As some of you may know Volleyboy1 generally hosts an Open Thread every Friday around Israel/Palestine and other issues of interest.
This week sadly, he has broken hand and asked if I could pitch in with the series. VB generally includes something along the lines of the following in these diaries:
Notice BTW, I use the word FRY'D DAZE instead of Friday... I do that because most of us are fried after a long week at work. Some of us are fried because of the posting we do and/or both.
I want to try to do this on Fry'd Daze as a way to get people to talk to about whatever comes into their heads regarding this.. Sort an open forum for people to meet... ask questions.
I don't want this to be a flame forum. Rather something that we can present articles to each other from sources in the U.S. and M.E. and discuss. It does not have to be just I/P. I can be about Lebanon, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia or what have you.
Alright here we go...
This week Elvis Costello has decided to cancel two concerts in Israel.
Costello, 55, was set to make his debut in Israel with his new folk-bluegrass band, The Sugarcanes, at Caesarea Amphitheatre north of Tel Aviv on June 30 and July 1.
His decision to cancel came two weeks after telling the Jerusalem Post that the only answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dialogue and reconciliation.
Meanwhile, Costello's wife, Canadian singer Diana Krall from Nanaimo, B.C., is scheduled to perform at Tel Aviv's Ra'anana Amphitheatre on Aug. 4.
A few days ago, an announcement on Costello's website said: "There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung, and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent."
Ma'an News is reporting that Hamas is proposing a 10-year truce, albeit without recognition of Israel.
The proposal put forward by Hamas would see the acceptance of a Palestinian state "in stages" on the green line, the 1967 armistice line, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and "the return of all refugees without recognizing Israel in exchange for a 10-year truce," Al-Haya said during a Hamas conference to mark Nakba Day in Gaza City's Ash-Shuja'iyeh neighborhood.
"This means that if the international community grants the right of return to the six million Palestinian refugees across the world to their homes in Haifa, Yaffa, and Akko [Acre], then there will no longer be an occupying state," Al-Haya said.
The return of Palestinian refugees, he said, would signal the end of Israeli occupation, and was paramount in the movement's 1967 border proposal.
Israel is waging a "fierce war to terminate this right," the Hamas official said, adding that the right return is "the cornerstone of the Palestinian cause."
"These rights will not be restored but by force," he added.
On Thursday, Hamas lawmaker Mohammed Abu Tir was detained for hours after release from Israeli jail, after having served a 4-year term in conjunction with the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
Though the reason for the arrest Thursday is not yet known, it is possible that Abu Tir was summoned for questioning over remarks he had made during a press conference immediately following his release.
Extreme right wing Israeli activist Itamar Ben-Gvir waited for Abu Tir outside the police station in Jerusalem, and yelled out derogatory remarks when the Hamas man exited the station.
Earlier Thursday, Abu Tir urged Israel's leaders to reach an agreement with his organization that would see the release of Shalit, who was captured in a cross border raid in June 2006 and has been held in Gaza by Hamas ever since.
Abu Tir told reporters that if it were "in his hands" he would expedite the prisoner swap deal.
"All Israeli leaders are against the deal to release Gilad Shalit," Abu Tir told reporters following his release. "They reached a deal a number of times, but never followed through. Just like I have a family, a father, mother and children, Gilad Shalit also has a mother and father who want him."
"If only there was a deal, but it's not in my hands, it is in the hands of the leaders," said Abu Tir. "Israel's leaders must think about this. I don't like that Shalit is being held hostage, just as I didn't like being held hostage."
When asked how he felt having been released from prison, Abu Tir said: "I feel good, thank God. I paid a heavy price."
Right-wing activists are vowing to protest Rahm Emanuel's son's Bar Mitzvah in Israel.
Last year, as the Jerusalem Post reports, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said he would come to Jerusalem on Memorial Day weekend for the bar mitzvahs of his son Zach and nephew Noah (son of his brother Ari).
That didn't sit well with far-right Israeli activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who say Emanuel is a "traitor" who is "worse than Hamas."
They believe Emanuel is the driving force between the Obama administration's Israel policy, which has resulted in strained relations between the U.S. and Israel.
Emanuel had planned to hold the bar mitzvah, a religious ceremony held around a boy's 13th birthday, at Jerusalem's holy Western Wall, a popular location for such ceremonies. In a letter to the chief of staff, the two far-right activists vowed to disrupt his plans.
"We promise to accompany your son's bar mitzvah events in Israel, we will make sure to receive you as you deserve to be received ... with catcalls and disgust," they wrote, according to ABC News.
Finally Reuters notes that Palestinians are at the vanguard of an Arab music renaissance.
Growing up in the chaos of the Lebanese civil war, Palestinian composer and singer Marwan Abado used to practise the oud while his friends in a rough Beirut neighbourhood were out carrying knives.
"Marwan thought far ahead of us. The Israelis were laying siege to Beirut. He was resisting with his oud," said Lebanese banker Hussein Jaber, a childhood friend of Abado, who later emigrated to Austria and studied the Arab string instrument under Iraqi maestro Assim Chalabi in Vienna.
"There was no electricity, but we used to play basketball while the night sky was being lit by shelling from warships. The fact that Marwan was a Maronite Christian in (mostly Muslim) West Beirut didn't matter."
Twenty five years after leaving Lebanon, where his family fled from war in Palestine during the creation of Israel in 1948, Abado is on his biggest Arab tour in Amman, Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut and Sidon.
He is part of a small but dogged class of artists working on reinvigorating Arab music by integrating Western influences without detaching it from its roots.