Tag: Israeli Home Demolitions

“How long had you been away from the place you loved best?” – Naomi Shihab Nye

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NEWS OF THE DAY

Palestinian territories stable after Trump plan, but for how long?

AL-MONITOR, PALESTINE PULSE
Feb 20 2020
A relative calm has returned to the West Bank after a brief outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of cities and contact points after US President Trump announced his so-called deal of the century for Israeli-Palestinian peace on Jan. 28.
– – – – Confrontations on the West Bank in early February went beyond Palestinians throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces to include deadly clashes involving gunfire, a car-ramming attack and resisting the demolition of a home. In Gaza, Palestinians launched more than 20 rockets and hundreds of incendiary balloons toward Israeli communities. In response, the Israeli army decided on Feb. 6 to send reinforcements to the border with Gaza and to the West Bank.
– – – – In a speech at the UN Security Council on Feb. 11, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said, “We will not resort to violence and terrorism, no matter the aggression against us. We believe in peace and fighting violence. We are ready to cooperate with any country to combat terrorism, and we will fight with peaceful popular resistance.”    More . . . .

‘We gave up on historic Palestine in exchange for nothing’

Bassem Tamimi, who has led popular protests in Nabi Saleh for more than a
decade, says the two-state solution is ‘no longer an option.’
+972 MAGAZINE
Feb 19 2020
“We need to wake up and change our strategy, to unite our struggle,” says Bassem Tamimi, a veteran Palestinian activist and father of Ahed Tamimi, as he sits in his Nabi Saleh home in the occupied West Bank. Tamimi, who was born in 1967 and has only ever known military occupation, was jailed during the First Intifada and has been among the leaders of the village’s popular protests over the past decade. Now, however, he has given up on the two-state solution. “It’s no longer an option,” he says.
– – – – The Tamimi family, and their village, made global headlines in late 2017 when Ahed slapped an Israeli soldier who had entered her family courtyard during a Friday demonstration. Earlier that day, a soldier had shot a 15-year-old relative in the head. A few days later, soldiers arrested Ahed, then 16, from her home in the middle of the night. Her mother, Nariman, was arrested shortly after her daughter for filming the slapping incident. Both spent eight months in prison.    More . . . .

  • Israeli court approves demolition of homes of five Palestinian detainees
    WAFA
    Feb 20 2020
    The Israeli Supreme Court today gave the go-ahead to demolish the Ramallah-area family homes of five Palestinian detainees allegedly involved in the killing of a settler in late August 2019.
    – – – – Israeli media reported that the Israeli court unanimously approved the demolition despite multiple petitions filed by the prisoners’ families against the demolition.
    – – – – The court explained its approval by the need to “establish credible deterrence against attacks.” Israel commenced in January the trial of the five prisoners, who were detained in December purportedly for being responsible for the killing of an Israeli settler. . . .  More . . . .
  • IOF shoot Palestinian youth east of Khuza’a town
    PALESTINOW
    Feb 20 2020
    Israeli soldiers shot, on Wednesday afternoon, a young Palestinian man east of Khuza’a town, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
    – – – – Media sources said the soldiers shot the young man near the perimeter fence, inflicting moderate wounds before he was rushed to the European Hospital for treatment.
    – – – – The Israeli army claimed that sharpshooters of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad fired rounds at military vehicles and soldiers across the fence and that the soldiers fired back.    More. . . .
  • Dozens of Palestinians choke by IOF tear gas during clashes in West Bank
    PALESTINOW
    Feb 19 2020
    Dozens of Palestinian citizens on Tuesday choked on tear gas fired by Israeli occupation forces (IOF) during confrontations in Tulkarem and Ramallah in the West Bank.
    – – – – In Tulkarem, scores of Palestinians marched in protest at the US deal of the century, raised Palestine flags and burned car tires, local sources reported.
    – – – – The IOF attacked them with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters. Dozens suffered breathing difficulties as a result of inhaling tear gas.    More . . . .

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Searching for Lost Sons and Daughters: Statistics on Palestinians in the Diaspora
This Week In Palestine
Issue #262, Feb 2020
By: Ola Awad
Satistical data indicate that on the eve of the 1948 war, the population in Palestine had reached 2.1 million, 1.45 million of which were Palestinians. Varying estimates and divergent figures have been circulated by different sources regarding the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes during this war. The Israeli occupation took over 774 Palestinian cities and villages, 531 of which were completely demolished, whereas the others were subjugated to the Israeli occupation and its regulations, eventually to be incorporated into the Israeli state. . . . The most modest estimates of Palestinian refugees counted around 736 thousand individuals, more than 50 percent of the Palestinian population. They were moved to refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the neighboring countries Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. . . .
. . . . At the beginning of the current century, PCBS took the initiative of listing Palestinians who live in the diaspora in order to build a database that may serve as the basis for efforts to bridge existing gaps between the Palestinian people in their homeland and in the diaspora in order to connect them. . . . This catalogue will be the tool by which data are collected and monitored, providing as well an agreed-upon list of indicators. The database will be updated whenever possible. Palestinian embassies and representative offices in places around the world where Palestinians live constitute the main source of data and serve as focal points and PCBS’ link to Palestinian diaspora communities.    More . . . .

POEM OF THE DAY

“HELLO, PALESTINE” — Naomi Shihab Nye

Hello, Palestine
In the hours after you died,
all the pain went out of your face.
Whole governments relaxed in your jaw line.
How long had you been away
from the place you loved best?
Every minute was too much.
Each year’s bundle
of horror stories: more trees chopped,
homes demolished, people gone crazy.
You’d turn your face away from the screen.
At the end you spoke to your own blood
filtering through a machine:
We’ll get there again, friend.
When you died, your long frustration
zipped its case closed. Everyone in a body
is chosen for trouble and bliss.
At least nothing got amputated,
I said, and the nurses looked quizzical.
Well, if only you had seen his country.

From Transfer, by Naomi Shihab Nye, BOA editions, 2011.
Available from Barnes and Noble.

“. . . I’m old enough, almost four, I’ve seen enough . . .” (Hanan Ashrawi)

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❶ IOF arrests seven Jerusalemite minors
CONTEXT: Military Court Watch (monitoring the treatment of children in detention)
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israeli settler attacks Palestinian child in Hebron
CONTEXT: Space to play: West Bank refugee camps are facing a crisis of safety and square feet
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) A life worth living?

  • Background: “The Right to Home: Domicide as a Violation of Child and Family Rights in the Context of Political Violence.” Children & Society

❷ Palestinian demolishes own home in Jerusalem to avoid Israeli fines
❸ POETRY by Hanan Ashrawi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ IOF  ARRESTS  SEVEN  JERUSALEMITE  MINORS
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Nov. 12, 2017 ― Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested on Sunday morning, five Jerusalemite minors after storming their houses in the town of Silwan, south of Al Aqsa Mosque.
___The IOF arrested from Silwan. Abdulrahman Shweky, 14, Qosay Zaiton 13, Imran Mansour ,15, Mehdi Mansour, 12, and Khaled Mayala, 20, and were transferred to investigate at Maskobeya police station in the occupied Jerusalem, confirmed the lawyer Mohammed Mahmoud.
___Wadi Hilweh Information Center said that the intelligence and occupation forces stormed Silwan neighborhoods and arrested five children after storming their houses.   MORE . . .
CONTEXT:    MILITARY  COURT  WATCH  (MONITORING  THE  TREATMENT  OF  CHILDREN  IN  DETENTION).   Briefing Note, October 2017 ― This Briefing Note reviews developments in the Israeli military detention system for children and covers the period up to October 2017.
. . . . . ❶― (ᴀ) ISRAELI  SETTLER  ATTACKS  PALESTINIAN  CHILD  IN  HEBRON 
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency 
Nov. 12, 2017 ― Ahmed Hadeeb, 15, was injured by bruises on Saturday after an Israeli settler beat and injured him in the center of Hebron.
__According to local sources, the settler hit Habeed with the butt of his rifle; he was injured and then transferred to the hospital.   MORE . . .
CONTEXT:  SPACE  TO  PLAY:  WEST  BANK  REFUGEE  CAMPS  ARE  FACING  A  CRISIS  OF  SAFETY  AND  SQUARE  FEET 
Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP)       
Oct. 5, 2017   ― [. . . .] Overcrowding and fifty years of Israeli military occupation, as well as the now-frequent Palestinian security forces’ raids, have negatively impacted the available spaces for play. When schools let out for the summer, children spend their time between camp spaces that are either too cramped or too dangerous for play [. . . .]
. . . . . ― (ᴃ) A  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING?
The Electronic Intifada      
Hamza Abu Eltarabesh
Nov. 9, 2017 ― Young people in Gaza are finding few prospects for a better life.
___On Tuesday, 29 August, Mohannad Younis swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and ended his life.
___He was only 22 and seemed to have much going for him. A budding author, he had recently completed a series of short stories and just put the finishing touches on a stage play – Escape.   MORE . . .

Akesson, Bree, et al.
“THE  RIGHT  TO  HOME:  DOMICIDE  AS  A  VIOLATION  OF  CHILD  AND  FAMILY  RIGHTS  IN  THE  CONTEXT  OF  POLITICAL  VIOLENCE.”
Children & Society, vol. 30, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 369-383.
[. . . .] The term domicide was coined by Porteous and Smith to describe the ‘deliberate destruction of home against the will of the home dweller’.
[. . . .] Home is a symbolic place that often embodies togetherness, individual and family growth, accomplishments, memories, and deeply personal and familial connections with land and territory. Scholars have pointed out how places of origin, such as the home, are closely connected to cultural practices, symbolic meanings, memories and rituals that shape individual identity.
[. . . .] One study examining the effects of home demolitions on Palestinian children . . .   compared to children of similar demographics living in the same location, found that children who had their homes intentionally destroyed fared significantly worse on a range of mental health indicators including withdrawal, somatic complaints, depression, anxiety, social difficulties, higher rates of delusional, obsessive compulsive and psychotic thoughts, attention difficulties, delinquency, and violent behaviour. Not surprisingly, the study found that children’s mental health was closely tied to their caregivers’ mental and physical health. Similarly, [a] case study of home demolitions for children in Palestine found that children who were forced from their homes reported feeling anxious, sad and angry after experiencing repeated displacement. Losing their homes and becoming refugees within their own neighbourhoods was reported as the most painful incident that had happened to them and ultimately an experience of ‘living in the hyphen’.   FULL ARTICLE . . .

❷ PALESTINIAN  DEMOLISHES  OWN  HOME  IN  JERUSALEM  TO  AVOID  ISRAELI  FINES    
Ma’an News Agency  
Nov. 12, 2017 ― A Palestinian from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan was forced to destroy his own home on Saturday in order to avoid incurring a demolition fee from Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality, which was set to carry out the demolition.
___According to the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, Abd al-Ghani Dweik, a resident of the al-Bustan area of Silwan, said that the Israeli municipality issued a demolition order against his house, along with a demolition fee of 80,000 shekels ($22,741).
___Four people were residing in the home, which was built two years ago.
___A spokesman of a Silwan-based committee formed to fight demolitions, Fakhri Abu Diab, previously told Ma’an that all 100 residential structures in the al-Bustan area are slated for demolition, and that the 1,570 residents of the area have exhausted all legal options.   MORE . . .

“FROM  THE  DIARY  OF  AN  ALMOST-FOUR-YEAR-OLD,”  BY  HANAN  ASHRAWI
Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off. I wonder
will I see half an orange,
half an apple, half my
mother’s face
with my one remaining eye?
I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and a look in
his eyes
I could not understand.

If I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
it could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose.

Next month, on my birthday,
I’ll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle —
I’ve gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.

I hear a nine-month-old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too—a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye—
I’m old enough, almost four,
I’ve seen enough of life,
but she’s just a baby
who didn’t know any better.

Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
From ANTHOLOGY  OF  MODERN  PALESTINIAN  LITERATURE.  Ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Available from Columbia University Press.

 

“. . . “States must each protect minorities, their national or ethnic identity and their linguistic, cultural and religious identity. . . .” (UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights)

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super-moon
#Photo of The #SuperMoon from the capital of #Palestine, #Jerusalem (Widely posted on Facebook, Nov. 13, 2016)

❶ US slams Israeli plan to ‘legalise’ settlement outposts

  • Background: “The Palestinians In Israel: The Challenge Of The Indigenous Group Politics In The ‘Jewish State’.” Journal Of Muslim Minority Affairs

❷ Israel moves forward with bill to ban Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers
❸ PCHR Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the oPt (03 – 09 November 2016)
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ US  SLAMS  ISRAELI  PLAN  TO  ‘LEGALISE’  SETTLEMENT  OUTPOSTS
Al Jazeera English   
Nov. 15, 2016
The US has described as “troubling” an Israeli bill supported by a ministerial committee allowing settlers in the occupied West Bank to remain in homes built on private Palestinian land, additing it hoped the law does not pass.
___”We are deeply concerned about the advancement of legislation that would allow for the legalisation of illegal Israeli outposts located on private Palestinian land,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told a briefing on Monday.
___While most of Israel’s settlements in occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank – all of which are illegal under international law – are constructed under the auspices of the Israeli government, outposts are built without authorisation and technically illegal under Israeli law.      More . . .       Background . . .  Israel to legalise Jewish outposts in occupied territories

jewish-settlement-_3153184b
A file photograph of Adei Ad, the illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank (Photo: REUTERS/Nir Elias, Jan. 2, 2015)

. . . ❶― (a) ISRAELI  AUTHORITIES  DEMOLISH  3  STRUCTURES  IN  JERUSALEM  DISTRICT  AMID  SPATE  OF  DEMOLITIONS       
Ma’an News Agency  
Nov. 15, 2016
Israeli authorities demolished three agricultural structures in the Jerusalem district neighborhoods of Silwan and Jabal al-Mukabbir on Tuesday morning, according to witnesses.
___Alaa Shweiki, a resident of the al-Thuri area in Silwan, told Ma’an Israeli police and Jerusalem municipality inspectors stormed the area around his home and escorted bulldozers onto his property.
___The bulldozers then demolished one structure roofed with steel tubes and tin sheets that he uses as horse stable, as well as a shack he uses to store agricultural equipment.     More . . .     Related . . . Israeli forces demolish residential structures south of Hebron

  • Ghanem, As’ad, and Mohanad Mustafa. “The Palestinians In Israel: The Challenge Of The Indigenous Group Politics In The ‘Jewish State’.” Journal Of Muslim Minority Affairs 31.2 (2011): 177-196.    Source.  

The Palestinians . . .  live in a state that was forced on them and does not represent them. A striking example of the attitude of the ruling majority towards the Palestinian minority in Israel is in the statements . . .  that as part of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian side should accept Israel as a “Jewish state.”
[. . . .]  According to the definition of . . .  the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities a “minority” is a governed group, with citizenship from the state in which it lives. Its unique ethnic, religious and linguistic attributes separate it from the rest of the people in the nation in which it lives. The term “Indigenous Minority” . . .  refers to the remaining minority of a group that resides in its own homeland, despite other immigrant groups occupying it or founding a new state on its lands. . .  The Palestinian minority in Israel meets most of the criteria to be considered indigenous. These criteria were enumerated by the United Nations . . .  early presence, voluntary conservation of cultural uniqueness, self-definition as an indigenous people, refusal to be subjugated, trivialized, marginalized, expelled or discriminated against by the hegemonic society. . . the presence of a group of people as a society, and their attachment to a specific area.
[. . . .]   The first section of the declaration on persons belonging to national or ethnic minorities, or those belonging to religious and linguistic minorities reads: “States must each protect minorities, their national or ethnic identity and their linguistic, cultural and religious identity. States must also lay the groundwork to facilitate the cultivation of the various identities”.
[. . . .]  The foundation of the Judaization idea is far from being an integral part of the democratic system. Oren Yiftachel calls these practices “ethnocracy”, therefore, the ethnocratic regime is founded on a national project that imposes ethnic national hegemony on the domain through the processes of expansion and settlement. In the case of Zionism, the Judaization of the domain and the land produces an ethnocratic regime. Spatial control is one of the important pillars of the ethnocratic regime. Its goal is the “creation of a new ethno-political geography”. The process of “ethnicizing” a disputed region evolves in the following stages: separation of settlements is used to propagate the control of the majority over the land. In this process the minority is labeled a threat to the ethnic control of land. Subsequently, land planning—which enables the ethnic control of the land. Finally, structural discrimination against the minority, denying it access to development projects and access to the distribution of resources. [. . . .]

❷ ISRAEL  MOVES  FORWARD  WITH  BILL  TO  BAN  MUSLIM  CALL  TO  PRAYER  OVER  LOUDSPEAKERS
Ma’an News Agency
Nov. 14, 2016
The Israeli Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved on Sunday draft legislation which could ban the use of loudspeakers to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer in Israel.     ___The bill, which calls for barring the use of loudspeakers for any religious or “inciting” messages as part of the call to prayer, would need to go through several readings in the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — before making it into law, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday.
___The call to prayer — also known as the adhan — is broadcast five times a day from mosques or Islamic centers.     More . . . 

Call to prayer from area of Masjid al-Aqsa; the first Qiblah of the believers.
May Allah bring liberation to the people of Palestine. Aameen

❸ PCHR  WEEKLY  REPORT  ON  ISRAELI  HUMAN  RIGHTS  VIOLATIONS  IN  THE  OPT  (03 – 09  NOVEMBER  2016)
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
Nov. 14, 2016
During the week of 03 – 09 November 2016, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian civilian at the entrance to the “Ofra” settlement, northeast of Ramallah and al-Bireh. Additionally, 6 Palestinian civilians, including a child and a photojournalist, were wounded in the occupied West Bank.
___Israeli violations of international law and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), during the reporting period, were as follows:   More . .

“. . . Don’t ask me to abandon . . . the memory of my childhood . . .” (Fouzi El Asmar)

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settlers
Settlers break into Palestinian apartments in Hebron (Photo: Elisha Ben Kimon)

❶ Palestinian family of 7 in Hebron Hills faces imminent displacement by Israel
. . . ❶― (ᴀ) Israeli court rejects appeal against [Hebron district] home demolition of Palestinian attacker’s family

  • Background: “The Last Colonialist: Israel In The Occupied Territories Since 1967.” Independent Review

❷ Israeli occupation plans to build new settlement units in Hebron
❸ POETRY by Fouzi El Asmar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PALESTINIAN FAMILY OF 7 IN HEBRON HILLS FACES IMMINENT DISPLACEMENT BY ISRAEL
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 21, 2016
Seven Palestinians face imminent displacement after Israeli forces delivered a demolition warrant for their home on Sunday, which is located inside the official village limits of al-Tuwani in the vulnerable Southern Hebron Hills region of the occupied West Bank. ___Al-Tuwani village council head Nasser al-Adra told Ma’an that Israeli forces notified Kamil Mousa al-Rabai and his family for a second time that their 120-square-meter house would be demolished [. . . .]
___“This would be the first time Israeli forces demolish a house located within the official community master plan,” al-Adra told Ma’an. “This new policy is a dangerous escalation against al-Tuwani and its neighboring villages and hamlets.”       MORE . . .    

. . . ❶― (ᴀ) ISRAELI COURT REJECTS APPEAL AGAINST [Hebron district] HOME DEMOLITION OF PALESTINIAN ATTACKER’S FAMILY 
Ma’an News Agency 
Aug. 22, 2016
The family of Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Abd al-Majid Omaireh, who Israel accused of being an accomplice in a shooting attack last month which left one Israeli settler dead, said on Monday that an Israeli court decided to demolish their family home in the village of Dura in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.      MORE . . .  

❷ ISRAELI OCCUPATION PLANS TO BUILD NEW SETTLEMENT UNITS IN HEBRON 
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 22, 2016
The Israeli occupation authorities (IOF) plan to build new settlement units in the Jewish settlement amid Hebron southern the West Bank, Haartez newspaper reported.  ___The newspaper reported on Monday that the plan is scheduled to be ended these days, noting that the former Army Minister, Moshe Yaalon, has issued a statement to build the settlement unit on h2 area under Israeli sovereignty.      MORE . . .       RELATED . . .

  • Reuveny, Rafael. “The Last Colonialist: Israel In The Occupied Territories Since 1967.” Independent Review 12.3 (2008): 325-374.  FULL ARTICLE.  

During the past five hundred years, three primary types of colonies have been established: colonies of exploitation, colonies of settlement, and colonies of contested settlement. Colonies of exploitation, the large majority, overworked natives in labor intensive sectors and did not include many settlers. In colonies of settlement, the settlers became the majority and gained full control. In Spanish America, for example, settlers intermarried with the local elites, killed many natives, and enslaved others, and in British North America and Australia, settlers ousted the natives and decimated them demographically, turning them into a small minority in the land they had previously inhabited. Some of these settler societies also imported slaves from Africa. In colonies of contested settlement in Africa and Asia, many settlers went to live in the colonized lands, but they remained a minority rejected by the natives.
[. . . .]
Recent settler actions in the West Bank city of Hebron and the former settlement of Homesh provide additional insight. Seeking to gain control over Hebron’s old city, settlers have attacked Palestinians since 2001, playing a key role in driving out 15,000 to 20,000 Palestinian residents and 1,500 to 1,700 Palestinian businesses from the city. Settlers also have often attacked verbally and physically the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel sent to enforce order. In early 2007, settlers took over a large Palestinian house in Hebron and returned to Homesh, from which the government had removed them during 2005. Because they had done so without approval. Defense Minister Amir Peretz from the Labor Party sought to evacuate them, but the World Council tor Saving the People and the Land of Israel, a settler body, warned him not to intervene. IDF evacuated the settlers from Homesh, but they have since returned several times. In Hebron, the settlers reportedly presented forged documents to prove their ownership of the house and have refused to leave.
[. . . .]
In line with historical colonial examples, Israeli settlers have often built settlements, so-called outposts, without state approval. By 2007, some two thousand settlers lived in about one hundred outposts, seizing 75 percent of their lands from Palestinians. Some Israeli governments have promised to remove outposts and have even removed a few, but all the governments have essentially accepted them after the fact.

kelly-demolition
Homes Demolished in the South Hebron Hills, Feb. 12, 2016 (Photo: Cassandra Dixon/antiwar.com blog)

“TO  A  JEWISH  FRIEND,”  BY  FOUZI  EL-ASMAR
Don’t ask me
the impossible
Don’t’ ask me
to hunt stars,
walk to the sun.
Don’t ask me
to empty the sea
to erase the day’s light
I am nothing but a man.

Don’t ask me
to abandon my eyes, my love,
the memory of my childhood.

I was raised
under an olive tree,
I ate the figs
of my orchard
drank wine from
the sloping vineyards
Tasted Cactus fruit
in the valleys
more, more.

The nightingale has sung
in my ears
The free winds of fields and cities
always tickled me
My friend
You cannot ask me
to leave my own country.  (March 1971)

El Azmar, Fouzi. POEMS  FROM  AN  ISRAELI  PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.
Available from Amazon.
About Fouzi El Asmar.

“. . . I am a child who lives under the ruins of constant Israeli violence . . . the bombs . . .” (Riham Mansour Hasanat – age 14)

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children al-fawwar
Children from Hebron Excellence Center in Al-Fawar Refugee Camp painting a roadside mural. Jan. 24, 2015 (Photo: Hebron Excellence Center)

❶ Israeli forces storm Hebron area refugee camp, injure 35 with live fire, tear gas, rubber bullets
RELATED: Israel detains 22 Palestinians overnight, including family of teen accused of stabbing

  • Background: “Ongoing Exile: Palestinian Children Write Their Ongoing Nakba.”

❷ Israel refuses to give building permits, demolishes Palestinian homes.
❸ EU logo no shield from Israel’s bulldozers
❹ Opinion/Analysis:  “PALESTINE BESIEGED: WHY PALESTINIANS NEED AN INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION FORCE”
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` 
❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  STORM  HEBRON  AREA  REFUGEE  CAMP,  INJURE  35  WITH  LIVE  FIRE,  TEAR  GAS,  RUBBER  BULLETS
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
35 Palestinians were injured, one seriously, early Tuesday morning during clashes when Israeli forces stormed the al-Fawwar refugee camp in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron.
___Locals told Ma’an that large numbers of Israeli troops surrounded the camp around dawn on Tuesday, when they began ransacking homes and interrogating residents in the streets.
___Local youth reportedly reacted to the forces, sparking clashes with the soldiers who fired live gunshots, tear gas, and rubber-coated steel bullets at the youth.    MORE . . .       RELATED:   ISRAEL  DETAINS  22  PALESTINIANS  OVERNIGHT,  INCLUDING  FAMILY  OF  TEEN  ACCUSED  OF  STABBING  

  • Background: “Ongoing Exile: Palestinian Children Write Their Ongoing Nakba.” Palestine-Israel Journal Of Politics, Economics & Culture 15/16.4/1 (2008): 159-164.
    SOURCE.

“My Nakba”
Lalifa al-Wawi (15).
Palestine Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp – Occupied West Bank
My Nakba separated me from my family and my land. I live in a place far from the past, but the past will be the present with my return to my homeland… the land I dream of every night. I often look at the stars in the sky and wonder why I am here… in a camp that has nothing for my present and nothing of my past. In it I live as a stranger amongst the rubble and the ruins.
[. . . .] My cousin completed his studies in Sudan and worked in Saudi Arabia. He decided to leave everything to come to find us and live here as long as he could. It was here that the Israeli soldiers killed him. Perhaps it was his fate after being separated from his land and family all his life; it would be from here, after his return, that he would ascend to heaven.

“I Am a Child of This World”
Riham Mansour Hasanat (14).
Deir al-Dubhan Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp – Occupied West Bank
I am one of the children of this world; I live in a refugee camp, and I say to anyone who will listen that I am a child, and that I will be free like the other happy people living in their homes, on their land, in their country. I am a child who lives under the ruins of constant Israeli violence, the bullets and the bombs. Every day I hear that someone in our camp has been killed or injured or imprisoned. I wake up to the sound of the tanks and the sounds of the planes hovering in the skies above our houses, our homes. They search these homes; they kill and imprison children and old people; they injure and kill those who have committed no crime, and then they call us terrorists. I am a child, and I know that one day I will be free like the other happy people, but that this day will only come after I return to our real homes, the place where we can return happiness to the hearts of the children, the women, and all those who have committed no crime.

❷ ISRAEL  REFUSES  TO  GIVE  BUILDING  PERMITS,  DEMOLISHES  PALESTINIAN  HOMES
Alray-Palestinian Media Agency
Aug. 16, 2016
Israeli occupation forces destroyed Tuesday morning eight homes and two stores in Sa’ir town east of Hebron.
___Local sources reported that the houses which were demolished are inhabited. Israeli occupation had handed the Palestinian homeowners demolition orders before two years, so they have tried to get building permits but the occupation refused to give them building permits.
___It added that a large military force raided with bulldozers Ein Aljawza town and forced the Palestinian residents to evacuate their homes in order to destroy them.     MORE . . .  

eu
Soldiers from Israel’s Civil Administration demolish structures donated by the European Union in the southern Hebron Hills on February 2, 2016. (Photo: Nasser Nawaja/B’Tselem)

❸ EU LOGO  NO  SHIELD  FROM  ISRAEL’S  BULLDOZERS
The Electronic Intifada
Silvia Boarini
Aug. 16, 2016
Bilal Hammadin looks beyond the tin shacks in the occupied West Bank village of Abu Nuwwar, home to approximately 600 Palestinians, to the red-roofed homes in Maaleh Adumim, an Israeli settlement where nearly 40,000 people live.
___“As I was growing up, I could see the settlement getting bigger. I guess you can say that we grew up together,” he says, laughing at the irony.
[. . . .] In February [in Abu Nuwwar], the Israeli army demolished two trailers which were to serve as a new school for first- and second-graders. The cabins, donated by a French nongovernmental organization and funded by the European Union, bore visible EU logos. MORE . . .

❹ Opinion/Analysis: “PALESTINE  BESIEGED:  WHY  PALESTINIANS  NEED  AN  INTERNATIONAL  PROTECTION  FORCE”
Nation
Buttu, Diana, and Nadia Hijab
Oct. 22, 2015
[. . . .] Palestinians have taken to the streets to demonstrate against nearly 50 years of military rule and the denial of their freedom at the hands of Israel. These protests come after the death of the peace process, the election of a rightwing Israeli government that has stated it has no intention of granting Palestinians their rights, and growing discontent with the unelected Palestinian Authority (PA).
___The protests have also been fueled by repeated Israeli announcements of settlement expansion; settler attacks on Palestinian lives, property, and holy places; and the Israeli government’s decision to allow right-wing extremists who seek the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to enter the Haram al-Sharif compound while simultaneously denying Palestinians access to their holy sites.
[. . . .]  First, as the occupying party, Israel is required under international law to ensure the protection of the civilians under its rule. Instead, Israel has, during its 48-year occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, done exactly the opposite.
___Two Palestinian generations have grown up entirely under Israel’s military control. By 2014, more than 800,000 Palestinians had been imprisoned by Israel, including 8,000 children under the age of 18 arrested since 2000. Currently, there are 5,621 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
[. . . .] Things have reached such a pass that even PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been compelled to call on the UN “to provide international protection for the Palestinian people,” as he did in his September 30 speech to the General Assembly.    MORE . . .

 

“. . . I had no address. I am a man in transit . . .” (Rashid Hussein)

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khuzaa
Palestinian women walk past a mosque and water tower damaged by Israeli air strikes and shelling in KHUZAA near ABU RIDA GATE in the southern Gaza Strip. Aug. 3, 2014. (Photo: The Irish Times)

❶ Israel surveys vast tract of land southeast of J’lem to declare it state land

  • Background: “Settlements and Ethnic Cleansing In the Jordan Valley.”

❷ Israeli forces level lands in southern Gaza Strip

  • Background: “Perils of Parity: Palestine’s Permanent Transition.”

❸ Palestinian human rights groups ‘gravely concerned’ over ongoing death threats to staff
❹ POETRY by Rashid Hussein
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  SURVEYS  VAST  TRACT  OF  LAND  SOUTHEAST  OF  J’LEM  TO  DECLARE  IT  STATE  LAND
The Palestinian Information Center
Aug. 15, 2016
The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has embarked recently on conducting a land survey between the settlement of Efrat (southeast Jerusalem) and the area to its east with the intention of annexing it and declaring it state land, according to a report published by Haaretz newspaper on Sunday.
___Efrat is in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the southern West Bank, and the area to its east is called Givat Eitam.    MORE . . .  

  • Tofakji, Khalil. “Settlements And Ethnic Cleansing In The Jordan Valley.” Palestine-Israel Journal Of Politics, Economics & Culture 21.3 (2016): 81-87.

[. . . .] The Israeli government utilized two main methods in order to construct and expand its settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).The first method involved setting legal and bureaucratic procedures enabling the government to confiscate lands. By using the following justifications: seizure for military purposes, declaration of state lands, seizure of absentee property, confiscation for public needs, and initial registration, Israel has managed to take over about 50% of the lands in the West Bank, barring the local Palestinian public from using them. The second method is by evicting Palestinians from these lands, with the declared objective of controlling maximum land with a minimum number of Palestinian Arabs. The Israeli daily Haaretz on 21 May 2014 revealed in a report the methods the IDF uses to remove the Palestinians from Area C, and quoted Israeli army officer col. Einav Shalev as saying the Israeli army practices daily confinement, harassment and attacks on Palestinians through the sabotage of their crops and lands, as well as preventing them from obtaining building licenses, water and electricity. These “tools” are used to place pressure on and eventually force the Palestinian inhabitants of these areas to leave their houses and lands. Shalev added that the army also increased its military training in the Jordan Valley in an attempt to force the Palestinians to leave the land.
___These methods are viewed by Palestinians as systematic ethnic cleansing policy and have also been also implemented in the Jordan Valley.
[. . . .] With security considerations no longer being the primary motivation, the continued expansion into and occupation of the West Bank is a strategic move for Israel serving its economic interests. Through the restrictions on movement of people and goods, Israel is able to control the Palestinian economy and constrain growth to limited designated areas, or via immigration into neighboring countries. These methods, combined with the Bahrain Canal Project linking the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, which would primarily benefit the Israelis, the continued demolition of Palestinian homes, and the eviction of Bedouins, aim at attaining the undeclared goal of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the OPT.    SOURCE.

efrat
Illustrative photo of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, December 17, 2014 (Photo: Times of Israel/Miriam Alster/Flash90)

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  LEVEL  LANDS  IN  SOUTHERN  GAZA  STRIP
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 15, 2016
Israeli military vehicles staged a limited incursion across the borderline of the besieged Gaza Strip to level land on Monday morning, locals said.
___Locals told Ma’an that six Israeli military vehicles crossed the Abu Rida gate at the border east of the town of Khuzaa in the southern Gaza Strip and leveled Palestinian land in the area.
___Israeli military incursions inside the besieged Gaza Strip and near the “buffer zone” which lies on both land and sea sides of Gaza, have long been a near-daily occurrence.    MORE . . .  

  • Miller, Zinaida. “Perils of Parity: Palestine’s Permanent Transition.” Cornell International Law Journal 47.2 (2014): 331-415.

[. . . . ]  Rather than understanding the situation in terms of occupation—a framework that seeks to protect a vulnerable people from a militarily strong sovereign—the Oslo regime suggests two warring parties. In the process, Israeli, international, and even Palestinian discourse has gradually reduced or eliminated the use of the term ‘occupation’ while focusing on the achievement of ‘peace.’
___The Oslo regime has also affected Palestinian resistance. While the PLO in the past sought to end the occupation, current iterations have focused on the achievement of statehood. In the process, the goal of equality . . .  may at times be undermined by a process predicated on parity . . . . Relations of parity resulted in part from the Palestinian belief that mutual recognition or formal status would alter the terms of the conflict; in the end, however, the conception— and perception—of equivalence largely overtook the reality of asymmetry, making it harder rather than easier to address the structural inequality between the players. The focus of the international community (and the PLO) on establishing a state has oriented the Palestinian national movement away from earlier approaches rooted in rhetoric of emancipation and liberation.   [. . . . ]    No longer simply occupier and occupied, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been transformed into putative equals engaged in perpetual negotiation [. . . .]
___These changes came about in no small part because of the unexpectedly enduring presence of international actors. The Accords reassigned responsibility for the Palestinian population to the newly created Palestinian Authority while leaving control over territory largely in the hands of the Israeli government. With the nascent Authority severely lacking capacity, the arrangement was tenable only because of international support in the form of money and expertise [. . . . ]
___Over the course of the following two decades, international actors and organizations provided aid . . .  facilitated peacebuilding, development, and post-conflict reconstruction, and supported negotiations between the parties. International actors, however, brought more than money or institutional blueprints: their ideas about how to make peace and reconstruct territories after conflict reshaped the form and conceptualization of governance and peace in the Occupied Territories.  FULL ARTICLE.

❸ PALESTINIAN  HUMAN  RIGHTS  GROUPS  ‘GRAVELY  CONCERNED’  OVER  ONGOING  DEATH  THREATS  TO  STAFF
Al-Hourriah
Aug. 15, 2016
The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) said in a press release on Sunday that they were “gravely concerned” over an ongoing smear campaign and mounting threats by Israeli authorities and associated groups directed at employees of PHROC member organizations. ___The statement came after reports emerged that human rights lawyer Nada Kiswanson, who represents Palestinian NGO Al-Haq before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, had been receiving death threats since February, Dutch newspaper NRC reported on Wednesday. ___The report revealed the threats referred specifically to Kiswanson’s work with the ICC, rousing suspicions that Israeli security services may have been involved in the attack, according to the newspaper.    MORE . . .          RELATED . . .

“AN  ADDRESS,”  BY  RASHID  HUSSEIN
―1―
Hairs as short as my life is
And a mouth as sensuous as my dreams
And fire is her voice
And so is the music
Yet she wants me to rest
On an easy chair
And keep my thoughts clean.

Oh my dear hunter!
What you ask is much more
Than all that I can give . . .
For the angels are dead,
And I am not with them.

―2―
A wine was her perfume
Generous was her bed
But her hopes were stronger,
And the strongest of all:
She wanted my address.
She asked: “Where lives the ‘Prince’?”
Then, I stood silenced
For I had no address.
I am a man in transit,
Twenty years in transit
A man who was even deprived
The right of having an address.

Rashid Hussein  
See also  
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.

 

“. . . to demolish a man’s house is to tear his heart into little pieces . . . an extremely inhuman act . . .” (Irus Braverman)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
demolition
Demolitions in Umm al-Kheir on Aug. 8, 2016 (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

❶ Israel poised to raze Bedouin village so Jews can take land

Background from Law & Social Inquiry

. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israeli forces demolishes Palestinian structures across West Bank, assault locals
. . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Israeli occupation demolishes restaurant, pottery workshop in Nablus, residencies in Hebron
. . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) Israeli forces demolish water pipelines under construction in northern West Bank
❷ Council: Palestinians in need of 30,000 housing units in Jerusalem
❸ POETRY by Yousef El Qedra
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  POISED  TO  RAZE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE  SO  JEWS  CAN  TAKE  LAND
The Electronic Intifada
Charlotte Silver
Aug. 8 2016
Israeli bulldozers are poised to raze the Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran in the Naqab (Negev) region in the south of the country.
___On 31 July, bulldozers began ploughing a trench around the village, encircling those homes Israel intends to demolish to make way for a Jewish community.
___The village lost its 13-year legal battle in May 2015, when a three-judge panel on Israel’s high court ruled that the government was authorized to demolish the village and displace its residents  [. . . .]
___Like about 40 other Bedouin villages home to 70,000 people in the Naqab, Umm al-Hiran is not recognized by Israeli authorities, leaving its 1,000 residents, who are Israeli citizens, without basic services or rights.     MORE . . .         RELATED. . .

From: Braverman, Irus. “Powers Of Illegality: House Demolitions And Resistance In East Jerusalem.” Law & Social Inquiry 32.2 (2007): 333-372

. . . . while Foucault’s analysis [of the spectacle of a public execution in DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, 1979] depicts brutality as inflicted upon the human body, in the demolition instance this brutality is imposed upon the nonhuman body of the house. Significant as it may seem, this distinction between human and nonhuman bodies is rendered irrelevant by most of the Palestinian informants. The Palestinian community planner, for example, claimed that “a person whose house has been demolished, I don’t see any difference between him and a person whose only child is killed,” and a Palestinian defense lawyer told me: “to demolish a man’s house is to tear his heart into little pieces . . . the demolition is an . . . extremely inhuman act.”
___Clearly, most Palestinian informants not only themselves relate to their house as interchangeable with their body but also believe that Israel relates to it in a similar way. Accordingly, this is how a Palestinian Jerusalemite that has worked as a planner in the Jerusalem municipality for over thirty years described the situation: “they twist our hand behind our back until they hear a cry of pain: [then] the municipal officials smile with pleasure, and twist our hand even tighter in order to produce a louder cry. They take pleasure in the Palestinian pain more than in anything else.”
___But while the identification of the Palestinian body with the body of her house may establish one cause for its demolition, another explanation is also possible. Such an alternative explanation is provided by a Jewish Israeli defense lawyer who has been representing Palestinians from East Jerusalem for over twenty years. The lawyer suggests that the official Israeli discourse regards the Palestinians as “airplanes that are not even detected by the Israeli radar,” namely as invisible to Israeli administrators. Rather than choosing between these two seemingly conflicting interpretations, it is important to see their simultaneous existence: while the first interpretation embodies the Palestinian in this space by rendering her body opaque, the second interpretation disembodies her, making for a transparent Palestinian body.
___Instead of undermining each other, the bifurcated dialectic between these two bodily interpretations provides for their reciprocal reinforcement.

. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISHES  PALESTINIAN  STRUCTURES  ACROSS  WEST  BANK,  ASSAULT  LOCALS
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 9, 2016
Israeli authorities carried out multiple demolitions across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning, including residential structures funded by the European Union, in the midst of an unprecedented campaign targeting Palestinian homes, business, and agricultural structures under the pretext of lacking building permits which are nearly impossible to obtain.
___The demolitions — which included two business in Sabastiya, five homes in Umm al-Kheir, and two homes in al-Jiftlik — were immediately denounced by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in a statement released on Tuesday.
___“Israel is relentlessly destroying Palestinians’ homes and livelihoods in order to make way for more illegal settlements,” Hamdallah said.     MORE . . .

demolitions 2
Demolitions in Umm al-Kheir on Aug. 8, 2016 (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

. . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) ISRAELI  OCCUPATION  DEMOLISHES  RESTAURANT,  POTTERY  WORKSHOP  IN  NABLUS,  RESIDENCES  IN  HEBRON
Alray Palestine Media Agency
Aug. 9, 2016
The Israeli occupation forces demolished on Tuesday a restaurant and a pottery workshop in the village of Sebastia, north of Nablus, as well as residential structures in the village of Um al-Kheir near Hebron, local sources reported.
___Mayor of Sebastia municipality said that Israeli forces broke into the village and demolished a restaurant and a pottery workshop, both owned by two local Palestinian villagers, under the pretext of construction without permission.     MORE . . .
. . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISH  WATER  PIPELINES  UNDER  CONSTRUCTION  IN  NORTHERN  WEST  BANK
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 8, 2016
Israeli forces reportedly destroyed large portions of a water pipeline under construction in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tubas on Monday.
___Arif Daraghmah, the head of the village council in the Jordan Valley and neighboring Bedouin communities, told Ma’an that Israeli forces accompanied by military vehicles and two bulldozers began the demolition process early on Monday morning on the pipeline, which he said targeted a pipeline funded by NGO Action Against Hunger that had been under construction for the past four months in order to provide water to residents of the area.
___Daraghmah added that the Israeli forces completely destroyed the four-kilometer water pipeline between the town of Tubas and the village of Yarza, and also destroyed and seized large parts of the nine-kilometer pipeline connecting Yarza to the village of al-Malih.
___He said Israeli forces were carrying out these demolitions in order to pressure Palestinian residents into leaving the area.     MORE . . .

demolitions 3
Demolitions in Umm al-Kheir on Aug. 8, 2016 (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

❷ COUNCIL:  PALESTINIANS  IN  NEED  OF  30,000  HOUSING  UNITS  IN  JERUSALEM
Al-Hourriah
Aug. 8, 2016
Jerusalem will be in need of 30,000 housing units, the Palestinian Housing Council said Monday.
___The council’s technical director in the occupied West Bank, Zuheir Ali, said, at a workshop held in al-Bireh under the title “Housing in Occupied Jerusalem: Facts and Challenges,” that the Palestinians have been facing difficulties in constructing new homes on at least 13% of east Jerusalem lands.
___Ali added that Israeli restrictive measures resulted in a sharp housing crisis and that Occupied Jerusalem is in need of 30,000 housing units, to the tune of around three billion dollars, until 2020.     MORE . . .  

“I  HAVE  NO  HOME,”  BY  YOUSEF  EL  QEDRA

I saw clouds running away from the hurt.
I have no language.
Its weight is lighter than a feather.
The quill does not write.
The ink of the spirit burns on the shore of meaning.
The clouds are tears, filled with escape and lacking definition.
A cloud realizes the beauty she forms—
beauty which contains all good things,
for whom trees, gardens, and tired young women wait.

I have no home.
I have a night overripe with sweats caused by numbness all over.
Time has grown up on its own without me.
In my dream, I asked him what he looks like.
My small defeats answered me.
So I asked him again, What did he mean?
Then I found myself suspended in nothingness,
Stretched like a string that doesn’t belong to an instrument.
The wind played me. So did irresistible gravity.
I was a run of lost notes that have a sad, strong desire to live.
―Translated by Yasmin Snounu and Edward Morin

Yousef El Qedra is a young poet and playwright living in Gaza. He has his BA degree in Arabic Literature from Azhar University, Gaza. Since 2006 he has worked as a project coordinator of theater and youth groups for the Cultural Free Thought Association in Gaza City. He has written several books and plays and published four volumes of poetry, translated into French and Spanish.
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. Available from Amazon. demolitions 4

Demolitions in Umm al-Kheir on Aug. 8, 2016 (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)



“. . . Whenever a child goes silent . . .” (Maya Abu Al-Hayyat)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
bypass
Bypass road in the greater Bethlehem area; a clear physical manifestation of a spatial segregative system existing within the West Bank. (Photo: probablenotes, April 22, 2012)

❶ B’Tselem: Israel demolished more Palestinian homes in past 6 months than in all of 2015

  • Background from Postcolonial Studies

❷ A new Israeli bypass road cater to the benefit of El Matan outpost

  • Background from Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture

❸ Opinion/Analysis:  JERUSALEM MUNICIPALITY ‘TAKING ADVANTAGE’ OF US ELECTIONS TO EXPAND SETTLEMENTS
❺ POETRY by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ B’TSELEM: ISRAEL DEMOLISHED MORE PALESTINIAN HOMES IN PAST 6 MONTHS THAN IN ALL OF 2015
Ma’an News Agency
July 27, 2016
Israeli authorities have demolished more Palestinian homes in the West Bank in the first six months of 2016 as they did in all of 2015, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem revealed in a report released on Wednesday, in a worrying confirmation of Israel’s ongoing crackdown on Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank.
___The report, which was also presented by the Arab Joint List during a Knesset conference on Israel’s home demolition policy the same day, said that 168 homes were destroyed during the first half of 2016 for lacking hard to obtain Israeli-issued building permits, leaving 740 Palestinians homeless.
___B’Tselem’s report did not include punitive demolitions enacted on the home of suspected Palestinian attackers and their families.       MORE . . .

From Postcolonial Studies
With the wall, this policy [Apartheid] became obvious and clear. Before there were laws, how they dealt with you differently, even in your daily life. But when they started building the wall and these checkpoints, the analogy became more obvious. . .  [the Wall] is here. You can see it on a map, you see it on the ground, and you see the checkpoints. So now, talking about apartheid became much more open, especially to the international community after 2002. It has become totally accepted to the world . . . . everybody is talking about apartheid because this is something that is so clear. What they are doing here and inside Israel, destroying Palestinian homes through thousands of house demolitions, more than 76,000 people have had their homes threatened in Jerusalem—all of this fits into this analogy [of Apartheid].

  • Lee, Christopher J. “Beyond Analogy: Bare Life In The West Bank.” Postcolonial Studies 16.4 (2013): 374-387.  SOURCE.

❷ A NEW ISRAELI BYPASS ROAD CATER TO THE BENEFIT OF EL MATAN OUTPOST
POICA – Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities in the Palestinian Territories
July 28, 2016
Since 1967, the successive Israeli Governments have actively supported Israeli settlers to build settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian territory . . .  it has been a form of expanding Israel’s control of land and natural resources with the purpose of creating irreversible facts on the ground that will become hard to change in the future.
___El Matan, a tiny but strategic Israeli outpost in the heart of Wadi Qana area, in Salfit Governorate. It is one example of the Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land. In June 2002, a group of religious Israeli settlers from the nearby settlements of the so-called Shomron local council occupied a hilltop south of Ma’ale Shomron . . .
___Recently, Israeli Authorities commenced the construction of a new bypass road that connects the outpost (El Matan) with the nearby Ma’ale Shomron settlement. Extensive construction is underway in the outpost and is being implemented based on a previously approved master plan (TPS) No. 116/5.  MORE . . .    

From Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture
Behind the policy of denying the Palestinians permits to build or to expand their homes is an even greater motivation; to protect the interests and stability of the Jewish state.’ ___While this approach has existed since the establishment of the state of Israel, a policy decision related to Jerusalem was officially made in 1973 by a ministerial committee known as the Gafni Commission. At the core of the policy was the concern that the Jewish character of Jerusalem would be jeopardized if the Palestinian population kept increasing at its current rate. In 1977, the Planning Policy Division prepared a paper stating: “One of the cornerstones of Jerusalem’s planning process is […] the preservation of the demographic balance between the ethnic groups [in accordance with] the resolution of the Government of Israel.” Therefore, as a result of this growing “threat,” Israel has used a number of methods to keep the demographic balance between the Jewish and the Palestinian populations at a fixed ratio of 70% Jews to 30% Palestinians.'”

  • Dimova, Nicoletta. “When Ideology Leads to Destruction: Home Demolitions in East Jerusalem.” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture Sept. 2008: 92+.  SOURCE.
settlement
A section of the Wall is seen close to a Jewish settlement near Jerusalem. (Photo: REUTERS)

❸ Opinion/Analysis: JERUSALEM MUNICIPALITY ‘TAKING ADVANTAGE’ OF US ELECTIONS TO EXPAND SETTLEMENT
Mondoweiss
Annie Robbins
July 27, 2016
Never let a serious crisis go to waste. This is the first thought that crossed my mind when I read Israel National News headline: ‘We’re taking advantage of the US elections to build’ . . . .
___Israel will use every opportunity to expand the breadth of their illegal colonies on Palestinian land, and the US election season is no exception. Jerusalem Online picked up the story too reporting “Jerusalem construction accelerated due to US elections“. The articles claim officials from the Jerusalem Municipality told Channel 2 News that plans to build 57 new housing units over the green line in the occupied East Jerusalem colony of Ramot had been fast-tracked because of U.S. election season and “the accelerated process is not a coincidence.”     MORE . . .

“CHILDREN,” BY MAYA ABU AL-HAYYAT
Whenever I see an image of a child’s hands
sticking out of the rubble of a collapsed building
I check the hands of my three children
I count the fingers of their hands, the toes on their feet,
I check the numbers of teeth in their mouths, every
last hair in each finely-marked wee eyebrow.

Whenever a child goes silent in Al Yarmouk Camp
I turn up the volume on the TV, the songs on the radio,
I pinch my three children
to make them cry and squirm with life.

Whenever my sore heart gets hungry at Qalandia checkpoint
I comfort-eat, I
emotionally over-eat, craving excessive salt
as if I could then somehow say: enough, block out
the salt spark of the tears everyone around me is crying.
―Translated by Liz Lochhead

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a prize-winning author of novels, poetry, and short stories. Born in Lebanon, she has a degree in Civil Engineering from Al-Najah University in Nablus, the largest Palestinian university, and lives in Ramallah.
From A BIRD IS NOT A STONE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY PALESTINIAN POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available From Amazon.com.
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat reading one of her poems
About Qalandia checkpoint

 

“. . . Then I found myself suspended in nothingness . . .” (Yousef El Qedra)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
pyo1
The Palestine Youth Orchestra (Photo: Edward Said Conservatory of Music Homepage)

❶ Israeli forces demolish 12 homes in Qalandiya village, assault homeowners
. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israeli forces demolish 4 structures in East Jerusalem’s Issawiya

  • background from Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal

❷ Uncovering the Lost Palestinian Villages Underneath Glitzy Tel Aviv
❸ Palestinian Orchestra spreads positive message with music
❹ POETRY by Yousef El Qedra
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISH  12  HOMES  IN  QALANDIYA  VILLAGE,  ASSAULT  HOMEOWNERS
Ma’an News Agency
July 26, 2016
Under the escort of Israeli forces, bulldozers entered the village of Qalandiya on the outskirts of the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem late Monday evening, where they demolished 12 homes, according to locals.
___Israeli authorities destroyed the homes, which had previously been issued demolition notices, claiming they were too close to Israel’s separation wall and that they lacked the proper Israeli-issued licenses. . . .
___Israeli soldiers reportedly fired rubber-coated steel bullets, sponge bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades at locals, and assaulted residents of the homes before the demolitions.      MORE . . .   
. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) ISRAELI  FORCES  DEMOLISH  4  STRUCTURES  IN  EAST  JERUSALEM’S  ISSAWIYA
Ma’an News Agency
July 26, 2016
MORE . . .      RELATED . . .  

From Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal
There is a very strong argument that Zionist Israel has committed, and continues to commit, genocide against Palestine and the Palestinians in terms of Lemkin’s famous passage . . .
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.   (Lemkin, R. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944.)
[. . . .]
Whilst the daily living reality for a Palestinian citizen of Israel inevitably differs from a Palestinian living in the West Bank, Gaza or the diaspora, the underlying techniques employed by the Israeli government are the same.. . . .  The intention of these policies was clearly stated by ARIEL SHARON IN AN INTERVIEW IN 1988:
_‘YOU DON’T SIMPLY BUNDLE PEOPLE ON TO TRUCKS AND DRIVE THEM AWAY. . . I PREFER TO ADVOCATE A POSITIVE POLICY. . . TO CREATE, IN EFFECT, A CONDITION THAT IN A POSITIVE WAY WILL INDUCE PEOPLE TO LEAVE.’
. . .  it is apparent to Palestinians in different contexts experiencing discriminatory policies intended to drive them away from their land that the ‘Nakba’ of 1948 did not end in that era and is an ongoing process.

  • Rashed, Haifa, Damien Short, and John Docker. “Nakba Memoricide: Genocide Studies And The Zionist/Israeli Genocide Of Palestine.” Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal 13.1 (2014): 1-23.    FULL ARTICLE.

❷ UNCOVERING  THE  LOST  PALESTINIAN  VILLAGES  UNDERNEATH  GLITZY  TEL  AVIV
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)
Mira Sucharov
July 19, 2016
Tel Aviv residents are often described as living in a “bubble,” because of their relative distance from the epicenter of conflict and occupation, and because, at least compared to Jerusalem, the zeitgeist of the city tends toward liberalism and open-mindedness.
___But despite all the talk about Tel Aviv’s insulated status, this “first Hebrew city” is very politically saturated — if you look underneath it. I’m thinking of the eight Palestinian villages whose traces, post-1948, are just barely visible beneath the bustling urban center that this place has become. What remains of these villages, whose remnants were absorbed by Tel Aviv’s municipality as the city expanded after the war, and what remains to be done?     MORE . . .  

la-fg-israel-palestinians-raid-home-demolished-20151116-001
A home lies in ruins after a raid by Israeli troops in the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah. (Photo: Alaa Badarneh / European Pressphoto Agency, November 15, 2016)

❸ PALESTINIAN  ORCHESTRA  SPREADS  POSITIVE  MESSAGE  WITH  MUSIC
Days of Palestine
July 25, 2016
Glasgow -A group of Palestinian young orchestrates are trying to travel around the world to spread a positive message about Palestinian with their orchestra.
___It is lunchtime on a sunny day in the Scottish city of Glasgow, and the general director of The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music is making a thoughtful observation about the aims of its Palestine Youth Orchestra (PYO).
___Suddenly, a ping-pong ball bounces across the table. Suhail Khoury barely bats an eyelid.
___“Having an orchestra can tell people that young Palestinians are like anyone else, despite their situation,” he says. “They like to play music, they like to have fun.”    MORE . . .    –   VIDEO . . . (Music begins 9:45)

“I  HAVE  NO  HOME,”  BY  YOUSEF  EL  QEDRA

I saw clouds running away from the hurt.
I have no language.
Its weight is lighter than a feather.
The quill does not write.
The ink of the spirit burns on the shore of meaning.
The clouds are tears, filled with escape and lacking definition.
A cloud realizes the beauty she forms—
beauty which contains all good things,
for whom trees, gardens, and tired young women wait.

I have no home.
I have a night overripe with sweats caused by numbness all over.
Time has grown up on its own without me.
In my dream, I asked him what he looks like.
My small defeats answered me.
So I asked him again, What did he mean?
Then I found myself suspended in nothingness,
Stretched like a string that doesn’t belong to an instrument.
The wind played me. So did irresistible gravity.
I was a run of lost notes that have a sad, strong desire to live.
―Translated by Yasmin Snounu and Edward Morin

Yousef El Qedra is a young poet and playwright living in Gaza. He has his BA degree in Arabic Literature from Azhar University, Gaza. Since 2006 he has worked as a project coordinator of theater and youth groups for the Cultural Free Thought Association in Gaza City. He has written several books and plays and published four volumes of poetry, translated into French and Spanish.
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. Available from Amazon.

“. . . the destruction of habitable space without expelling too many people . . .” (Sari Hanafi)

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gilo
Gilo Settlement, Thursday, 19 November 2009 (Photo: BBC NEWS)

❶ PLO: Israel consolidating its ‘Apartheid regime’ through expansion of Gilo settlement

  • background from Social Text

❷ The settlement of Na’aleh expands on lands of Deir Qiddis
❸ Israeli plan to build more housing units for Haredi settlers
❹ Analysis:  SPACIO-CIDE: COLONIAL POLITICS, INVISIBILITY AND REZONING IN PALESTINIAN TERRITORY.
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PLO:  ISRAEL  CONSOLIDATING  ITS  ‘APARTHEID REGIME’  THROUGH  EXPANSION  OF  GILO  SETTLEMENT
Ma’an News Agency
July 25, 2016
Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat released a statement Monday condemning Israel’s newly advanced plans to expand the illegal Gilo settlement, saying the move was part of “Israel’s political decision to bury the two-state solution by consolidating its illegal occupation and Apartheid regime over the Palestinian people.”
[. . . .]
___“Such a decision further reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel’s settlement expansion,” Erekat said. “It comes as Israel receives more assurances that no action will be taken against its illegal policies of colonization and annexation of occupied Territory, a war crime under international law.”   MORE . . .

From Social Text.

(A report of the University of New Mexico’s Israel/Palestine Field School, 2011)

Walls, fences, checkpoints, and bypass roads connecting illegal settlements all work to restrict Palestinian movement with the ultimate goal of encouraging Palestinians to embrace their own ethnic transfer. The field school witnessed an advanced stage of the process of spacio-cide in the West Bank village of al-Walaja. In this small village, a bypass road designed for settlers as well as two expanding Israeli settlements (Har Gilo and Gilo) are daily encroaching on al-Walaja’s land. The village population has been decimated, as most of the village’s men have been imprisoned or have left home in search of work. We met a community organizer in al-Walaja who admitted that her village is likely to disappear in the next few months because the expansionist settler state of Israel is making life impossible. The community organizer’s goal is to figure out how the remaining women of the village can create economic opportunities for themselves once they’ve lost their ancestral lands.
[. . . .]
Specific sites within Israel’s 1948 borders . . . [represent] different strategies of erasure/assimilation and different outcomes. The Palestinian village of as-Zakariyya. . .  had a population of more than one thousand in the mid-1940s.’ The population persisted on the old village site after the 1948 war but was eventually evicted in mid-1950, as decided by the Jewish National Fund. The Jewish settlement of Zecharya replaced the Palestinian village, and we found three buildings from the old village still present. . . . The main building to which we paid attention was the old mosque, surrounded by a fence, trash sprinkled and dumped all around it, boarded up.

  • Lubin, Alex, et al. “The Israel/Palestine Field School.” Social Text 31.4_117 (2013): 79-97.   SOURCE    (Alex Lubin is Professor and Chair of the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico)

❷ THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  NA’ALEH  EXPANDS  ON  LANDS  OF  DEIR  QIDDIS
POICA – Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities in the Palestinian Territories
July 25, 2016
On the 13th of July 2016, the Israeli occupation Bulldozers backed by army forces commenced a large scale land razing in Deir Qiddis village west of Ramallah Governorate, to expand the nearby Na’ale Settlement located on the northern edges of Deir Qiddis Village. Villagers and affected Palestinian land owners stated that the expansion is being implemented based on a previously approved Town Plan scheme in the settlement. Analysis conducted by the applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) to the affected area showed that on the 13th of April 2016. . . the Town Plan Scheme was deposited for approval to the Israeli settlement sub-committee on the 27th of May 2015, and was approved in 2016. The construction is being implemented by Holly Ervin Wiesenthal company.    MORE . . .

deir qaddis
Deir Qaddis, occupied Palestine, 20th July 2016 (Photo: International Solidarity Movement)

❸ ISRAELI  PLAN  TO  BUILD  MORE  HOUSING  UNITS  FOR  HAREDI  SETTLERS
The Palestinian Information Center
July 25, 2016
Israel’s cabinet for housing affairs on Friday discussed a plan to build more housing units for ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) settlers in the Galilee and the Negev. According to Haaretz newspaper, a crew was assigned to study the construction of new two towns for Haredi families in the northern and southern regions during the meeting that was chaired by Israel’s minister of finance Moshe Kahlon     MORE . . .

❹ Analysis: “SPACIO-CIDE:  COLONIAL  POLITICS,  INVISIBILITY  AND  REZONING  IN  PALESTINIAN  TERRITORY.” 
Contemporary Arab Affairs
Sari Hanafi
[. . . .]
Since the inception of the Zionist myth of a land without people for a people without land, the policy of successive Israeli governments has been to appropriate land while ignoring the people on it. The founding myth has been perpetuated, and, in its more modern form, can be seen in the policy of acquiring the most land with the least people (where ‘people’, of course, refers to the Palestinians). The resulting institutionalized invisibility of the Palestinian people both feeds and is fed by Israel’s everyday settler-colonial practices. For example, parts of the Israeli West Bank wall are being constructed specifically to remove the visual presence of Palestinian villages such as the wall along the sides of Route 443 where there is no security function or those of Gilo Settlement in front of Beit Jala.
___Moreover, this enforced invisibility sustains an Israeli system neither interested in killing nor in assimilating the Palestinians. . . . The Israeli colonial project is ‘spacio-cidal’ (as opposed to genocidal) in that it targets land for the purpose of rendering inevitable the ‘voluntary’ transfer of the Palestinian population, primarily by targeting the space upon which the Palestinian people live. This systematic destruction of the Palestinian living space becomes possible by exercising the state of exception and deploying bio-politics to categorize Palestinians into different groups, with the aim of rendering them powerless.
___. . .  This policy involves a combination of three strategies.
___First, it involves ‘space annihilation’. . .
___The second strategy is that of ethnic cleansing . . . the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians . . .  was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. . .  [by] reduction of lives to ‘bare life’ without eliminating too many people, the destruction of habitable space without expelling too many people from that space, the production of impoverishment without  starvation. . . .
___The third strategy, deployed in the face of resistance to space annihilation and ethnic cleansing, consists of what . . .  ‘creeping apartheid’ . . . . increasingly impregnable ethnic, geographic, and economic barriers between groups vying for recognition, power, and resources.

  • Hanafi, Sari. “Spacio-cide: colonial politics, invisibility and rezoning in Palestinian Territory.”  Contemporary Arab Affairs 2.1 (January–March 2009), 106–12.  FULL ARTICLE.