PALESTINE NEWS

Haaretz – Editorial – Palestinian society, like every society waging a struggle for national liberation, feels a special responsibility toward those of its sons and daughters who have sacrificed their lives or their freedom for the collective. Palestinians consider the people we call “terrorists” or “murderers” as “freedom fighters” and “national heroes.” In many cases, as in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it was prisoner leaders who effected reconciliation.-rh

Neve Gordon – Aljazeera – But if there is any hope for this region, the recognition must be reciprocal. The Palestinians, who have no doubt been wronged, must concede, as the late Edward Said urged them to do, that two wrongs do not make a right. Only once there is mutual recognition of the two historical narratives will an opportunity for reconciliation truly emerge.-rh

Ma`an News Agency – Prisoners rights group Addameer said after the hunger strike deal it is “concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.”-rh

Zvi Bar`el – Haaretz – First the settlers annexed the slogan “appropriate Zionist response” to means that for every terror attack and every person killed in one, a new settlement or neighborhood should be built. Not in the State of Israel, since Israel is already a foreign, Tel Avivan state that does not know what genuine Zionism is. The “Zionist response” must be provided in the only Zionist state, the state of the settlers.-rh

Larry Derfner – +972 – The truth, rather, is that by demonizing Nakba Day, the winners of the War of Independence are telling the losers that they’re not even allowed to cry, not in public, anyway.-rh

Julie Holm – MIFTAH – Palestinian children grow up in a very politicized reality; they are affected by the occupation even before they are born. They grow up in a world of checkpoints and walls, a world where every family has had a family member who is or was in prison and where the only tool these prisoners have to get fair treatment is their empty stomachs.-rh

Linah Alsaafin – The Electronic Intifada – “Lamar my love: I know that you are not to be blamed and that you don’t yet understand why your father is going through this battle of hunger strike for the 75th day, but when you grow up you will understand that the battle of freedom is the battle of going back to you, so that I can never be taken away from you again or to be deprived of your smile or seeing you, so that the occupier will never kidnap me again from you.”-rh

Addameer – The demands raised in the collective hunger strike, which was launched on 17 April, included an end to the IPS’ abusive use of isolation for “security” reasons, which currently affects ­­­­19 prisoners, some of whom have spent 10 years in isolation, and a repeal of a series of punitive measures taken against Palestinian prisoners following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, including the denial of family visits for all Gaza prisoners since 2007 and denial of access to university education since June 2011.-rh

Paul Woodward – War in Context – Anyone who is really afraid of the delegitimization of Israel should consider that Israel may face no greater threat than the one posed by its own defenders.-rh

Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – For those who held negative views of Israel influence in the world, the foreign policy of the Israeli State is by some distance the main reason explaining their negative rating (45%).-rh