ALRAY – In a lecture held in Doha, Jibril Rajoub of the Fatah Central Committee suggested three alternatives to the failed peace talks with Israel: to impose an international trusteeship over the Palestinian lands, to resort to a regional integration that would be capable of supporting the Palestinian cause, and to set up an interior national front, using popular resistance as its weapon against the Israeli occupation. ak
Wafa – Israeli forces Tuesday stormed the northern West Bank city of Jenin and the nearby camp, attacking a hospital and homes, as well as destroyed water and power networks in the area. The army deployed snipers at the roofs of homes as well as arrested a 22-year-old in the camp. Following the provocative raid confrontations erupted. Governor of Jenin, Tala Dwekat, who condemned the “ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people” said the Israeli attack campaign was aimed at restoring chaos, insecurity and instability. ak
Ma`an – Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi and PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat to hunger strike Wednesday in solidarity with administrative detainees who have refused meals for nearly 4 weeks.
Interview with Rachel Corrie`s parents
Israel Social TV – Rachel Corrie, a human rights activist from the State of Washington on the US West Coast, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by an IDF bulldozer as she demonstrated non-violently against the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. This week, the High Court will start hearing the family`s appeal to the district court`s ruling that Rachel is responsible for her own death. The interview with Rachel`s parents was made when they arrived in Israel to attend the court hearings. ak
Shabak: Revenge of the Torturers
Richard Silverstein – Tikun Olam – On May 2, Noam R. posted excerpts from the witness testimony of Palestinian minors who said they were interrogated by the Shin Bet, including an 8-year-old boy who said he asked to use the bathroom and was told to pee in his pants and a 15-year-old who said a Shin Bet official put jumper cables between his legs and threatened to turn on the electricity if he didn’t confess. On Noam’s Hebrew-language blog he wrote that he cried that day for the first time since he was 11. See also:http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.591619 [bz]
After Kerry, only BDS may save the two-state solution
Larry Derfner – +972 – Even if Herzog (or Livni, or Lapid) could get elected to lead a center-left government with Meretz and Arabs and all sorts of other good people – which is unlikely; polls show Netanyahu and the right gaining popularity because the public blames the Palestinians for the peace talks’ failure – such a government could not end the occupation and carry out the two-state solution. The reason is that neither a Herzog government nor any other government in today’s Israel can do what’s necessary to meet the Palestinians’ demands, which are backed by the entire world (myself included), and which involve, but are by no means limited to, the removal of between roughly 100,000 and 170,000 settlers from the West Bank. [bz]
On Gaza’s Embattled Margins, Farmers Wage a Quiet Struggle to Reclaim the Land
Joe Catron – The Palestine Chronicle – “In its ‘2013 Statistical Report on Israeli Attacks in the Access Restricted Areas,’ Gaza’s Al Mezan Center for Human Rights reported 57 shooting incidents that year. These resulted in the death of a farmer and eight further injuries, including one child. Over the same period, the center documented 55 incursions to level farmland, in which one additional person was killed and four injured. But in a slither of land that is home to more than 1.8 million people but just some 25 kilometers long and as little as 4 kilometers wide, every patch of earth counts” [ry]
WATCH: The warped narrative of a settler – and of mainstream Israel
Ami Kaufman – +972 – “It’s the narrative of government after government for decades. The fanatic settlers are simply emissaries, nothing more, executing the Zionist mission. It is the narrative of a majority of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine who still believe that after 66 years of occupation and having the most powerful military in the region, that they are still the victims” [ry]
B’Tselem – “The establishment of Ma’ale Adumim had a markedly deleterious effect on the members of the Jahalin tribe. As far back as the 1980s, during development work for the first neighborhoods in the settlement, Israeli authorities demolished tent encampments and at least two permanent structures in which members of the tribe lived. In 1994, the Civil Administration relocated dozens of Jahalin families from land that had been allocated to a new neighborhood in the developing settlement to a site near the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump, on Abu Dis land that Israel had declared state land” [ry]
