Nada Mumer. Nine months pregnant, Mumer waited for the officer to call the names of people who will be allowed to ride a bus to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing in Gaza.
[. . . .]
The departure gallery at the Rafah crossing was full of people with their suitcases, waiting for their turn to leave as Egypt announced a four-day window the crossing will be open. . .
____Palestinian officials were relieved by the Egyptian decision to open the Rafah crossing, which had been closed for more than two months, aggravating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
____During this time, many people, including patients seeking advanced medical treatment abroad and students who want to complete their education in universities outside Gaza, found themselves trapped inside what is known as the “world’s biggest open air prison.”
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❸ From: INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM)
EXTREME  RIGHT-WING  ZIONISTS  WITH  THE KAHANE  GROUP  ATTACK  PALESTINIANS  AND  INTERNATIONAL ACTIVISTS  IN  HEBRON
ISM al-Khalil Team, Hebron
August 20, 2015
A group of twenty-five extreme Jewish Zionists from France attacked three international activists in front of the shops near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, H2 area this afternoon.
____When the activists encountered the group of extremists, the extremist started to clap their hands and sing songs while they approached the activists. The activists pulled out their cameras to record what was happening and the extremists responded by threatening the activists in Hebrew, attacking the cameras, pushing and spitting on the activists. . . The military occupation forces did not much to prevent the violence. Instead of holding the extremists accountable for their actions, the army encouraged them to walk away and formed a line to prevent the activists from walking the direction they had intended to and were directed to go another way.
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❹ From: INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER (IMEMC)
CHRISTIAN  PRIESTS,  PALESTINIANS,  HOLD  PRAYERS  ON  BULLDOZED  LANDS
August 23, 2015
Dozens of Palestinians, headed by several Christians priests, conducted prayers on Palestinian lands that have been destroyed and uprooted by Israeli soldiers, in Beit Jala city, in the West Bank district of Bethlehem.
____Head of the Beit Jala City Council Nicola Khamis said the priests, the locals and various international human rights and Palestine solidarity activists gathered on the lands, carrying Palestinian flags, and signs condemning the ongoing and escalating Israeli violations and land theft.
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❺ Opinion
From: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
THE  ILLUSION  OF  A  RIFT  IN  THE  OBAMA – NETANYAHU  RELATIONSHIP
Dr Fayez Rasheed
August 21, 2015
Some of our Palestinian and Arab politicians and writers are counting on a desert mirage. They think it is water, but when they approach it, they find that it is something else.
____This mirage is the rift in the relationship between Netanyahu and Obama. Their evidence of this is weak, i.e. Netanyahu’s statements against Obama, especially after the signing of the Iranian nuclear agreement and what seemed to be Obama’s anger with Netanyahu after his speech in Congress, etc.
[. . . .]
____ The point is that the relationship between America’s presidents and any of Israel’s prime ministers is governed by the following rule: the US officials must comply with Israel’s interests, even if Israel’s leaders attack the leaders of their top strategic ally. In order to please their consciences, the American presidents will say some words about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after their presidential term is up or is on the verge of finishing.
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“NO!”  BY  MUEEN  BESSISSOU  (Mu’in  Bseiso)
His wounds said: “No!”
His chains said: “No!”
And the turtledove which shielded his sound with her feather
Said: “No!”
Gaza’s silver anklet.
They sold the bullets and bought a goose.

Quaking goose!
Stop for a moment.
And listen to him
Saying: “No!”
Pity him; he did not die under neon lights,
Between the candlestick and the moon.
Pity him; there was no formal announcement
. . . or a dumb funeral.
No moaning poem or song.
Stones!
Let me compose, if only one line of verse
That I may recite it to all the men with long and false beards.

Stop quaking for a moment
And listen to him saying: “No!”
Like the solid fence of a house in Gaza.
Every day, he gets killed one thousand times,
Quaking goose!

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.

Mu’in Tawfiq Bseiso (1926 –1984) was a Palestinian poet who lived in Egypt. . . He finished his primary and secondary education in Gaza in 1948. He started publishing his work in the Jaffa-based magazine Al-Hurriya where he published his first poems in 1946. . . he enrolled in the American University in Cairo and subsequently graduated in 1952. . . Imprisoned in Egyptian jails twice: 1955 to 1957 and 1959 to 1963. He died due to heart failure in London in 1984.
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