Abba Solomon notes this year is a year of big anniversaries for America’s chief Zionist organization, “As Palestinians prepared to observe Nakba day, the American Zionist Movement(AZM), the American component of the World Zionist Organization(WZO), in early May sent an announcement to its mailing list celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Biltmore Conference, launching the observance of what it calls a ‘Year of Zionist Anniversaries.'”
Nathan Thrall has an important new book out, “The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine”, arguing that Israel will only end the occupation when it is subject to “severe pressure” from the U.S., and that the U.S. is capable of applying that pressure. In an interview with Phil Weiss and Scott Roth in Jerusalem, Thrall says a two-state solution is the optimal outcome and says that violence on both sides has actually led Palestinians and Israelis to take steps toward such an outcome.
Read an excerpt from Gershon Shafir’s latest book, “A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict,” which investigates the strategies, policies, and historical continuities that promoted Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory. In this excerpt Shafir seeks to answer the question, why has the occupation lasted 50 years? “Israeli colonization, to paraphrase William Faulkner, is not dead; it isn’t even past. The tools of colonization, honed before 1948 to a sharp edge, and subsequently deployed within Israel’s new boundaries, were available and ready to be pressed into service in the territories newly occupied in 1967,” Shafir writes.
U.S. President Donald Trump faces a deadline this Thursday about whether to renew a presidential waiver to delay recognizing occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Jonathan Cook writes, “Whether Trump signs the waiver or not on Thursday, all indications are that the US president – faced with domestic pressures and an intransigent Israeli government – is going nowhere with his ‘ultimate deal'”.
Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike called off the strike this weekend after achieving many demands in 41 days of self-imposed starvation. One thing for sure about the historic strike: it didn’t get a lot of coverage in the U.S. press. A cartoon by Katie Miranda.
Howard Cohen returns to the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran where he meets more members of his student’s, Noor Abu al-Qia’an, family, and finds a cousin who was nearly lynched by a mob of Israelis, “Noor’s expression grew animated with tension and excitement as he related the story, as if he himself was reliving it. His cousin was working in a supermarket in Tel Aviv and had stepped outside into the street to smoke a cigarette. A young man came up to him and demanded aggressively that he show his ID. The Bedouin youth was indignant at this unwarranted intrusion into his life and replied that he was not a police officer and had no right to demand from him anything. ‘Show me proof that you are a police officer otherwise just leave me alone,’ said the youth proudly. The man refused to show any ID and also refused to accept that the Bedouin Arab could defend his rights according to the law like any other citizen and set upon him brutally. His friends who were nearby came to the scene and joined in the lynching. Noor’s cousin was beaten to a pulp and hospitalized as result. ‘I think I remember hearing about this on the news at the time,’ I said. Noor nodded, confirming that the event indeed reached the mainstream news outlets. ‘A campaign was set up for him and he received 80,000 shekels which was paid into his account.'”
Israel’s policy of ‘economic warfare’ against Gaza makes BDS pale in comparison. But Israel would have us think BDS is extreme, and that Israeli policy is moderate.
Jeff Warner traveled to the West Bank with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence’s nine-day summer work camp where 133 Diaspora Jews participated in projects across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, “The very existence of the CJNV delegation, perhaps the largest group of Diaspora Jews ever to come together in Palestine to fight the occupation, makes a powerful statement to American and Israeli political leaders. It is another illustration that Jewish American and other Diaspora Jews do not support Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and are ready to stand up and fight for that principle.”
David Kattenburg attends the weekly Friday protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, whose spring and adjacent agricultural lands were stolen by the Israeli settlement Halamish. 16-year-old protester Ahed Tamimi tells him, “We have to be strong because if we are not like this they will kill us, and they will destroy our land. When I go to the demonstrations I feel I’m more strong.”
AFP reports Israel’s cabinet passed a plan for cable cars to run over East Jerusalem, “Israel’s government on Sunday approved plans to install a cable car to Jerusalem’s Old City, a project likely to anger Palestinians and much of the international community.”