REVISITING AND RELIVING THE NAKBA

 Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
nakba-day-2013 (1)
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As Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, our problem is not with Jews who believe in “live and let live” but is rather with this diabolical, fanatical and genocidal Zionism which has drenched this part of the world with blood, hatred and inequity.
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The Nakba revisited
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By Khalid Amayreh
 

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the violent usurpation and occupation of Palestine by Zionist Jewish invaders coming from around the world. The seizure of Palestine can be considered as one of the greatest acts of theft in the history of mankind. Israel itself therefore is a gigantic war crime and a crime against humanity.

Thanks to the infamous Balfour declaration of 1917, Palestine, an Arab country since the seventh century, was given by another country (Britain) to a third people (the Jews) without even consulting the native people of the country.

According to the British Philosopher Bertrand Russell:” The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state.”

In fact, it can be safely argued that the West, particularly Britain, committed the original sin by envisaging, planning and implanting Israel in the heart of the Arab world in order to protect its colonial and imperialistic interests.

In 1905, Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman invited the Western Imperial powers for conference which continued until 1907.

The conference of the thieves recommended the establishment of ” a state on the lands of Palestine, to serve as an advanced base for the covetous colonialists, and protect their interests, implement their plans and schemes and ensure the outflow of natural resources from the region, as well as the import of their goods and products into the markets of the region.”

The American Jewish writer Noam Chomsky described this evilness committed by these European powers, especially Britain:

“When a man brings a snake and puts it in the bed of a child and it stings the child, the man is responsible for the child’s death, not the snake,”.

The person who brings the snake into the child’s bed is the real criminal, not the snake. This person cannot claim innocence and say ‘I did not know that the snake is so poisonous!’”

The famous British historian Arnold Toynbee, in his book “A Study of History” said that “while the direct responsibility for the calamity that overtook the Palestinian Arabs in A.D. 1948 was on the heads of the Zionist Jews who seized a lebensraum for themselves in Palestine by force of arms in that year, a heavy load of indirect, yet irrefutable, responsibility was on the heads of the people of the United Kingdom.

But the “snake” (Israel) has acquired a life of its own, and it no longer depends on its erstwhile western benefactors for its survival and continuity.”

None the less, there is no guarantee, historical, moral or religious that the “snake” will have an extended life, e.g. live longer than a century.

In the final analysis, Israel is an immoral and illegal being that will have to go. Yes, Israel is a regional superpower, has a prosperous economy, is technologically advanced and tightly controls the government, Congress and media of the United States .

But nations don’t live by modern fighter jets and nuclear bombs alone. The Soviet Union had a plenty of these.

In order to have a sustained existence nations must possess a moral justification. Justice, not military might, is what guarantees the longevity and continuity of states.

In 1948, Zionist leaders such as Ben Gurion thought that that the Palestinian people would go into oblivion, slowly but surely. Indeed, just as the genocidal invaders from Eastern Europe and elsewhere bulldozed and obliterated more than 500 Palestinian villages, Zionist elders thought that old Palestinians will die and young Palestinians will forget!

But to the Zionists’ chagrin, the Palestinian cause is still as vivid and relevant in the minds and hearts of the Palestinian people today as it was in 1948.

Thousands of Palestinians still retain the keys to their homes from which they were expelled at gunpoint when Israel was created 65 years ago. The trust is bequeathed by the older to younger generations.

Today, even the least patriotic Palestinians who would rather reach “a peace deal” with Israel by hook or by crook wouldn’t even dare suggest that they would sell out the right of return even in return for a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

To be sure, Palestinians and Muslims in general have no problem living with Jews. Jews lived side by side with Arabs and Muslims for close to 1400 years. Jews had never revolted against their Muslim rulers or demanded a state of their own.

Indeed, the call for the return of Jews to Palestine did not come from Middle Eastern or Palestine Jews; it rather came from Western Jews.

When the Hungarian Jewish leader Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, which was attended by 196 delegates. Only four of the 196 delegates were Jews from Palestine .

As Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, our problem is not with Jews who believe in “live and let live” but is rather with this diabolical, fanatical and genocidal Zionism which has drenched this part of the world with blood, hatred and inequity.

Israel claims to be Jewish and following ancient Jewish ideals of justice. But this is a hollow claim, bordering on wishful thinking.

The truth of the matter is that Israel represents the antithesis of the prophetic ideals of the ancient Israeli prophets. What happened to “Thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, and thou shall not lie”?

Even Abraham, the purported common forefather of the ancient Israelites and northern Arabs wouldn’t accept to obtain a burial place for his dead wife Sara free of charge in Hebron.

Today, one is really affronted by these fanatical Jewish settlers who terrorize and savage peaceable Palestinian villagers, poison and kill their livestock, burn down their fields and orchards.

And when the unprotected helpless Palestinians seek redress at Israeli courts, they are told by the Jewish judges that the settlers have a point because “your homes and land once belonged to the settlers’ ancestors some three thousand years ago.”!!!

Such a state where inequity and oppression are rampant can’t and will not live long, even if it possessed all the modern warplanes in the world.

They killed the two-state solution

Israel has already decapitated the two state solution. The intensive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem , has really left no room for a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

The U.S., EU and the helpless Palestinian Authority (PA) pretend that there is still a chance for reviving the two-state solution strategy. But we who live here in the West Bank know better. We just can’t betray our eyes.

We also know rather well two other facts that further enforce our conviction that the chances for establishing a true Palestinian state have vanished rather irreversibly. The first fact is that the Israeli society is moving steadily toward Talmudic Jewish fascism, which makes it extremely unlikely that Israel would agree anytime in the predictable future to give up the spoils of the 1967 war, which would imply the inevitable dismantlement of hundreds of Jewish colonies built on the occupied Palestinian territory.

The second fact is that the United States, Israel’s guardian-ally, is utterly unable, even if willing, to exert any meaningful pressure on Israel, which would force or convince the Jewish state to end its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The reason for this is the tight Jewish stranglehold on the American decision-making process. Thus, the Israeli control of the White House, Congress and other American political institutions is too overwhelming to allow for any U.S. maneuver outside the Jewish dragnet.

The Demographic situation in Israel/Palestine

Apart from the historical rights and moral high-ground, the Palestinians also have a strategic advantage over Zionism, namely the demographic asset. According to the prominent Israeli demographer Della Pergula, there are already more non-Jews than Jews between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.

“We have already reached the demographic critical mass, the establishment of a Palestinian state now is therefore more of an urgent Israeli need than a Palestinian need” But the possibility for establishing a viable Palestinian state no longer exists in light of the phenomenal expansion of Jewish settlements mentioned earlier. More to the point, the concept of a bi-national state is a kind of anathema for most Israelis as it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Hence, the problem.

There are millions of Israelis who would think or probably are already thinking of unthinkable scenarios such as expelling large number of Palestinians. But expulsion can’t really be carried out without some sort of a genocide. None the less, the Palestinians have thoroughly learned and imbibed the lessons of 1948 and would never ever leave their country. They would rather die in their own homes, towns and villages rather than give Zionists the joy of watching them repeat the Nakba scenario.

The Israeli Zionists have already committed huge and numerous crimes against the Palestinian people. Needless to say, committing still more crimes would be suicidal and fraught with grave consequences for Israel and Jews.

In the final analysis, the repetition of what happened in 1948 could speed up the process of Israel’s demise and extinction.

 

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Ongoing Nakba: Powerful infographic from Visualizing Palestine shows century of land theft, expulsion

 

(Visualizing Palestine)

Disappearing Palestine, a powerful new infographic from Visualizing Palestine (visualizingpalestine.org).

MOTHER PALESTINE MARKS 65 YEARS OF THE NAKBA

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
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Sam Bahour سام بحّور – Refugees Waiting

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Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He is a freelance business consultant operating as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups. Sam was instrumental in the establishment of the Palestine Telecommunications Company and the PLAZA Shopping Center and until recently served as a Board of Trustees member at Birzeit University. He is a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and serves in various capacities in several community organizations. Sam writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians. He blogs at http://www.epalestine.com. 

يحمل رجل الأعمال الفلسطيني سام بحور الجنسية الأميركية وهو يسكن في مدينة البيرة في رام الله، فلسطين. ويعمل بشكل مستقل كمستشار ومنسق مشاريع كما يملك شركة لإدارة المعلومات التطبيقية (إيم) وهي تختص في تطوير الأعمال والمشاريع مع تركيز على الشركات الناشئة. ولعب سام دوراً أساسياً في تأسيس شركة الإتصالات الفلسطينية (بالتل)، ومركز بلازا للتسوق. وأصبح مؤخراً عضو فاعل في مجلس الأمناء في جامعة بيرزيت. ويشغل حالياً منصب عضو مجلس إدارة في البنك الإسلامي العربي، كما يشغل عدة مناصب أخرى في منظمات المجتمع المدني. ويركز سام كثيراً في كتاباته على الشؤون الفلسطينية، فتنشر مقالاته على نطاق واسع. ساهم سام في تحرير كتاب “الوطن: التاريخ الشفوي لفلسطين والفلسطينيين” ويمكن معرفة المزيد عنه والاطلاع على مقالاته من خلال تصفح مدونته على الموقع الالكتروني التالي: www.epalestine.com

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During this tragic period of remembrance, just a reminder that NEVER AGAIN means something, TODAY!

TWENTY FIVE TENTS THAT ROCKED THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZION

The village of Bab Al Shams was established last Friday by Palestinian activists, on privately owned Palestinian lands, in an area between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim, which Israel refers to as E1.
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The Palestinians  may be moved physically, but Palestinian villages, old and new,  will never die so long as they remain alive in the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people and all their supporters worldwide…

Bab Alshams – We Shall Not Be Moved

 


250 men and women from across Palestine establish this morning
a new Palestinian village named “Bab Alshams” (Gate of the
Sun). Tents were built in what Israel refers to as area E1 and
equipment for long-term living was brought.

The group released the following statement:

We, the sons and daughters of Palestine from all throughout
the land, announce the establishment of Bab Alshams Village
(Gate of the Sun). We the people, without permits from the
occupation, without permission from anyone, sit here today
because this is our land and it is our right to inhabit it.

A few months ago the Israeli government announced its
intention to build about 4000 settlement housing units in the
area Israel refers to as E1. E1 block is an area of about 13
square km that falls on confiscated Palestinian land East of
Jerusalem between Ma’ale Adumim settlement, which lies on
occupied West Bank Palestinian land, and Jerusalem. We will
not remain silent as settlement expansion and confiscation of
our land continues. Therefore we hereby establish the village
of Bab Alshams to proclaim our faith in direct action and
popular resistance. We declare that the village will stand
steadfast until the owners of this land will get their right
to build on their land.

The village’s name is taken from the novel, “Bab Alshams,” by
Lebanese writer Elias Khoury. The book depicts the history of
Palestine through a love story between a Palestinian man,
Younis, and his wife Nahila. Younis leaves his wife to join
the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon while Nahila remains
steadfast in what remains of their village in the Galilee.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Younis smuggles through
Lebanon and back to the Galilee to meet his wife in the “Bab
Alshams” cave, where she gives birth to their children. Younis
returns to the resistance in Lebanon as his wife remains in
Bab Al Shams.

Bab Alshams is the gate to our freedom and steadfastness. Bab
Alshams is our gate to Jerusalem. Bab Alshams is the gate to
our to our return.

For decades, Israel has established facts on the ground as the
International community remained silent in response to these
violations. The time has come now to change the rules of the
game, for us to establish facts on the ground – our own land.
This action involving women and men from the north to the
south is a form of popular resistance. In the coming days we
will hold various discussion groups, educational and artistic
presentations, as well as film screenings on the lands of this
village. The residents of Bab Al Shams invite all the sons and
daughters of our people to participate and join the village in
supporting our resilience.

 

This is what happened…

 

 

 

Although established on privately owned Palestinian lands, Israel forcefully expelled residents of the village in a pre-dawn raid this morning. Six required medical attention Shortly before 3 AM, hundreds of Israeli cops and soldiers staged a raid on the newly founded Palestinian village of Bab Al Shams (Gate of the Sun), violently evicting its 150 inhabitants. Use of police brutality is even more objectionable in light of the passive resistance offered by the residents. No arrests were made, and all persons detained were released shortly after.

In light of harsh international criticism over the plan to expand the Maaleh Adumim settlement, and in an attempt to draw away attention from the case, eviction took place early this morning. Following its arrival at the scene, a massive police force began by removing journalists from the residents’ immediate surroundings and proceeded to drag people away, beating some of them. Six Palestinians later required medical care at the Ramallah Hospital.

Following his release, Mohammed Khatib of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said, “We will not remain silent as Israel continues to build Jewish-only colonies on our land. Bab Al Shams is no more, but during its short days it gave new life and energy to all who passed through it. Israel continues to act in violation of every imaginable law and human decency. In establishing Bab Al Shams we declare that we have had enough of demanding our rights from the occupier – from now on we shall seize them ourselves.”

Last night the state appealed to the High Court to withdraw an injunction prohibiting the eviction. The state argued, among other things, that the very existence of the village may occasion rioting, despite its remote and isolated location. The state further argued that the village was established by the Committees to Resist the Wall (a body which does not exist), also behind a blockade of Route 443 in October 2012. This claim, backed only by an affidavit signed by an Israeli police chief, has never been supported by any indictments or arrests for the questioning of individuals.

The village of Bab Al Shams was established last Friday by Palestinian activists, on privately owned Palestinian lands, in an area between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim, which Israel refers to as E1. After the acceptance of Palestine as a non-member state to the UN, Israel announced the approval of a plan to expand the Maaleh Adumim settlement by building some 4,000 residential units in this area. Such construction would effectively bisect the West Bank and effectively cutting it off from Jerusalem.**

 

 

 

PALESTINIANS ERECT ‘LEGAL SETTLEMENT’

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On THEIR land which is in the process of being stolen by the zionists, 200 Palestinians pitched tents in a nonviolent form of resistance that will surely be met by violence ….
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 Palestinians erect outpost in E1 zone

Group of 200 Palestinians pitch tents in disputed area connecting Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. Organizer: Encampment part of non-violent resistance

A group of 200 Palestinians, backed by foreign activists, have been erecting an outpost in the disputed E1 zone, near Ma’aleh Adumim, since the early hours of Friday morning.

The Palestinian outpost, named Bab al-Shams (“Gate of the Sun”), contains 50 tents. Mahmoud Zawara of the Popular Palestinian Committees told Ynet the tent encampment was being set up as part of the Palestinian “struggle.”

He said “we chose this specific area because it is conquered Palestinian land and places a wedge between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.”

בונים את באב אל-שמס (צילום: אוהד צויגנברג)

Building ‘Bab al-Shams’ (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)  

Zawara said the camp will be used by the Popular Palestinian Committees during activity in the Jordan Valley area in the coming days. “I hope the encampment will be permanent and remain in the E1 area,” he added.

Zawara said the Palestinians do not plan on confronting Israeli security forces, who have yet to arrive at the site. “We came here in the framework of non-violent resistance; we will not resort to any kind of violence,” he told Ynet.

200 פלסטינים ופעילי סולידריות הגיעו ל-E1 (צילום: אוהד צויגנברג)

‘Day without violence.’ Palestinians at camp (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

“According to international law, and even Israeli law, the Israeli army cannot prevent us from pitching tents.”

"מקווים שהאוהל יהפוך לאוהל קבע" (צילום: אוהד צויגנברג)

‘Conquered Palestinian land’ (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Zawara said it was possible that IDF and Israel Police forces would eventually evacuate the Palestinians, but expressed hope that “today will be a day without violence.”

Bab al-Shams is the name of a novel by Elias Khoury about the life of Palestinian refugees inLebanon after theIndependence War of 1948.

A little more than a month ago the Israeli government approved plans to advance construction in the E1 zone, which connects Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, as a response to the UN’s recognition of “Palestine” as a non-member observer state.

The move drew harsh criticism from the West, including the US, with European countries summoning Israeli ambassadors to express their condemnation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to move settlement construction ahead in E1. However, the Right has accused Netanyahu of postponing the construction plans.

Source

THE TEMPEST THAT ZION PRAYED FOR

Freezing cold winds, rain and threats of snow is what Jerusalem is experiencing today. That’s fine for those living in homes or apartments, but what about those living in tents or on the street? Even worse than the storm itself are the ongoing illegal activities of zionism in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, Sheik Jarrah in particular. The evictions from private homes continue due to the implementation of lebensraum; Israel’s ‘final solution’ in motion … a policy that is supposedly opposed to by the West and the EU, but still in motion nevertheless.
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For some background on this almost forgotten struggle, I present here a three year old Op-ed from The New York Times;
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Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.

In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.

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Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah?

By KAI BIRD
Published: April 30, 2010
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AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades.

Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.

As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.

My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.

At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state.

The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the “New City.”

Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.

Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.

In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.

The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these “absentee” Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis.

This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?

I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.

Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”

That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.

The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.

If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again.

Kai Bird is the author of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.”

THE PALESTINIAN FREE AREAS OF PALESTINE

In a post yesterday I used a German term ‘Lebensraum‘.  Read the following to see what I was talking about …

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The original owners, some of whom fled in 1967 and returned to the West Bank after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, are still not allowed to access the land because of a military order preventing them from entering the border area.

Palestinian owners barred from Jordan Valley land, while Israeli farmers profit

Thai workers from the Israeli settlements are allowed across the border fence into the area, while the Palestinians are not; IDF spokesman also refuses to let Haaretz reporters tour the area.

By Chaim Levinson 
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A Palestinian farmer in the Jordan Valley.
A Palestinian farmer in a Jordan Valley field. Photo by Michal Fattal
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Settlers in the Jordan Valley are farming more than 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) of private Palestinian land located between the border fence and the actual border with Jordan. They received the land from the World Zionist Organization in the 1980s.

The original owners, some of whom fled in 1967 and returned to the West Bank after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, are still not allowed to access the land because of a military order preventing them from entering the border area.

After the Israel Defense Forces entered the West Bank in 1967, it issued Order 151, which defined the area near the Jordanian border as a closed military area. Later the border fence was erected, which in some places is up to two kilometers from the Jordan River, the natural border of the Jordanian kingdom.

Until 1994, the area was completely abandoned, including the ancient churches in the area, because of a large number of minefields in the region. At the beginning of the 1980s, the government decided to encourage farmers to work the fields in the area to create a buffer zone along the border and prevent infiltration from Jordan. The WZO was given the private Palestinian land and leased it to the settlers.

In July 1987 then-general in charge of Central Command, Amram Mitzna, instructed the brigade commander in the sector to prevent Palestinians from entering the area. A document from then that Haaretz has obtained states: “There is no doubt that from a security standpoint, it is unthinkable to let someone who is not part of the security forces or an armed veteran enter the area.”

The situation was never reexamined or changed, even after Oslo and the peace treaty with Jordan, said IDF sources. Today, Thai workers from the Israeli settlements are allowed across the border fence into the area, while the Palestinians are not. The IDF spokesman also refused to let Haaretz reporters tour the area.

The amount of land farmed has increased 110 percent in recent years. Based on aerial photographs from the IDF, the amount of land farmed in 1997 was 2,380 dunams, while in 2012 this reached 5,064 dunams. Most of the land is planted with date orchards, a particularly profitable business.

The WZO said that only state land or that defined as “absentee property” is being farmed. Absentee property is the legal term for land belonging to Palestinians who fled the region in 1967 and did not return. A source in the IDF Central Command told Haaretz that much of the land being farmed is privately owned by Palestinians. While many Palestinians returned ot the region after 1994, the WZO and IDF have made no efforts to determine if any of the absentee property owners are among those who returned, and there are no maps showing which land in the area belongs to whom.

The IDF spokesman said the matter would be checked. The head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, David Alhayani, said all the land was being farmed with the permission of the WZO.

 

Source

ISRAEL’S ‘FINAL SOLUTION’ HAS BEEN IN THE MAKING FOR DECADES

The long awaited excuse ….
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The following appeared as an Editorial in the Guardian’s Comment is Free ….. Just wait till CIF Watch gets a hold of it… They are already jumping on anyone opposing the settlement expansion.
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The Israeli NGO B’Tselem says the plan dates back to 1999. Every US administration since has condemned it, because it would sever the Palestinian state from its capital in East Jerusalem. Although European diplomats call it a red line, it should have surprised no one that it is now to be crossed. Each piece in the jigsaw of settlement planning had been laid by previous Israeli administrations. Sealing the West Bank off from Jerusalem had been their purpose from the start.
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Israel-Palestine: concreting over the solution

If this is punishment for the crime of going to the UN, how does Netanyahu hope to persuade Palestinians back to talks?

 

Supporting a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feels increasingly like clinging onto a cliff edge while someone with heavy boots stamps on your fingers. The boots were Israeli on Monday. Having spun the line that European governments had misunderstood Israel‘s plan to create a settlement that would cut the West Bank in two and separate it from East Jerusalem, the prime minister’s office vowed that nothing would alter their decision. The European diplomatic protest was, by its meek standards, unprecedented. Israeli ambassadors were summoned in Britain, France, Sweden and Spain but none of the four threatened any concrete measures to punish Israel. They should have.

From their inception, the West Bank settlements have been a cumulative study in opportunism. It matters not whether the horrified US secretary of state is a Republican or a Democrat. Condoleezza Rice said in 2007 that Har Homa should not be built. Five years later it is a fact on the ground, “the last brick in the wall of Jerusalem”, and never be surrendered. The same is about to happen to an area of land called E1, which lies between another egregious act of occupation, Ma’aleh Adumim, and Jerusalem.

The Israeli NGO B’Tselem says the plan dates back to 1999. Every US administration since has condemned it, because it would sever the Palestinian state from its capital in East Jerusalem. Although European diplomats call it a red line, it should have surprised no one that it is now to be crossed. Each piece in the jigsaw of settlement planning had been laid by previous Israeli administrations. Sealing the West Bank off from Jerusalem had been their purpose from the start.

The decision was intended as a punishment for Palestinians having the temerity to seek observer status from the same body, the United Nations of which Israel is already a full member. Israel hoped to rally between 20 and 30 countries to oppose the Palestinian request. In the event only eight countries, among them four tiny Pacific island nations, complied. Instead of isolating Palestinians, the UN vote showed how much support Israel lost in the place it values most – Europe. Only Czech Republic supported them.

If this decision is the punishment for the crime of going to the UN, how does Binyamin Netanyahu hope to persuade the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, now that he has just blocked their route off physically? Unless of course he, too, believes a two-state solution is a convenient fiction. One thing is clear. He continues to act with impunity. Until the US callibrates its relationship with Israel, until its leaders feel there is a price to pay for settlements, the plan for a two-state solution will remain a pipedream.

WHY IS ISRAEL SO AFRAID OF POSSIBLE PEACE?

 peace-pic-by-jerusalem-kids1 (1)
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The recent actions/reactions of Israel shows us how afraid they are of possible long-lasting Peace ‘breaking out’ in the region …. the question is WHY?
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The long overdue recognition of Palestine as a legitimate entity among the family of nations is seen as a threat to those that have successfully denied its existence for almost 65 years. 65 years of successfully destroying what remained of a nation via occupation, blockades, land theft, torture and murder, while claiming to be the victim.
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It is that very victim status that has kept the zionist entity from disappearing off the face of the map. It is that status which brings forth billion$ of dollars in handouts from the West, 3.5 Billion from the US alone annually.
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It is that status that has allowed them to ignore every UN Resolution ever passed against them. It is that status that is allowing them to expand the illegal settlements which stand on lands stolen from the Palestinian people. The settlement expansion is now seen by many as a direct ‘dare’ to the Obama Administration, rather than to the Palestinians themselves… U.S. Rachets Up Attack on Israel Over Settlements

Calls for Reconsideration Over ‘E1′ Occupation Plans

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From an earlier post; Fear of Peace … or is it the fear of losing the 3.5 BILLION Dollar$ a year which the American taxpayer unwillingly GIVES to Israel is great cause for alarm. What if there no longer is an ‘enemy’? What if a United Palestine achieves the Statehood they have been waiting for since 1948? For sure, unity will lead to statehood, statehood will lead to the end of the occupation, BOTH will lead to Peace. Can Israel live with these results?

 
The zio press seems to think otherwise; An Editorial in Today’s Jerusalem Post raises many invalid points regarding these matters…
The question of Palestinian Statehood is the greatest fear as can be seen in THIS ultra right column…
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Israel must be isolated from the rest of the world. The time has come to let them know that Peace is the only solution, not zionism!

THE QUESTION IS …. WILL THERE BE ANYTHING LEFT OF PALESTINE TO BUILD A STATE WITH?

Israel’s response to the UN vote comes as no surprise to anyone. Their ‘final solution’ for Palestine remains in effect as can be seen in the following;
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In response to UN vote, Israel to build 3,000 new homes in settlements

Netanyahu orders thousands of new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank; controversial plans for new construction in the E1 area near Jerusalem will be advanced, contrary to commitments made to the Obama administration.

By Barak Ravid
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Israel plans to build some 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements in response to the Palestinians’ successful bid for recognition at the UN General Assembly this week, a senior diplomatic source told Haaretz on Friday.

According to the source, Israel also plans to advance long-frozen plans for the E1 area, which covers an area that links the city of Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

If built, the controversial plan would prevent territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, making it difficult for a future Palestinian state to function.

In the beginning of his term, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the Obama administration a commitment that Israel would not build in the area. Both of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, also promised the U.S. administration that Israel would not build in E1.

The source said Israel would advance building plans for another several thousand housing units in settlement blocs in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, while weighing additional measures.

He added that the construction would be carried out according to the map of Israel’s strategic interests.

In a historic session of the United Nations in New York Thursday, exactly 65 years after passing the Partition Plan for Palestine, the General Assembly voted by a huge majority to recognize Palestine within the 1967 borders as a non-member state with observer status in the organization. Some 138 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 41 abstained and 9 voted against: Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, U.S., Panama, The Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru, and Micronesia.

Following the vote, U.S. UN envoy Susan Rice said the resolution does not establish Palestine as state, that it prejudges the outcome of negotiations, and ignores questions of security.

Source

And of course, the prepared ‘objections’ from those who will be footing the bill for the new illegal settlements …

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U.S. condemns Israel’s settlement expansion plan in Jerusalem, West Bank

White House says decision to build 3,000 new homes in settlements is ‘counterproductive’; Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemns move, says Israel is ‘defying the whole international community.’

By Barak Ravid
U.S. President Barack Obama
U.S. President Barack Obama. Must overcome his difficulties with Netanyahu to face the Iranian threat.Photo by Bloomberg

The U.S on Friday condemned the Israeli decision to build 3,000 new homes in the settlements, which came as a response to the UN vote to upgrade Palestine’s status to a non-member observer state.

“These actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. “We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlement activity and East Jerusalem construction and announcements.”

“Direct negotiations remain our goal and we encourage all parties to take steps to make that goal easier to achieve,” the White House spokesman said.

Earlier Friday, a senior diplomatic source told Haaretz that Netanyahu ordered 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to the source, Israel also plans to advance long-frozen plans for the E1 area, which covers an area that links the city of Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

If built, the controversial plan would prevent territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, making it difficult for a future Palestinian state to function.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also condemned the Israeli announcement, saying Israel was “defying the whole international community and insisting on destroying the two-state solution.” He said the Palestinian leadership was studying its options.

In a historic session of the United Nations in New York Thursday, exactly 65 years after passing the Partition Plan for Palestine, the General Assembly voted by a huge majority to recognize Palestine within the 1967 borders as a non-member state with observer status in the organization. Some 138 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 41 abstained and 9 voted against: Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, U.S., Panama, The Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru, and Micronesia.

Following the vote, U.S. UN envoy Susan Rice said the resolution does not establish Palestine as state, that it prejudges the outcome of negotiations, and ignores questions of security.

Also FROM

AN ANNIVERSARY NOT TO CELEBRATE // 10 YEARS OF THE WALL

The Wall, 10 years on / part 12: Where do we go from here?
HAGGAI MATAR
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Ten years have passed since Israel started building the wall, probably the largest and most expensive construction project in its history, which does not seem to be going anywhere. For four months now I’ve been presenting its story, and now it is time to offer some breaking updates, look into the future, and conclude. The final chapter of the series. (Previous chapters in series appear below)

The Wall: 10 years on (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills

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This was supposed to be a four part mini-project for the week of Passover. However, as work progressed, interview followed interview, and the tours along the wall’s route unraveled new stories, and as the gap between the magnitude of the project and the lack of in-depth writing about it in mainstream media became clear – the series grew longer, only to reach its end now.

But before we conclude, some recent important developments must be shared. In the first andeleventh chapters, I mentioned the massive gaps in the wall: dozens of unbuilt miles of the route in the eastern part of Gush Etzion and the Adumim plains near Jerusalem. About four years ago, the state stopped construction in these parts due to the pause in hostilities, insufficient funds, and a fear that U.S. pressure and High Court intervention would make it harder to complete the approved route which effectively annexes huge swaths of Palestinian West Bank lands.

This pause in construction is now coming to an end. A recent statement made in court by the head of the wall project, Colonel Ofer Hindi, indicates that Israel is getting ready to resume construction in these two parts. The statement was confirmed this week by the Ministry of Defense in reply to an inquiry by +972. The confirmation stated that the ministry is currently “conducting evaluations and examining beginning construction of the Gush Etzion route, pending judicial approval. The route in the Adumim plains will be reevaluated over the course of 2013.”

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This is big news. Alongside the resumption of deliberation of two petitions pending in the High Court, this could also prompt a revival of the popular Palestinian struggle in the villages south of Bethlehem, possible resistance by settlers in the Gush area, and perhaps even a renewed international interest in the route deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice. In fact, Hindi’s statement has already led foreign diplomats stationed in Tel Aviv who read this series to invite me to share thoughts on the renewed construction for a report to their government.

And two more short updates: in a discussion on the wall’s effects on natural surroundings, I mentioned attempts made by the village of Battir to gain World Heritage Site status from UNESCO in order to stop the wall. Apparently due to internal conflicts within the Palestinian delegation, the UNESCO annual convention has since decided to recognize another local site, the Church of the Nativity and its surroundings, leaving Battir’s ancient terraces in harm’s way.

Discussing the misfortunes brought upon the village of Walajah, I wrote that the wall is planned to surround it in all directions. In recent weeks, however, villagers received a new map of the route, which indicates a possible opening in the wall to the southwest. Activists mention that there are not yet any guarantees for this, and that even if this part is left open, the village would still lose most of its lands and be detached from the urban center of Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank. “Our most minimal demand is to maintain free passage to Beit Jala,” tells me Sheerin al Araj, a prominent activist in the village. “This we have not yet accomplished.”

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The new route around Walajah. Open to the southwest (The Civil Administration)
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The wall and the occupation

Throughout this series I tried to focus on the wall itself and its implications, without broadening the argument to the entire system of occupation and settlement. But as I move toward the end, it is crucial to remember how the wall is but one piece in the puzzle of the military regime ruling over the lives of millions, with its two separate legal systems, its home demolitions, its siege on Gaza, and much more. As Haaretz’s Amira Hass always reminds readers, the story of the wall cannot be detached from the permit system put in place in 1991, which has since continuously expanded in extreme ways.

“Many people, including judges we face in court, don’t understand the meaning of occupation’s bureaucracy,” says attorney Shira Hertzanu from Yadin Elam’s law firm, which deals with countless cases revolving around the seam zone on behalf of Hamoked. “Take farmers who want to reach their lands beyond the fence: they might not get an answer for their request for months, then not get it in writing, and procedures keep changing and growing harder all the time. Even when someone is summoned for a hearing at the DCO [District Coordination Office], they might find themselves waiting for hours only to be informed that the officer in charge just isn’t around.

“So people despair. Farmers give up on their trees. People living in the seam zone loose touch with life in the West Bank and consider leaving home and crossing to the ‘Palestinian’ side of the wall. The wall is still new, in many parts less than ten years old, but it’s frightening to see the process of annexation happening in front of your eyes.”

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Women on their way to Jerusalem from Ramallah on Ramadan (Oren Ziv / Activestills)
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This rationale of the permit system does not only apply to the seam zone, and ones much like it can also be found in the Jordan Valley, and the “special security zones” around South Hebron Hills settlements, and with time in more and more locations across the West Bank. “The notion that a Palestinian would need a permit to get to his land started with agricultural areas that got stuck behind settlement fences, widened dramatically with the wall, and the most recent development is how this is reasoning is duplicated to areas where there is no fence at all,” says attorney Michael Sfard, who is representing villagers from Beit Furik in a petition against the state’s decision to seal off parts of their land in order to protect the settlement of Itamar and its illegal satellite settlements.

“Now the state tells the court that permits can be arranged to enter the zone whenever farmers wish, but knowing the seam way of thinking I’m positive that after the petition is over and done with we’ll hear the army say ‘there’s no reason to farm the land during winter’ or something, and people will lose touch with their land. This is how Israel divides and rules Palestinians and creates apartheid through legal and physical means.”

As recently mentioned here in a different context, and as Noam Sheizaf excellently put it, all these tools of oppression will go on serving Israel for as long as the status quo remains its most rational choice. As long as Palestinian popular resistance and international pressure don’t grow significantly, Israel will not be the one to voluntarily end the stagnation in negotiations, and peace initiatives such as the Arab League’s will remain unanswered. Until such a time of change, the occupation and apartheid are here to stay. And so is The Wall.

Here to stay. The wall around Jerusalem (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The fate of walls and empires

The story sounds so odd that it might actually be true: Scattered reports by activists in Jayous, a single line in a Wikipedia page, and several long posts in a site that went offline sometime after work on this series started all claim that the Scottish town of Falkirk has signed a twinning contract with the Palestinian village of Jayous. A short Youtube clip confirms that even if this initiative is not given official status, there are surely some town people pushing for it.

The reasoning for this move was offered in the now-unavailable site and can still be seen in the clip. Falkirk sits on the old route of the Antonine Wall, built by the Romans to safeguard their northern border in the British Isle. The wall and all its fortifications lasted just twenty years before the empire retreated to its previous more southern border.

The people of Falkirk and Jayous thought that there would be a legitimate symbolism in linking their histories, and thus somehow encouraging the Palestinian village’s popular struggle against the wall built on their lands. The link was also meant as a reminder of the temporary nature of all walls and empires. It is with this reminder to all of us as well that I wish to end.

All things must pass. The Antonine Wall in Falkirk (Kim Traynor)

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The Wall Project could not have been made possible were it not for the assistance of countless dedicated Palestinian and Israeli activists, extremely patient interviewees, the support of the +972 editors, and of course – my good friend and excellent photographer Oren Ziv of the Activestills collective. All of these I wish to thank deeply.

This article was originally published by +972 Blog and is republished with permission.
Source

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Previous chapters in this series:


Part 1: The great Israeli project

Part 2: Wall and Peace

Part 3: An acre here and an acre there

Part 4: Trapped on the wrong side

Part 5: A new way of resistance

Part 6: What has the struggle achieved?

Part 7: A village turned prison

Part 8: A working class under siege

Part 9: Dividing land – water, fauna, flora

Part 10: My encounters with the wall in space

Part 11: Security for Israel?


REMEMBERING THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Unlike some people that never stop crying, Palestinians have developed the following attitude instead of pulling out their ‘victim status card’ every chance they get;

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We didn’t cry during farewell!
For we didn’t have time, nor tears, Nor was it farewell
We didn’t realize that the moment of farewell was farewell
So how could we cry?”
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On Land Day, Palestinians Remember the Price of Freedom

Shahd Abusalama

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My drawing of “the ruins of my homeland” (Shahd Abusalama)

 

We didn’t cry during farewell!
For we didn’t have time, nor tears, Nor was it farewell
We didn’t realize that the moment of farewell was farewell
So how could we cry?”

Said Taha Muhammad Ali, one of the leading poets on the contemporary Palestinian literary scene, describing his expulsion from his homeland. He was 17 years old, old enough to remember the gloomy day when he was ethnically cleansed from his original village, Saffuriya, together with most of its inhabitants and more than 600,000 Palestinian from 512 other village, during the 1948 Nakbha. But in 1949, Taha returned to Nazareth, making it his home.

However, my grandparents and hundreds of thousands couldn’t. They had fled to Gaza. They thought that it would be a matter of two weeks and then they would be back. But ever since then, they lived and died in Gaza’s refugee camps.

Ethnic cleansing has continued in many forms. On March 30, 1976, more Palestinian land in the north was confiscated so that Jewish settlements could be built on its ruins. But Palestinian people rebelled against the Israeli occupation and confronted its forces. A popular uprising took the form of peaceful marches and a unique general strike that provoked the Israeli occupation forces, causing their murders of six heroes, together with the wounding or detention of hundreds of other people. Their only crime was that they refused to give up their land and protested non-violently, but powerfully, against dispossession.

It is significant as the first time since 1948 that Arabs in Israel organized a strong response to Israeli policies as a Palestinian national collective. That’s why this day was etched in the history of the Palestinian struggle and ever since, Palestinians have commemorated March 30 as “Land Day”, to emphasize our embrace of Palestinian land and our rejection of the criminal occupation and its illegal settlement. In Gaza, I joined several thousands of people to march toward Erez checkpoint calling for the end of occupation and for our legal rights of the land.

March 30, 2012 marks the 46th anniversary of Land Day. As I welcome this immortal day, a flood of memories flows through my mind. I can’t remember my grandfather well, as he died when I was very young. But I can very clearly recall my memories of my grandmother, who helped raise me.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky! “

Only when I got older did I learn that lullabies are songs sung to kids until they fall asleep. I never slept to a lullaby. Yet I can’t count the times I slept while listening to my grandmother telling her favorite, most touching story, the story of Nakba, the story of her stolen lands. Unlike other kids around the world, The Nakba was my lullaby.

“Behind every great man there is a woman.” This proverb could not find a better example than my father. He always said, “I have God in the sky and my mother on the ground.” She had been always his role model and the reason he embraced the resistance during his youth. Now his resistance is centered on planting his patriotic values and his love for the homeland in his children, in us, so we, the third generation, carry on demanding our people’s stolen rights.

I vividly recall how her steady, wide eyes struggled with tears every time she narrated that story. She must have repeated it thousands of times, and I am sure she would never have stopped if she were still alive. My siblings and I heard it many times. And, every time, her wrinkles evoked the same feeling, her voice shook the same way, calmly flowing with memories, then suddenly rising in anger as she said the same proverb: “The homeland is ours and the strangers fire us.”

“Your grandfather used to go every day to a high hill in north Gaza called Alkashef,” I remember her saying. “People used to see him sitting on the top, pondering his raped homeland, Beit Jerja, and crying.” Their wound was too deep to be healed or forgotten.

In Beit Gerga, my grandparents were farmers, living for the glories of the land as the majority of Palestinians did then. Every single day after their expulsion, they said, “Tomorrow we will return.” They were simple and uneducated people who didn’t understand the political games of Israel and its allies. They died before smelling their precious sand again.

The generation of the Nakba is dying. But another revolutionary generation was born, the generation of Intifadas, to which my parents belong. My father has always described his resistance, and his 15 years of youth inside Israeli prisons, as “the price of homeland and the cost of freedom and dignity.”

My father’s friend Jabber Wshah, who was released in the same 1985 swap deal, has another amazing Palestinian mother. Jabber is just as inspiring as my dad. He now heads the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and always prioritizes the political prisoners’ issue.

I love sitting with elderly people who witnessed the Nakba to listen to their stories, even if they are mostly alike. They remind me of my grandmother and my memories of her, which I cherish very much. Jabber is another example of a man born from a great woman’s womb. I met his mother once in a festival for the prisoners released in the Shalit exchange.

Her mother does not know her own date of birth, but assumes she is in her 80s. I heard her telling the story of when her son Jabber was sentenced to two lifetimes. She described how she stood, proudly and strongly, and confronted the Israeli court for being unfair to her son, then started singing for Palestine, for resistance. “I didn’t cry nor scream,” she said. “If Netanyahu is hardheaded, we are even more so. We’ll never stop resisting. Resistance will continue until we restore out rights. I had four sons in prison at that time, and I walked to prison every day for 15 years hoping to meet them.”

She made me proud to be the daughter of a Palestinian mother when she said, while pointing to her breast, “My milk was fed to my sons, the milk of our homelands.” She continued firmly, “As long as there are Palestinian women giving birth and bringing up new generations, we will breastfeed them the milk of our homeland, we will breastfeed them with toughness and resistance.” Then she smiled and said that she told a CIA officer the same thing while looking at him in the eye, adding, “The land of Palestine is for her people, not for you!”

Palestinians have spent more than six decades sacrificing, paying the price of freedom for themselves and their lands that were stolen by the Zionist entity. You can rarely find a Palestinian family from whom none were killed, or have experienced imprisonment or deportation, or have had their houses demolished or lands confiscated. Not only people have paid the price for the freedom of the lands, but even the trees, stones, and even sands.

Israel continues to build more and more illegal settlements on what is left of our lands, leaving less than 22% for Palestinians. They openly violate all international agreements, but no agreements, nor human rights organizations, can limit Israel’s daily violations and crimes against Palestinians and their lands. That’s why the Palestinian resistance will never die. Many more Land Days will happen, and they will be celebrated in one way or another, every day of every coming year, inside or outside the occupied lands, until we restore our stolen rights.

For this 46th anniversary of Land Day, I’d like to share a poem with you. I wrote it last May, speaking for every Palestinian refugee whose nostalgia grows with every passing day. This is to emphasize our spiritual attachment to our stolen lands, from which our grandparents were ethnically cleansed, and to stress our right to return.


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My drawing of our embrace of the right to return to our stolen lands (Shahd Abusalama)

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My village, in which I didn’t live a single day
Has been living inside me everyday
Since I was born, I grow and my nostalgia
Grows more and more till it tears me up
It wasn’t me who chose to live far away
And neither my grandparents did
They were beaten, cleansed and dispossessed
Into tents of exile their souls were left
Gone with their olive groves and citrus fields
Leaving a wound to never be healed
Since my grandparents fled away
They thought they would return the next day
They died, but no need to sigh
As, their heritage, their songs and memories persist
They say that elderly people die
And after that the young will forget
But no way
Until return, Palestinians will resist
Our tears of hope will never dry
And when we return to our homelands
From ashes, trees will rise high
And white doves will over fly
And we’ll caress with our bare hands
Every precious berry of sand
This dream might not happen soon
But it absolutely will one day

Source 

IN THE SHADOW OF BETHLEHEM

 If only trees could talk …. Shown below are 3 – 5,000 year old specimens growing in the Bethlehem area. Can you even imagine the history these trees have witnessed? Obviously too much as far as the Israeli authorities are concerned …. slowly but surely they are being destroyed to make room for more illegal settlements. The history of Palestine must never become known, even if it comes from these precious trees, they must remain silent…
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Yesterday, villagers from Al-Walaja and international supporters went to the area where the Israeli apartheid authorities were still destroying lands to build a wall that will isolate the villagers from their remaining lands and allow for further expansion of the illegal colonies of Gilo and Har Gilo. Already over 90% of the village lands were taken for colonial settler activities in the past 6 decades. The area this short video was taken is just around the oldest tree in Bethlehem district (an olive tree perhaps 3-5,000 year old).
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The video and description was sent by Mazin Qumsiyeh, our Associate and activist in the above struggle to save his nation.

SPEAKING OF INVENTED NATIONS….

Here’s one the Newt overlooked … created and paid for with YOUR tax dollar$
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‘Israelis’ in Jerusalem answer the question “Where ya from?”
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UNESCO MEMBERSHIP PUNISHABLE BY MORE LAND THEFT

On November 1, Israel’s inner cabinet decided to speed up construction of homes for Jews in Arab east Jerusalem and in other nearby settlements allegedly to punish the Palestinians for winning membership in the UN cultural agency, UNESCO.
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Israel approves East Jerusalem settlements
Jerusalem municipality approves construction of 130 homes in a move Palestinians say would further isolate Bethlehem.
Israel is said to be speeding up its building of settlements after Palestinians won  membership in UNESCO [Reuters]
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The Jerusalem municipality has approved the construction of 130 new homes in illegal settlements in the east of the city.

The homes are to be built in Gilo neighbourhood on land captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Municipal spokesman Stephan Miller said on Wednesday the construction was approved by the city’s planning committee after the period to lodge objections to it had ended.

Israel regards West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem as part of one united city. Housing applications there are dealt with on municipal level, usually without any government intervention.

However, the international community sees East Jerusalem as occupied territory, with the same status as the West Bank, and decries unilateral Israeli moves there.

The latest construction approval came 10 days after Israel raised international and Palestinian ire by including three locations in and near East Jerusalem in plans to build 600 homes.

Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state and object vigorously to any Israeli construction there.

The Palestinian Authority has said it will not resume direct peace talks until and unless Israel halts all construction in its West Bank settlements and in East Jerusalem.

The Gilo project received initial approval in November 2010, in a move the Palestinians said was an attempt to further isolate Bethlehem from east Jerusalem. Gilo lies just a few kilometres north of Bethlehem.

‘New Year message’

Wednesday’s approval did little to improve the mood between Israel and the Palestinians, who have not sat down for face-to-face talks for more than a year after direct negotiations collapsed following a dispute over settlements.

“I guess this is the New Year message that the government of Israel is sending us for 2012: ‘We will continue destroying the peace process and killing the two-state solution through continuing and escalating settlement activity’,” Saeb Erakat, a Palestinian negotiator, said.

“The Quartet and the international community must hold the government of Israel fully responsible for these policies if they want to save the peace process and the two-state solution.”

The Middle East Quartet, which includes top European Union, United States, United Nations and Russian diplomats, has been urging the two sides to return to direct negotiations with next to no success, with each party blaming the other for sabotaging peace efforts.

UNESCO decision

Last week, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s accelerated settlement building, saying it sent a “devastating” message, and urged the Jewish state to reverse the plans.

On November 1, Israel’s inner cabinet decided to speed up construction of homes for Jews in Arab east Jerusalem and in other nearby settlements allegedly to punish the Palestinians for winning membership in the UN cultural agency, UNESCO.

Since then, Israel has issued announcements for 2,057 new homes in Arab east Jerusalem and 1,241 in the West Bank, official figures show.

More than 310,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the number is constantly growing.

Another 200,000 live in a dozen illegal settlement neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem.

 

 

Source

ISRAEL BLAMING THE VICTIM FOR ITS OWN CRIMES

 

 

“Refugee camps in Israel gave birth to thriving towns and cities. Refugee camps in Arab Countries gave birth to more Palestinian refugees.”

One two part question, even unanswered gives the reason why… WHO ‘gave birth’ to the Palestinian refugees in the first place, and WHO has refused to let them return to their land and homes, forcing them to remain in Refugee camps???

When Israeli officials speak, they present lie after lie. Palestinian officials have no opportunity to counter those lies as they are not recognised as a member State YET.
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Israel’s UN envoy slams Arabs over refugees 

Speaking on Partition Plan’s 64th anniversary, Ambassador Prosor says Israel absorbed its own refugees into society, ‘our neighbors did not’

 WASHINGTON - Speaking at the United Nations on the occasion of the Partition Plan’s 64th anniversary, Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor said: “The difference between the two distinct populations was – and still is – that Israel absorbed the refugees into our society. Our neighbors didnot.”

“Refugee camps in Israel gave birth to thriving towns and cities. Refugee camps in Arab Countries gave birth to more Palestinian refugees,” he said.

“We unlocked our new immigrants’ vast potential. The Arab world knowingly and intentionally kept their Palestinian populations in the second class status of permanent refugees,” Israel’s envoy added.

Prosor stressed that in the overwhelming majority of Arab state, Palestinians have no citizenship rights.

‘Has Arab world accepted Israel?’ 

Addressing the 1947 Partition Plan, which called for the establishment of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in the area known as Palestinian, Prosor said that “Arab inhabitants rejected the plan and launched a war of annihilation against the new Jewish state, joined by the armies of five Arab members of the United Nations.”“One percent of Israel’s population died in combat during this assault by five armies. Think about that price,” the ambassador said. “It would be the equivalent of 850,000 soldiers dying in France today, or 3 million soldiers dying in the United States, or 13 million soldiers dying in China.”

Prosor added that the basic question underlying the Arab-Israeli conflict has not changed for 64 years: “Has the Arab World – and particularly the Palestinians – internalized that Israel is here to stay and will remain the nation-state of the Jewish People? It is still unclear whether they are inspired by the promise of building a new state, or the goal of destroying an existing one.”Israel’s UN envoy ended his remarks by calling on the UN Assembly to “finally glean truth from this historic day, nourishing the seeds of peace in our region that can blossom into a brighter future.”

 

Source

HOW CAN ISRAEL EFFECTIVELY PREVENT PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD?

 Annex what is left of Palestinian lands….
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Israel effectively annexes Palestinian land near Jordan Valley

Separation barrier route in Kibbutz Merav area changed leaving 1,500 dunams on Israeli side; may be first transfer of Palestinian-owned land to community on sovereign Israeli territory.

Israel carried out a de facto annexation of Palestinian land northeast of the Jordan Valley and given it to Kibbutz Merav. Merav, part of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, is about seven kilometers northwest of the parcel.

The route of the separation barrier in the area was changed so that the plot in question, about 1,500 dunams (375 acres), would be on the Israeli side.


 

A tractor working Kibbutz Merav’s fields between the separation fence and the Green Line.

Photo by: Alon Ron

Israel has previously built roads on and given Palestinian land in the West Bank to Jewish settlements, but this is thought to be the first instance of Palestinian-owned land being transferred to a community on sovereign Israeli territory.

A spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Guy Inbar, confirmed that the property is in the West Bank and said, “Kibbutz Merav has been farming this land for decades.”

The issue of the land’s legal status and its transfer to Merav is clouded in mystery, and official statements have been contradictory. All efforts to locate documents explaining the situation have failed, Inbar said.

 

 

 

Map of disputed land near Kibbutz Merav.

The kibbutz is in the Emek Mayanot Regional Council, whose jurisdiction is entirely within the Green Line. In a statement, council officials said the land is beyond its jurisdiction and that the Israel Lands Administration controls land allocations to the council’s member communities.

Ofer Amar, a spokesman for the World Zionist Organization’s Jewish settlement division said the tract is classified as farmland within the Emek Mayanot Regional Council. He said the settlement division had no authority over the parcel.

Kibbutz Merav’s secretary general, David Yisrael, confirmed the kibbutz has been farming the land for years, growing field crops including corn as well as citrus fruit. He said he had a lease with the ILA for it, but refused to show it to Haaretz.

An official in the Civil Administration said Yisrael refused to show the contract to his agency, too.

ILA spokeswoman Ortal Tzabar said the ILA had no knowledge of the matter, as it does not deal with land outside sovereign Israeli territory.

“There is a straight line from plundering these 1,500 dunams to Amona, Migron and Givat Asaf, outposts that were built years later,” said Dror Etkes, director of Peace Now’s Settlements Watch Project, who detected the annexed land in aerial photographs.

If the appropriation of the Palestinian farmers’ lands in the Jordan Valley had happened now, rather than in the 1970s, Israeli civil rights groups would have prevented it, Etkes said.

“This is an example of why it so important for MK Ofir Akunis and his wacky right-wing colleagues to conceal and silence leftist organizations and turn the High Court of Justice and the media into the government’s puppets,” Etkes said.

Ashraf Madrasa, from the nearby village of Bardallah, showed Haaretz an ownership deed from 1961 for a 36-dunam tract of the land. He said the Israel Defense Forces seized the land, declared it a “military area,” drove out the owners and ordered never to return.

A number of landowners were given alternative plots belonging to “absentee” Palestinians who fled during the 1967 Six-Day War. Sami Rajab, whose family farms in the area, said that in exchange for several plots in the area he was evicted from, his father received a tract that belonged to his uncle, who emigrated to Canada.

Recently his cousin came to visit and demanded his lands back, Rajab related. “We told him he had to ask the Israeli government to give it back to him,” Rajab said.

According to international law Israel is the custodian of absentee property in the West Bank and is prohibited from giving it to settlers, not to mention to communities within Israel.

In an opinion issued in 1997, the Civil Administration’s legal adviser said: “The Custodian of Absentee Property in the West Bank is nothing but a trustee looking after the property so it is not harmed while the owners are absent from the area … the custodian may not make any transaction regarding the asset that conflicts with the obligation to safeguard the asset as stated, especially his obligation to return the asset to the owner upon his return to the region.”

The state comptroller wrote in a 2004 report that thousands of dunams of privately-owned Palestinian lands were given to Israeli communities in the Jordan Valley in the 1960s and 1970s, according to ILA and Custodian of Absentee Property documents.

The ILA continued “these allocations, defined in the above documents as apparently illegal, after that as well,” he wrote.

IT’S TIME TO PICK THE OLIVES …. NOT THE WHOLE TREE

Tell that to the illegal settlers that seem to think otherwise….
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Settlers Uproot Dozens Of Olive Trees Near Nablus
 by Saed Bannoura
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A group of extremist armed Israeli settlers uprooted on Saturday dozens of Palestinian olive trees that belong to residents of Madama village, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Clashes were reported; soldiers fired gas bombs at the protesters leading to a number of injuries.

Image by Maan News Agency
Image by Maan News Agency

 

Armed settlers uprooted more than 45 olive trees that belong to the residents of Al Khalla and Qattan Al Soura villages, south of Madama.

The uprooted trees belong to residents Zakariyya Nassar and Mohammad Mustafa Al Qit.

Also on Saturday, settlers of the Yitzhar illegal settlement, burnt dozens of farming acres that belong to the residents of Einabous and Huwwara villages, south of Nablus.

Eyewitnesses told the Maan News Agency that the Israeli army declared the village as a “closed military zone” two days ago, in an attempt to prevent the residents and the international supporters from entering or leaving the village especially during the weekly nonviolent protest against the Wall and settlements in the area.

 

Source

IT USED TO BE ‘PLANT A TREE IN ISRAEL’ ~~ NOW IT’S BURN A TREE AND BUILD A SETTLEMENT

More than 300,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and another 200,000 live in settlements in east Jerusalem, which is also home to some 270,000 Palestinians.
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Years back, one would see throngs of zionists shaking their blue and white ‘pushkas’ (charity boxes) in New York and other large American cities. They were collecting money to ‘help make the desert bloom’. Now that it’s blooming, those very same zionists are helping to destroy dunams of existing olive trees to make room for new and expanding illegal settlements.
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Israel approves 900 settlement homes in East Jerusalem
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JERUSALEM — Israel’s interior ministry has given final approval for the construction of 900 new homes in the east Jerusalem settlement neighborhood of Har Homa, a ministry spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday.
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“This is a programme which was approved by the regional (planning and construction) committee two years ago,” spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said.

“According to the planning process in Israel, (it) needed the completion of amendments, therefore it was finally approved today.”

The approval marks the final planning stage for a project that has garnered fierce criticism from the Palestinians and the international community.

It will significantly expand the hilltop neighborhood, which lies in Jerusalem’s southwest and is defined as being within the municipal boundaries despite lying directly next to the Palestinian West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Har Homa is known as Abu Ghnaim to Palestinians and used to be a lush forested area in northern Bethlehem before being destroyed to make space for the illegal settlement.

Hagit Ofran, who monitors settlement activity for the Israeli group Peace Now, described the final approval of the project as “a very dramatic development” because of where the new housing will be located.

“It adds a new ridge to Har Homa which blocks the territorial contiguity between east Jerusalem and Bethlehem and adds a further barrier to the possibility of east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital in a two-state solution,” she told AFP.

Israel captured Arab east Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.

Israel does not view construction in the east to be settlement activity, calling both east and west Jerusalem its “eternal, indivisible” capital, and some 200,000 Israelis now live in east Jerusalem amid nearly 270,000 Palestinians.

But the Palestinians view settlement construction in Arab east Jerusalem as an Israeli attempt to extend control over the sector of the city that they want for the capital of their future state.

The international community, including the United States, has regularly criticized Israel for building settlements in the West Bank and particularly east Jerusalem, describing them as counterproductive and calling for a halt to all such construction.

Israel’s settlement construction has also snarled peace talks, which were restarted in September 2010 but ground to a halt shortly after they began when a partial Israeli ban on settlement building expired.

Israel declined to renew the freeze, which covered the West Bank but not east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians say they will not negotiate while Israel builds on land they want for their future state.

More than 300,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and another 200,000 live in settlements in east Jerusalem, which is also home to some 270,000 Palestinians.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem since 1967.

SETTLERS PATHETICALLY PRESENT THEIR CASE

&

There is no Palestine!
There never was a Palestine!!
There never will be a Palestine!!!
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Simple as A B C !
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International Law does not apply to them! Nor do UN Resolutions!!

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Just like Hebrew National Frankfurters, “They answer to a Higher Authority!”
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Got it??
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If you still have a problem with the occupation and settler terrorism, watch the following, it explains it all;
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SHEESH! That wasn’t so hard to understand, was it??
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Not convinced yet ? Maybe this will help you understand the ‘logic’ used to justify the settlements and downplay the boycott against their products… NGO Monitor has released a video which outlines the “BDS Sewer System” and ‘exposes’ the network of funders, NGOs, and tactics that make up the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
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Straight from the sewer itself….
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They don’t seem to realise how much they help our cause when they look so stupid.
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And finally, this is who they are defending….
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Oh …. and let’s not forget how the soldiers ‘protect’ those settlers from children flying kites ..
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And don’t forget …. to question or oppose their methods is anti-Semitic!
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Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
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THE POETRY OF STRUGGLE

 “The most effective thing we can do is use our voice in an ethical way,” he tells me. “I think the most prominent and positive thing an artist can do is stand on the right side of history and stand with oppressed peoples. So rather than just staying silently on the sidelines or going and whitewashing apartheid in Tel Aviv and talking maybe one or two lines about peace, we have the opportunity to use our voices in a more general sense.”
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Remi Kanazi’s poetry of struggle

Alexander Billet *

Remi Kanazi performs live. (Valerian Mazataud)

 

It’s early June, a few days after Gil Scott-Heron’s death. There’s something about the passing of an icon like him that makes the search for new, vibrant rebel art all the more urgent. In a strange twist of serendipity, I just happen to be sitting down to read Poetic Injustice by Remi Kanazi. The first lines hit me like a punch in the gut:

I never saw death
until I saw the bombing
of a refugee camp
craters filled with
dismembered legs
and splattered torsos
but no sign of a face
the only impression
a fading scream

I’m hooked. Without gilding the lily, it’s safe to say that there are a lot of parallels between the works of Scott-Heron and those of Remi Kanazi. Both of their bodies of work are a simultaneous expression of identity and a puncturing of borders — real and imagined. Both frequently blur the line between poetry and music. And both rely on a kind of plain-spoken articulation that dodges between pleasure and pain, drama and humor, vicious oppression and inspiring resistance.

It’s difficult to believe that poetry and spoken word were things that Remi more or less stumbled into. “I grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts,” he says to me over the phone, “and for me, growing up on lefty hip-hop, to have the voice of spoken word really filled a huge void. My brother and sister had just taken me to see Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and that was the transformational trigger point. I started writing every day after that.”

No doubt that this voice has been honed over time. By now, as Poetic Injustice indicates, Remi has achieved a deft power, vividly versatile and completely unafraid while never drifting into sentimentality. Throughout this short, 50-page book, the author travels through a variety of settings; pompous American mouthpieces are humorously rebuked (“The Dos and Don’ts of Palestine”), solidarity powerfully invoked (“From Rikers to Bagram”), the horrors of US-Israeli imperialism graphically depicted (“A Poem for Gaza”). These are only a sampling.

Reinventing art as identity

Tying it all together are the 48 three-line poems peppered throughout the book — 48 symbolizing the year of the Nakba (catastrophe) when approximately 750,000 Palestinians were kicked off their land by Zionist militias. Divided into four parts (each dedicated to one of his four grandparents, all among that original displaced generation), each short verse provides a snippet of emotional truth of existence and resistance under occupation:

From my rooftop I can see an Israeli sunbathing

on the balcony my grandfather built…

 

A pregnant woman dies at a checkpoint

Sometimes a hand in the face is as powerful as a pistol…

 

Kids slingshot hip-hop, mix beats and break

in refugee camps. Reinvent art as identity

and tag the wall with the footsteps of their future…

As rewarding as reading Remi’s words can be, it’s little substitute for seeing him perform. His energy seems boundless, the humor and vigor of his words coming to life in the performer’s animation. To that end, Poetic Injustice comes with an audio CD of Remi reading fifteen of his favorite selections. It’s a perfect complement, adding immeasurable weight to the book itself.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the pleasure (albeit via email) of working with Remi on the Punks Against Apartheid petition urging Jello Biafra to cancel his show in Tel Aviv — a push that we can thankfully now say was successful.

Given the circumstances, it’s near-impossible not to think of another parallel to Gil Scott-Heron, namely the 2010 efforts that successfully convinced him to do the same. There’s also something of an irony — namely that even though the most powerful tool an artist has is his or her voice, what the movement for the cultural boycott of Israel demands is the withholding of that very same voice.

Stand on the right side of history

Nonetheless, Remi believes that an artist’s power is enhanced by his or her refusal to play Israel. “The most effective thing we can do is use our voice in an ethical way,” he tells me. “I think the most prominent and positive thing an artist can do is stand on the right side of history and stand with oppressed peoples. So rather than just staying silently on the sidelines or going and whitewashing apartheid in Tel Aviv and talking maybe one or two lines about peace, we have the opportunity to use our voices in a more general sense.”

In fact, the push for a cultural boycott is taking place at a time when rebel poets like Remi have the potential to reach a wide audience. The revolutions across the Arab world have been accompanied by a flourishing of art, music and culture. Politically charged groups like DAM and Arabian Knights have never been more popular. And while right-wing pundits like Pam Geller still insist that Arab culture consists of little more than camels and scimitars artists on both sides of the pond may still go a long way to countering this racism.

“I think that what some of the artists are doing today is brilliant because they’re refusing to be tokenized. If you listen to the music of Omar Offendum or The Narcycist or, in Arabic, the music of DAM, they completely shatter this notion that they’re going to be this post [11 September 2001] image of what is Arab or Muslim or Palestinian.” In other words, it’s this insistence on humanity despite all obstacles that makes these artists so potent.

The same goes for Remi’s book. And that’s precisely why it would be wrong to simply call this work “poems about Palestine.” Much like Scott-Heron’s portrayals of an oppressed black America inspired people well beyond the borders of Watts and Harlem, so do Remi Kanazi’s words speak toward a struggle that is, for lack of a better term, universal.

“The reason I become a poet was to educate, inspire, to act,” he says. “I’m not a nationalist, I’m not an ethnocentrist. This isn’t about me being a Palestinian or me being an Arab. It’s about a system of oppression and what’s being done to a people. So whether you’re talking about police brutality or the US-Mexico border or Afghanistan or the war in Iraq or the plight of Palestinians, what they’re going through and the injustice that’s being perpetrated against them is what matters. And that’s what we’re working against — systems of oppression, what’s being done to a people.”

This subtle yet dynamic interplay between art and struggle is what makes Poetic Injustice such a crucial contribution. It’s the feeling that for all its specificity, we’re reading not just about the Palestinians but about ourselves. And indeed, every struggle has its own art, it’s own poetry. As Remi Kanazi well knows, it’s this ability for beauty that makes the fight worth it:

I’ll exist in a world that

fights against racism

like Martin and Malcolm bleeds ghetto tales of Steve Biko

as a song that never dies

no matter what apartheid

makes of our bodies

feeds mouths in Belfast streets

and resurrects Bobby Sands’ message

so that we will never

be hungry again

 

Remi Kanazi’s Poetic Injustice can be purchased on Amazon.com.

*Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Chicago. He runs the website Rebel Frequencies and is a columnist for SOCIARTS. He has also appeared in Z Magazine, CounterPunch and PopMatters.com.

 

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