This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since that is the pronunciation preferred by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland.
Tel Aviv mall denies entry to three Arab men
(
story at Haaretz)
Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Mall refused to let in three Arab men earlier this week, with the company saying they were West Bank Palestinians and citing Israeli law under which entry permits are granted only for specific purposes.
“In this case, they were given permits for work only,” the mall said, adding that its guards are responsible for protecting shoppers’ security. “The Azrieli security crew acted in accordance with the law.”
[...]
Senesh, who did not speak with the three, posted the clip on his Facebook page along with a text. “On what grounds does the Azrieli Mall detain Arabs, take their ID cards and ultimately bar them from entering? They came to buy shoes,” Senesh wrote.
“The guard: ‘This is the mall’s order; they don’t want them to come in.’ In truth, it’s wrong for them to dare to spoil the Jewish homogeneity, and on the eve of Memorial Day yet. Arrogant bastards.”
and staying with the same theme, Haaretz editors
write about this episode:
Nes Ammim: A new milestone in Israeli racism
An Israeli family – father, mother and their two small children – submitted its candidacy to live in the community of Nes Ammim. The mother is a lawyer, the father an author and journalist. Both are middle class and able to pay the 1.6 million shekels ($400,000) for the house they wanted to live in. Both are educated and strong-minded and their application to Nes Ammim was based on a solid ideology of coexistence.
[...]
The vetting committee, none of whose members is Arab, held an inexplicable interview with the couple, one that consisted of questions such as, “What will you do if the community invites you to a barbecue on Independence Day?” The committee did not learn about the couple’s opinions only from that interview, but also from articles Hlehel had published in the media, articles that the committee did not like.
Christian cemetery vandalized in northern Israel, church official says
(
article in Haaretz)
Nineteen gravestones and crosses in the Christian cemetery of Biram in northern Israel were vandalized on Wednesday, for the fifth time in recent years. Biram was a Maronite Christian village in the Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border whose residents were ordered by Israeli authorities to evacuate their homes in 1948, with the promise that they would be able to return once the security situation stabilized. They have not been allowed back ever since.
Father Afif Mahoul said that even though the residents no longer live there, since 1967 they have been allowed to bury their dead in the cemetery there; and they hold a mass every week in the church at Biram, where he officiates.
Annual Palestinian March of Return
Thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel took part in the March of Return, in the lands of the destroyed village of Hadatha, near Tiberias, April 23, 2015. "March of the Return” is held every year since 1998 on Israel’s Independence Day to highlight the memory of the Nakba (disaster) of the Palestinian people and to advocate for the right of the Palestinian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons of 1948's displacement to return to their homes.
Activestills
covered the marches this year as they usually do.
JTA has the story: On Independence Day, thousands of Arab-Israelis march for Palestinians’ right of return
Several thousand Arab-Israelis at a protest march in the Galilee on Israel’s Independence Day commemorated Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948.
Near Tiberias, the participants in Thursday’s March of Return, as organizers called it, carried Palestinian Authority flags and chanted slogans on the need to fight court-ordered demolitions of homes of perpetrators of terrorist acts
+972mag has a discussion titled:
Liberating Israelis from the mentality of occupation
Times of Israel: Amid Israel’s independence festivities, Arabs mark Nakba
As Israelis across the nation marked the country’s 67th year of independence Thursday, thousands of Arab Israeli citizens gathered in the Galilee to mark the Nakba — the “catastrophe” of the creation of Israel.
The procession, an annual event titled “The March of Return,” has been held since 1998. Each year organizers choose the location of a different Arab village ruined in the War of Independence and march there, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes. Former villagers who are now displaced inside Israel are invited to come and tell stories of olden times.
+972mag covered the story (with pictures):
Thousands return to destroyed Palestinian villages in Israel
Hadatha, which is located southwest of Tiberias in the Lower Galilee, had around 600 inhabitants before being depopulated across May and June of 1948; now, the area consists of wild fields and scattered groves of trees.
[...]
“These are Israeli citizens. They have Israeli identity cards. And they remain in this country,” explained Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh. “They fled during the war from one village to the next one. And they were not allowed to return.”
“So tell me, what is the problem with them returning?” Odeh continued. “What is the problem with residents of Hadatha returning here? What is the problem with residents of Tzipori [Sepphoris] who fled from Tzipori to Nazareth during wartime returning? It is a good thing for all of us, that the Nakba and Israeli injustice be recognized.”
WikiLeaks shows Sony concerned by IDF's use of its cameras in Gaza bombings
Sony executives were concerned about a news report that showed one of its cameras being used to guide Israeli rockets bombing Gaza, company correspondence shows.
Israeli football chiefs prepare to fight Palestinian FIFA ban call
(
article in Haaretz)
Worried Israeli football chiefs are preparing to fight a Palestinian proposal to have their Football Association suspended from FIFA next month and will meet top officials in Switzerland in the coming week.
[...]
Rajoub (Palestinian FA) has accused Israel of continuing to hamper his FA's activities and is frustrated at restrictions he says Israel imposes on the movement of athletes between the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has raised a number of other issues.
Israel cites security concerns for restrictions it imposes in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule, and along the border with the Hamas Islamist-run Gaza Strip.
[...]
The Palestinian draft resolution calls for Israel's suspension because its actions "inhibit our ability to develop the game".
West Bank outposts: An entire system of dispossession
(
story in +972mag)
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said (Hebrew): “This location was established legally, with the support of the prime minister and the defense minister. True, later someone appealed, an Israeli organization of course, a leftist organization that found some Arab who claims ownership.”
[...]
Let me explain. When an outpost is created, it grabs territory, which later becomes the core of the outpost. This territory often includes private Palestinian land. Around the core there is what is known as the SSA – “special security area” – which Palestinians may not enter except on special occasions, since it serves as the perimeter of the outpost. Outside the SSA there is Palestinian land that becomes a source of friction.
Why is it a source of friction? Because the goal of outposts is to expand. Adei-Ad, our test case, now includes territory nearly 30 times its original size. How do outposts expand? Israeli civilians arrive in the vicinity and either attack Palestinian farmers or damage their crops. This is done in order to terrorize them and force them to abandon their land. When the land is abandoned, it is taken over.
All this ultimately leads to the violation of Palestinians’ right and ability to make a living. Two of the villages near Adei-Ad have already been emptied of many of their residents. An agricultural settlement, after all, cannot exist if its land is taken away by force.
We are not dealing with just one case: there are about 100 outposts. Every time one of them is legalized, it creates a precedent for the legalizing the next outpost, and creates incentives for Israeli civilians to seize more land and terrorize more Palestinians.
This isn’t an accident, it’s a system. The outposts are approved, as Ya’alon admitted, by the defense and prime ministers.
Palestinians petitioning court to get back Jordan Valley land
(
article in Haaretz)
The High Court of Justice is to hear petitions Monday by Palestinians seeking the return of land they own near the Jordanian border and which was given to Jordan Valley settlers to cultivate.
In 1969, two years after the occupation of the West Bank, the army declared the area between the Jordan-Israel border and the nearby security fence to be a closed military zone barred to Palestinians.
[...]
In the 1980s and 1990s, the state allocated these lands to the World Zionist Organization, after an aide to the defense minister, Uri Ben-On, decided in 1981 that that they could be cultivated. In issuing this decision, Ben-On ignored an opinion by the Justice Ministry that prohibited the cultivation of private Palestinian land.
[...]
The state claims that the heirs did not present the required inheritance documents and that such a long time has gone by that the reasons for the transfer of the land to Jordan Valley settlers cannot be traced. In any case, the state argued, the fact that the settlers have had possession of the land for so many years “cannot be ignored.”
Haaretz is sticking with the story:
Settlers farming land Israeli army has closed off to its Palestinian owners
They had tried to farm the land last December but a settler blocked their path, they said. The next day, they were told by the IDF that they were forbidden to enter the area. Aerial photographs of the land showed that some 200 dunams of it was being cultivated for crops.
In its response to the petition last month, the state confirmed that the lands in question belonged to Palestinians. However, it said it had “not completed sorting out the claim” that the land was being cultivated.
[...]
Last week, Supreme Court President Miriam Naor and justices Daphne Barak-Erez and Menachem Mazuz, who heard the petition, criticized the state. “Someone decided to ignore [state] decisions and took rights in private land,” said Mazuz, while Naor noted, “I don’t understand how this can happen.”
Justice Barak-Erez, meanwhile, said, “If it’s a military area and a possibility to farm it, why aren’t those who are entering it the owners? In some closed areas, the owners receive a permit to farm the land. The people should be allowed to exercise their ownership, subject to security regulations.”
“The situation is, in fact, clear,” said Mazuz. “You [the state] admit it’s private land. Handing it over [to the settlers] was apparently contrary to the decisions of the ministerial committee for defense affairs. So the state’s first obligation is to restore the situation to its previous condition ... then we must think about the financial aspects.”
More stories below the fold...
Thousands in Gaza plan int'l protest: It's impossible to live here
(
story at +972mag)
A group of young activists in Gaza are organizing an international day of solidarity to protest against the impossible conditions and human rights violations created by Israel’s and Egypt’s siege, the occupation, internal Palestinian conflicts and poverty.
“Life in Gaza has always been hard. But after Israel’s last attack it became impossible to live here. The problems became worse and the conditions deteriorated to the point that it is no longer possible to live humanely — and nobody cares,” Sajida Alhaj, 21, says in a Skype interview.
Alhaj is part of a group of young activists in Gaza that last month published a call for a mass protest in the Strip on April 29, demanding an end to the siege, the occupation and the human and civil rights abuses that accompany them.
[...]
When you walk down the street, she explains, you see one house standing and one house in rubble, one after another, on and on. In order to reach her university every morning, Alhaj says she must “walk between homes damaged in the war, to walk through places where people were killed.”
“And all that to reach my damaged university just to meet with my professors who haven’t been paid for political reasons,” she adds.
[...]
A group of Israeli women has already answered the call to action and is organizing a solidarity demonstration in Tel Aviv on the same day as the Gaza protest.
.
Hundreds protest conditions in southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods
(
story in Haaretz)
About 200 people assembled at Habima Square in Tel Aviv on Sunday night to protest poor conditions for the elderly and foreign workers in the city’s southern neighborhoods.
The protest came after the deaths of five babies in substandard, unofficial day-care centers for migrant workers, over a two-month period in February and March.
Protesters called for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to “stop abandoning children, black or white” and to “dismantle the ghettos” of south Tel Aviv.
ISIS executes three asylum seekers deported by Israel
(
story at +972mag)
At least three Eritrean asylum seekers who lived in Israel and were deported to a third country were executed by Islamic State militants in Libya this past week, according to family and friends who recognized them in a video released by the extremist Sunni group. The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants is checking the possibility that additional Eritreans deported by Israel were also executed.
[...]
The Israeli government recently announced its intention to begin forcefully deporting Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers. Refugee organizations are concerned that the state refuses to reveal its back channel deals with “third countries,” and worry that those same countries will not guarantee the safety of asylum seekers.
Netanyahu vs. Supreme Court
(
Editorial in Haaretz)
Netanyahu is seeking to implement a change that would allow for re-legislation, with a majority of 61 MKS, of a law that the court struck down for being in violation of a Basic Law. Overturning a Supreme Court decision would be possible with nothing more than the coalition majority, which would allow the coalition to discriminate against minorities that are primarily represented by the opposition, be they the Arab population (today) or the settler population (tomorrow). The importance of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom lies in its effectiveness at defending the weak and minorities, whose rights are often ignored.
Israel refuses visa to South African cabinet minister en route to Palestinian Authority
(story at Haaretz)
Israel has refused to grant an entry visa to the South African Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, who intended to visit the Palestinian Authority next week.
A senior official in Jerusalem said that the reason that the minister's visa request was turned down was because he intended to pass through Ben-Gurion International Airport for the purposes of visiting the Palestinian Authority, rather than visiting Israel.
Another reason, the official said, was Nzimande's radically anti-Israel stance.
Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, issued a statement:
South Africa, he noted in his post, is a country that suffers deeply from racism and violence. "It would be best for the South African government and the Communist Party to desist from attacking and inciting against Israel, which is a glorious democracy that deals exceptionally well, while ensuring maximum human rights and international norms, with threats and terrorist elements which, had they been active in South Africa, would have caused a bloodbath in the streets."
Berlin pro-Hamas Palestinian conference sparks outrage
(
Story in Jerusalem Post)
According to German media, the Berlin Senate interior agency classifies the PGD as an organization with Hamas supporters. Germany and the EU have designated Hamas as a terrorist entity. The interior agency noted that the annual Palestinian conference is “one of the most import activities” of Islamic supporters.
The logo of the conference shows a map of the Middle East without the State of Israel. A major aim of the conference is to demand the return of all Palestinians refugees to Israel. Critics say the “right of return” would dissolve the Jewish character of the state.
Asaf Romirowsky, the executive director of Scholars for Peace in Middle East, told the Post,”the full demand of a right of return represents a clear call for the destruction of the State of Israel. Thereby it is anti-Semitic and not in any kind of way furthering peace. The totality of the right of return gives the impression of a halo and legitimacy of conversation, but in reality demands the destruction of the State of Israel.”
Haaretz also has coverage:
Planned Palestinian conference in Berlin draws Jewish protests
No exit: An Israeli Arab city’s second-class status
A visit to the second largest Arab city [Umm al-Fahm]jordan in Israel, where 53,000 residents live, in the Wadi Ara area of northern Israel illustrates the impasse faced by many Arab towns in the country.
“It takes 20 to 45 minutes [to get out],” says Saliman Mahamid, the long-serving city engineer. “Every resident knows that in order to get to work they must make it through the traffic jam, and 12 hours later they will get stuck on the way back,” says Mahamid, noting that over 50% of the population works out of town. “People work all over the country so they leave early, but everyone sits in the same unbearable traffic jam. There is no city in Israel, certainly not of this size, where the exit and entrance are controlled by one small traffic light. I assume that in a Jewish city of the same size they would have already dealt with the matter,” he says.
It seems Mahamid is right: Over 10 million shekels ($2.5 million) was invested recently in another interchange for the second largest neighborhood in Hadera, Givat Olga, where some 12,000 residents suffered from an infuriating, but much smaller, traffic jam.
[...]
When government ministries invite proposals for a specific project, for example building day care centers, the rich municipalities pull out already prepared plans and have the money to pay outside planning firms to write the budget requests. The engineering departments in Arab towns are very small, and don’t have the money to hire outsiders. While the government considers this to be an equal opportunity process, the result is discrimination. “They present their plans much faster than we do, and their plans are better,” says Mahamid. “The fact is 31 Arab municipalities filed plans for a project to build day care centers, and 31 did not meet the criteria,” he said.
[...]
Mahamid: “At the end of the 1980s, when I would come to government offices, they would ask me: ‘Are you Druze?’ When I would say no, they would say there is no budget. Today the situation is a little bit better, but the lack of trust exists. Once they gave nothing, today they already give, but the distribution is wrong. Good will is important, but not enough.”
Home demolition in Jerusalem: “Tomorrow, I don’t know if I have a place to sleep.”
(
story at Int'l Solidarity Movement)
On Wednesday night, the Tohta family received a demolition order for their house in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz. After being warned that soldiers would come early on Sunday morning for the demolition, the family was joined by a group of about a dozen international supporters. Despite the warning, nothing happened that night – leaving the family afraid that their house could be demolished at any time without prior warning.
[...]
A demolition of the family home will leave the fifteen family members without a shelter. Twelve of them are children aged between four and eighteen years. Jenny, an ISM-volunteer, staying with the family during the night explained: “any noise – a car door slamming somewhere, a voice heard in the vicinity – made everyone turn their head towards it, fearing an imminent destruction of the house. The fear was visible on everyone’s face”.
[...]
Wadi al-Joz located directly outside the Old City of Jerusalem, is a vulnerable neighborhood that has seen three demolitions in the last three weeks. On 31st of March, the army illegally demolished the Amro family home, neighbors of the Tohta’s, without any demolition order or prior warning.
Settler group tries to shut down bi-national Memorial Day event
(
post at +972mag)
The Samaria Settler Council, the same group that recently released a video defaming human rights groups with anti-Semitic imagery, petitions the defense minister to stop Palestinians from participating in, and to pass a law banning an alternative Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony.
[...]
In its letter to the defense minister, the settler group referred to the Palestinians slated to participate in the joint memorial service as “the families of murderers.” The group further called on Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to advance legislation that would ban such events.
In an article with no byline on the website of “Ma’ariv,” which was recently acquired by the Jerusalem Post Group, the majority of which appears to have been copy pasted from a press release, the Palestinian participants are described as the families of “terrorists” and “terror operatives.”
A quick glance at the list of speakers at the joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony is enough to see that the portrait painted by the Samaria Settler Council is far from accurate. Along with bereaved Israeli families, scheduled to speak are: Mazen Faraj form the Daheish Camp, whose father was shot to death by soldiers while returning from work; and Yasmin Ishtayeh of Saalam village, who was born blind, and whose father was murdered by Israeli settlers.
[...]
In addition to settlers, criticism of the ceremony also can be found on the Palestinian side.
“I have Palestinian friends who are angry and who do not understand why I support such an event, but I am not afraid,” said Muhammad Salah of Bethlehem, a member of Combatants for Peace.
Israel must provide alternatives to prison for Palestinian minors
(
story at +972mag)
Israel’s detention and inhumane treatment of Palestinian youth is not new, but an increase in the numbers of Palestinian children arrested, detained, assaulted, and denied education by Israeli military and police forces is raising international awareness and concern. DCI-Palestine reports that Israeli military prisons detained a monthly average of 190 Palestinian children throughout 2014. Israeli military law defines Palestinian youth, ages 12 to 18, as adults in certain regards, whom the IDF can sentence to a maximum of 20 years in prison for an offense, such as stone throwing.
In contrast, Israel utilizes an entirely different, civilian legal system for Israeli youth, including those living in West Bank settlements, sometimes only hundreds of meters from Palestinian villages. If arrested, the Israeli authorities provide Jewish Israeli children with the option to attend alternative-to-prison programs including continued education, mental health treatment, and detention prevention. Israelis are not tried under military law in military courts, and they are certainly not sent to military prisons.
Imprisoned Voices: corporate complicity in the Israeli prison system
(
report from Corporate Watch )
This global movement in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners has been spearheaded and inspired by the struggle of those inside the Israeli prison system. Since 2011 , a wave of hunger strikes organised inside the prison system have won concessions from the Israeli Prison 'Service' (IPS) and have focused world attention on the prisoners' fight.
[...]
In 2012, a call was made from Palestinian prisoners' organisations for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against G4S until the company ceased providing equipment and services to the IPS
[...]
The campaign against G4S continues to gather momentum. On the 16 April 2015, after grassroots pressure from campaigners, over 20 South African businesses terminated their contracts with G4S over its involvement in Israeli prisons and human rights abuses.
While Article 76 [of the 4th Geneva Convention] states clearly that “protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein”.
The fact that Palestinian prisoners are held within Israel's 1948 borders means that many prisoners are never able to receive a visit from their loved ones, who lack the requisite permits. Several of our interviewees spoke of the isolation they felt because their families were unable to visit them, and of loved ones who died without being able to see them again. Removal of visiting rights has also been used as a form of collective punishment. All prisoners from the Gaza Strip were stripped of visiting rights in retaliation for the capture of Gilad Shalit.
[...]
454 Palestinians are currently imprisoned without charge under the 'administrative detention' law. Administrative detention has been imposed on Palestinians since the time of the British Mandate. In its current form administrative detention allows the Israeli state to imprison Palestinians indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence without charging them or allowing them a trial. The term of detention can be renewed indefinitely. Several of our interviewees were held in administrative detention, many of them simply for being a member of a political party. One interviewee told us: “Administrative detention is a kind of psychological torture where you never know if you are going to be released at the end of each detention period... Sometimes they only tell you on the same day as the possible release if they are extending it or not. It is torture for you and for your family”.
[...]
200 children under the age of 18 are in prison, some of whom are under 16 years old. These children are treated the same way as adults during arrest and imprisonment, are often denied access to lawyers or to an appropriate adult during interrogation processes and are denied a proper education while in prison. An international campaign is underway in solidarity with the five 'Hares boys', imprisoned since 2013 for allegedly causing a car accident by throwing stones.
[...]
Our interviews show that physical violence is commonplace in the Israeli prison system, both during interrogation and for long-term prisoners. The interviewees also describe psychological pressure and attempts to recruit them as collaborators during interrogation periods.
[...]
A group of doctors has called for a boycott of the Israeli Medical Association in line with the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. The call is on the basis of the IMA's complicity in torture and Israeli violations of the rights of the civilian population under the fourth Geneva Convention. Dr. Derek Summerfield, a British supporter of the boycott, said it was justified as many Israeli physicians were complicit in the occupation's crimes. According to Summerfield, one Israeli physician had confessed that he had “removed the intravenous drip from the arm of a seriously ill Palestinian prisoner, and told the man that if he wanted to live, he should co-operate with his interrogators.”
The Siege – cultural resistance in Palestine
(
story at Int'l Solidarity Movement)
We were sitting in the Freedom Theatre, a Palestinian community-based theatre and cultural centre located in Jenin Refugee Camp in the northern part of the West Bank. Started in 2006, the theatre’s aim is to generate cultural resistance through the field of popular culture and art as a catalyst for social change in the occupied Palestinian territories. So, after two months of rehearsals, they were finally ready to show us their eagerly anticipated new play.
[...]
Inspired by the true story of a group of freedom fighters, now exiled across Europe and Gaza, The Siege tells of a moment in history that took place during the height of the second intifada in 2002. The Israeli army had surrounded Bethlehem from the air and on land with snipers, helicopters and tanks, blocking all individuals and goods from coming in or out. For 39 days, people were living under curfew and on rations, with their supply of water cut and little access to electricity. Along with hundreds of other Palestinians, monks, nuns and ten activists from the International Solidarity Movement, these five freedom fighters took refuge in the Church of the Nativity, one of the holiest sites in the world.
The play gives some insight into what it was like to be trapped inside the church, surviving on so little, with the smell of decaying dead bodies in the building, shot by Israeli snipers. It brings out the hard choice they were faced with between surrendering or resisting until the end. However, no matter what they chose, they were given no other option than to leave behind their family and homeland for ever, as all the freedom fighters – in reality 39 – were deported and have not been able to come back since.
The play exceeded all expectations! Everyone seemed amazed by what they had just witnessed. We talked with Osama, a student and a friend from the Freedom Theatre School who was brought up in Al Azzeh refugee camp, in Bethlehem. His words were lost in the power of his emotion. “I would have loved to play in that show!”, he finally managed to share. Only 12 at the time when the tanks entered his city, the show related so much to his childhood and brought back many memories of that time in his life. He recounts how the loud bang, heard at the start of the play, was a reenactment of the shot that had pierced the city’s water tank. This sound is still strongly engrained in his mind as it was the start of the long and difficult days that the inhabitants were about to face. “We are under occupation, but we are not weak. We stand up with what we can, be it our bodies, our voices or our guns!” – Osama believes in armed resistance as one of many ways to fight the occupation. And as an actor, it is important for him to represent these resisters in “another way, a good way. We die because we want to live!”
[...]
He explained how this story is not just about what happened during 2002, but is a microcosm of the whole Palestinian struggle. It reveals the continuous Israeli propaganda that has been going on since 1948, representing the Palestinians as terrorists through false accusations. In this particular situation, the Israeli army blamed the fighters for having attacked the church and holding the monks inside it. This has later been proven to be a lie. The truth being that the monks had allowed the fighters in and they were working together during the whole time of the siege.
Here's a contemporary BBC story about the event:
Vatican outrage over church siege
A spokesman for Catholic monks in the Holy Land said earlier that Israeli soldiers were guilty of an "indescribable act of barbarity".
Israel had broken its international obligations and risked "long-term and incalculable" consequences, Father David Jaeger said.
Speaking from Rome, he said monks at the church had reported damage to "sacred spaces" and evidence that Israeli troops had entered the church.
[...]
One Palestinian gunman was shot dead in the battle, the Israeli source said.
But a priest inside the church, Father Amjad Sabbara, told the BBC that the Palestinian killed was a police officer who had been trying to douse the flames.
He said the blaze had burned for an hour, destroying a piano, chairs, altar cloths and ceremonial cups.
and a NY Times story:
Exile agreement appears to settle Bethlehem Seige
Why I won't be celebrating Israel's Independence Day this year
(
Asher Schechter in Haaretz)
Should we really raise a glass to Israel’s rapid descent into a moral and political abyss?
After all, what is there to celebrate this year? The past 12 months in Israel have been rife with internal and external conflicts, international isolation and political corruption. It saw an operation in Gaza last summer that claimed the lives of more than 2,000 Palestinians and 70-plus Israelis, and then was almost instantly forgotten. It saw an ugly election campaign that pitted Israelis against each other: right against left; Jews against Arabs; Ashkenazim against Sephardim; secular against religious – and the reelection of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Should we raise a glass to Israel’s rapid descent into a moral and political abyss? Should we congratulate the young nation on its narrowing democracy, on the growing reliance of its leaders on nationalism and bigotry, on the emotional numbness that seems to have overtaken it in recent years? Should we cheer for the untimely death of the two-state solution, or maybe Israel’s dangerous steps toward apartheid?
Or maybe for the reelection of Netanyahu, which all but guarantees Israel will remain on the same path? Should we toast despair, celebrate apathy? Were national holidays created to ignore or otherwise celebrate stagnation?
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper. The goal is to provide a bi-weekly update on the non-violent resistance movement.
Diplomatic negotiations and actions by armed resistance groups are covered quite widely by the mainstream press and in other diaries on DKos so they will rarely be included.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since this is the pronunciation used by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland. The more familiar Palestine is the Hellenic or Roman variant. Filasṭīn refers to the geographic entity roughly encompassing Israel and Palestine. It is a likely cognate of "Philistine", the name used in the Hebrew bible to describe a rival of the Jewish kingdom of that era.
Prior diaries:
April 19, 2015: Filastin: Shooting kids in the back, segregating female soldiers, state-sanctioned theft
April 12, 2015: Filastin week: Yarmouk refugees, NYU divestment letter, Terrorizing Children
April 5, 2015: Filastin Week: Segregated Streets in Hebron, Palestinians observe Land Day
March 29, 2015: Filasṭin Week by Week: A March for the Bedouin, A License to Kill & To Teach the Nakba
