Climbing Walls

Death in Jerusalem: An American woman seeks justice for Palestinian husband - latimes.com

2010-08-18T11:29:00.000+03:00

Here is an excellent article about my friend whose husband was killed by the Israelis in Jerusalem last June.

Death in Jerusalem: An American woman seeks justice for Palestinian husband - latimes.com

Justice sought over Jerusalem shooting

2010-07-26T13:40:00.000+03:00

What's the worst that could happen? Oh, yeah...

2010-07-26T13:37:00.000+03:00

I know it has been ages since I posted and I don't know if anyone still reads this blog, but I have a story to tell that is just heartbreaking. Ziad Jilani, the husband of one of my closest friends was killed by the Israeli border police in Jerusalem on Friday, June 11. He drove his car into a neighborhood where kids were throwing stones and it looks like his car was hit and he lost control of it and swerved toward the border police. When they started shooting, he ran for his life, but he was shot several times and fell to the ground. Instead of arresting Ziad at that point, one of the police walked up to him and shot Ziad in the face and body. He never had a chance to explain or defend himself.

My friend is an American like me, who moved to Jerusalem years ago to live close to her husband's family. They have 3 lovely daughters, all US citizens, who are now fatherless. Ziad was a good man. he was a dedicated family man who always put his family first. It was so refreshing to see a married couple who were still so much in love after so many years and I can't even begin to imagine how Moira will cope with the loss of this wonderful husband and father. She has permanent resident status in Jerusalem, and plans to stay in Jerusalem and continue to raise her daughters here.

To compound this terrible tragedy, the initial press reports were calling Ziad a terrorist. He definitely was not, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His wife Moira filed a case in the Israeli courts, but Palestinians, and even pro-Palestinian Americans have gotten little justice from Israeli courts.

Al Jazeera English finally did a piece on Ziad today, and I wanted to share it with you, but blogger has changed and I can't figure out how to embed a YouTube video here. I will try to do it from YouTube later.

on the sunny side

2009-03-31T14:44:00.004+03:00

After my last post, my younger daughter said "People who read your blog will think our yard is so beautiful." She is a "the glass is half empty" sort of person. There are ugly bits for sure, but why would I concentrate on them? She sees mostly the mud and weeds.

But I love the lush greenness of spring. I love the weeds.

If you get down close, they are spectacular. (The picture below was taken from under the tree in the picture above.)

There is this ugly fence all around the front yard. I try to keep it out of my pictures most of the time. See that bush hanging from the wall on the right?

It grows there every year, right out of a crack in the wall.

The flowers are amazing. In 2 months it will look entirely dead, but it will grow back next spring, inshaAllah.

I have been trying to get a good shot of these blue flowers for years, but I have such a hard time convincing my cheap, point-and-shoot camera to focus on them.

One is almost in focus! These flowers are about the size of my little fingernail.

There are so many cool shapes. Look at the little heart shaped seed pods.

Weird and cool.

Some of the flowers are bigger, and it is hard to believe they are wild.

This definitely is a weed, it has vicious thorns on the tip of each point on the leaves, but the pattern is cool.

So I have to be careful of those while I am roaming around trying to get eye level shots of tiny flowers.

I have a horrible time with the yellow and white flowers. They are always over exposed.

So I have to darken the pictures a lot to get any detail in the flower.

And the majority of the flowers are yellow.

I have tried taking the pictures on a cloudy day, but the white still over exposes.

Like so....

See these big leaves? That's khubaysah. The leaves are cooked and eaten, a spring treat my husband loves. I usually wander around taking pictures while I am picking the leaves.

Umm Farouq mentioned khubaysah in a recent post, so I made a point of getting a picture for her. It grows all around the trunks of the olive trees. It doesn't seem to like growing in the open as much. I wish you could come pick some with me Umm Farouq. There is more than I can use.

MashaAllah,

wa alhamdulillah.

I am still here

2009-03-22T13:41:00.007+02:00

I don't know how to begin. I feel like I ought to write some long, angst-y explanation of why I suddenly stopped blogging but I don't feel up to it. I get the blues and withdraw from the world sometimes. Thank you to each of the lovely people who wrote comments to ask where I was and if I am ok. Sorry but I don't think I will respond to each of you individually. Will you forgive me if I offer you a few pretty pictures?

I have been mostly looking at spring through my windows this year. This is the view from my bedroom window.
I really need to get out more, get a little fresh air and sunshine. Today was beautiful, and since the next couple days have rain forecast, I figured I ought to have a look at my yard while I can.The plum tree by my kitchen window has started to bloom. I can't look at those flowers and not feel cheered.
The garden is full of weeds and badly in need of some TLC. Those geraniums should have been pruned back last fall. I hurt my knee in October and haven't done a bit of yard work since.
Things are springing up all over the place. These snapdragons grew by themselves in the crack between the house and the sidewalk.My camera's batteries need replaced. They don't hold a charge for very long. I charged them over night and then ran around the house snapping pix quickly before the batteries went dead.I don't know why but I can't get a good picture of how the wildflowers look except as closeups.

What just looks like grass in this picture contains thousands of tiny flowers.The cat divides his time between chasing butterflies in the flowers and waiting at the door for my husband to feed him.
Stupid kitty.This all will need to be dug by hand. The plow can't get in these narrow parts of the yard without trampling the plants I want to keep.
Everything looked pretty today.The field behind the house is full of pretty red flowers, but they don't grow much in my yard. I love to look at them, but it never looks as nice in the pictures.Luckily, my youngest picked me a hand full of them on his way home from school, right before my batteries went dead. (The color here is totally wrong. They are a deep, true red.)
Bye for now. InshaAllah it won't be another 6 months before I post again.

Jerusalem is now

2008-09-28T23:37:00.002+03:00

This article is from Al-Ahram Weekly, but I found it at the Palestine Monitor. I don't recommend that you follow the link to the Al-Ahram site, because Google says that the site has had some sort of malware that downloads from it. Anyway, I liked this so much that I decided to print it all here instead of just linking to it. It's all about delay tactics. The goal seems apparent, to delay making "peace" until the older generation that remembers the nakba is gone, so that no one is left to say, "that was my house, there is my home." They think the old will die and the young will forget. Do they think that Jews spent centuries saying "next year in Jerusalem," but Palestinians will forget in a generation?

Jerusalem is now
Al-Ahram Weekly Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP
26 September 2008

One doesn’t need to be an expert in the so-called "peace process" to know that Israel’s aim for the past 40 years has been to deny the Palestinians their rights. Having failed to break the backbone of the Palestinians and end their resolve to resist, Israel resorted to delay tactics. When not postponing urgent issues, it tried to empty from them all meaning. Thus the idea of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state was diluted into that of creating a self-rule entity, shorn of any real authority, over fragmented patches of land.

This is what the Oslo process managed to produce over the past 15 years or so. The number of settlers in the occupied territories has doubled. A wall of racial segregation has been erected. The West Bank has been cut off from Gaza. And Jerusalem is now surrounded on all sides and stranded, with little or no connection to other Palestinian areas. When negotiations resumed, Israel tried to impart legitimacy on its major settlements, refusing to discuss the matter of the refugees and insisting on postponing any decision on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Israelis tirelessly tried to change the face of Jerusalem, building settlements inside and around it, altering and Judaising it by the day.

Israel is now suggesting a Palestinian state with "interim borders". In return, it wants the Palestinians to give up, effective immediately, the right of return of the refugees. Israel also wants the Palestinians to cede claims to large swathes of their land — land that has been gulped up by settlements, land surrounding the Dead Sea, land in the Latrun villages (Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba), etc. Israel is not in a mood to discuss Jerusalem right now. But it is in a good mind to build more settlements inside and around it.

Israel may be changing its rhetoric, but not its tactics. Instead of opposing a Palestinian state, it is willing to accept a state that has no sovereignty to mention. Instead of keeping every single settlement it has created on Palestinian land, it is willing to pull out 3,000 settlers, leaving 450,000 in place.

Everything Olmert and Barak have said so far suggests that they want to transform Jerusalem beyond recognition. The Jerusalem we all know is not the one they have in mind. The Jerusalem of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, Salwan, Al-Issawia, and other parts of the old town, is about to look very much like the neighbourhoods that have sprouted all around it: Izariya, Abu Dies and perhaps Beit Hanina.

Every time Palestinian negotiators give an inch, Israel takes a mile; the Oslo Accords are but a case in point. It is fine to negotiate, but not when negotiations undermine the very basis of international resolutions and norms. UN resolutions — backed by rulings from the International Court of Justice — state that all the land Israel grabbed since the morning of 5 June 1967 are occupied territories. This goes for the old city of Jerusalem and its surroundings, the West Bank, Gaza, the Latrun villages, the Golan, and even the Shebaa Farms.

Egypt insisted on taking back every inch of Sinai, just as Syria is holding out for every inch of the Golan. The Palestinians cannot accept less. We must insist on Israel’s withdrawal from all the occupied land, instead of being talked into a risky land exchange. It is bad enough that Israel took in 1948 half of the land the 1947 UN partition plan gave to the Palestinians. We don’t need to make things worse.

And what exactly is going on in negotiations? It’s all kept under a tight lid, except for the randomly leaked piece of info suggesting that the issue of Jerusalem would be postponed, yet again. The Palestinian people are left in the dark about what’s really going on. Given the bitter experience of Oslo, when a done deal was hatched behind the back of official negotiators, this doesn’t augur well.

Everyone knows that giving up Arab Jerusalem, or any part of it, is not an option acceptable to the Palestinian people. Also, any interim solutions, especially those postponing discussion of Jerusalem, are highly risky if not an outright sign of capitulation.

The last thing we need is another deal that undermines our rights and weakens our people. Those negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians bear a huge responsibility in this moment. Anything they do can have long-term consequences for us all.

Israelis for Obama

2008-09-28T09:43:00.003+03:00

Well, I am convinced........ that there is no hope.
HT al-Falasteenyia

al Aqsa on Friday

2008-09-28T08:51:00.003+03:00

UN-truth has some pictures of the crowds at Masjid al-Aqsa on Friday night, and also some pictures from the Qalandia checkpoint earlier that day.

She was wondering how so many people managed to get there despite all the checkpoints. Plenty of people who wanted to go, didn't make it. A friend of my son's from university tried to get into Jerusalem for Jummah and Taraweeh, but he is young and has a West Bank ID, so he tried to sneak through. He got caught, held for a few hours and roughed up a little. Then the forced him to sign a paper, ostensibly to promise he won't try it again, and then released.

Ramallah at night

2008-09-25T22:47:00.005+03:00

I know these pictures are pretty blurry, but I wanted to show what Ramallah is like at night at the end of Ramadan. We went out for iftar and then shopping. Look at the see-through people! I had the shutter speed set at 1 second.It was very crowded, but there were hardly any cars, and everyone was walking in the streets. The were street vendors selling balloons and toys all over the place, and everyone seemed cheerful except my poor husband. He hates shopping more than I do.
The guy on the left is selling sunglasses, and the girls in the red and pink hijabs are my daughters. I guess the good thing about blurry photos is that you don't have to worry about invading someone's privacy putting the pictures online.

It's gone

2008-09-24T21:11:00.005+03:00

I have tried to be so careful with the water this summer. I let a lot of the garden die, because I was trying to save the water from the cistern for use in the house. I always use it to wash the clothes and floors, and when the water from the main runs out we use the cistern water to flush the toilets and wash the dishes. I have gotten used to having the garden hose coming through the salon window and running to the kitchen or bathroom. The kids are even used to using it for their baths, after heating some on the stove.
Today it was cloudy and on the cool side, but these pretty yellow flowers we beginning to get wilted looking. (I took the pictures a few days ago.) The orange ones have almost finished for lack of water. I am trying to train them to grow over the ugly chain link fence.So I decided to go out and water the garden. Before I got even half way finished, the water stopped. It's empty. We have got about a month before there is a chance of any substantial rain. And then this evening, the water containers on the roof ran out. So no baths tonight, no toilet flushing. I PRAY the water will come on tomorrow, inshaAllah.

I hate shopping

2008-09-22T21:59:00.006+03:00

MashaAllah

Obviously, there is something odd about me. Women are supposed to love shopping, especially for clothes. Women are supposed to love fancy clothes and weddings and dancing and all that stuff. But I seem to have been born without that gene. I even hated clothes shopping when I was a teenager. My favorite place to shop was in my sister's closet. She liked to shop and brought home the nicest clothes. I would look at her wearing them a couple of times, and if I decided I liked the way she looked in them then they probably would be ok on me. She liked to shop... she could go buy more. ;-) My oldest daughter is like her. "Shop 'till you drop" is fun to her, not a threat. And she is good at it too, and finds lots of bargains.

Well, Miss Shop 'Till She Drops is getting married in less than a month. And oh my goodness there is a lot of shopping involved in getting married. In this culture, the groom pays for almost everything. Not only does he have to buy the wedding dress and gold jewelry, but he also has to buy his bride a new wardrobe. Some of everything. Suitcases full of new clothes. Then he has to buy furniture and rent a hall, and feed the guests. He pays for it, but she usually goes shopping with her mother and future mother-in-law. We went and chose the dress the week before Ramadan. It was too hot, but it was almost fun to see my daughter trying on wedding dresses. She looked so happy. And lovely. And I am pleased to report that I didn't cry even once. In public at least.
After the dress was chosen, well, that's when my enthusiasm ran out. Sure I want to see my daughter get all the pretty stuff she wants, but I would rather not have to walk all over creation to do it. Luckily, I got out of my motherly duty after only one day because they decided to shop in Jerusalem and I don't pass the checkpoint. So they finished it without me. I am sure I should be sad, or at least guilty, but I am not.

I always thought people here were to into the gold jewelry, but my daughters are not. Neither of them likes wearing gold much, but my older daughter loves the bling bling stuff. Which is fine, since the bride is supposed to get one of these rhinestone-y sets to wear with the wedding dress before they give her the gold. I am usually content to go along with whatever local customs are if they are important to other people, but there is one custom I just cannot tolerate. A lot of the weddings I go to have one part where the bride sort of sashays around the stage to the beat of a drum holding a Qur'an in a weird, fuzzy white cover. I have no idea why they do this. I don't think it is a custom for all Palestinian families, maybe it's only the Khalilis who do it. (Khalili = someone from the city of Hebron, which is called al-Khalil in Arabic. My husband's family is originally from there, although my husband was born in Jerusalem.) Anyway, I always found this custom inappropriate., and told my daughter that I do not want her to do it. We saw these examples in Ramallah. It looks like they are not whole Qur'ans but just 2 pages on a base that looks like a book. But look carefully at them. They have glitter hearts glued *on top of* the page, on the writing! A'uthu billah! Who thinks this is appropriate? These*will*not*be*at*my*daughter's*wedding! My biggest headache now is that I have to get a dress. No, I have to get at least 2 fancy outfits. My daughter will not let me wear my plain old black jilbab. Unfortunately I am a little on the big side. OK, not a little. And I am also taller than the average Palestinian woman, although I wouldn't be considered tall in the US. My sisters-in-law mostly come up to my shoulder. So finding clothes for me is a headache. I was hoping to get a nice conservative suit, or a plain dress with a pretty jacket. No luck. We went to the shop where I bought a dress for the engagement party last winter. That time, I got a rather simple brown dress with brown sequins on it. We went to several shops that had fancy falahi (village) and Khaliji (gulf) style dresses. My daughter insists that I choose something fancy, and glittery.I like the traditional embroidered dresses, but no one in my husband's family wears them. It's a falahi thing it seems, and his family are "city folks." But I would love to have one of the cross stitched dresses anyway. Many of the women in the village I live in wear just gorgeous hand made dresses as a regular thing. I fell in love with the machine embroidered green one below, but they didn't have my size. I don't think my daughter would have thought it was fancy enough for her wedding anyway.
I love-loved this faux calligraphy embroidery abaya we saw, but of course that wasn't fancy enough either.This dress fit, just. She didn't seem to think it was fancy enough. Everything that fit and I thought was comfortable looking wasn't fancy enough.I kind of like these two. They were a little snug, but the lady in the store said they could be let out. I wish the burgundy one didn't have those big gold jewels. The fabric is kind of shiny although that doesn't show in the picture, and it is supposed to be wrinkly like that. I hated the pink one, but the brownish might be ok.
The problem is that I like looking at this stuff, but I really want to buy it and hang it on the wall to look at, not wear! I wish my big sister could come and wear them a few times so I could decide, lol.
We also looked at fabric. I can't understand why fabric stores here are so small and have such a limited selection. I miss shopping in the US. The problem is I am not too confident about trying to make a fancy dress for my self. I am an ok seamstress when I have a pattern, but I don't have a pattern for a nice jacket. And I would be nervous cutting into an expensive piece of fabric. The dots on the fabric in the picture below are all glittery, but it didn't show in the picture, so I "photoshopped" some glitter into it.We spent the day shopping, and I still have no idea what I will wear. I didn't spend this much time on MY wedding clothes.

Something I noticed about the wedding dresses here. None of them have sleeves. They are all strapless or have narrow straps. You can buy little bolero type jackets to go over them for mixed weddings, but the weddings in our family are segregated. The bride wears a long hooded cape over her dress when entering and leaving, and during the short part of the party when the not closely related men will come in to congratulate the couple. The ladies all show up in their abayas and jilbabs, but they shed those during the women only part of the party so they can dance, dance, dance. My in-laws love to dance.

My mother actually picked out my wedding dress. It was off white had long sheer sleeves and a high neckline. It was sort of Victorian looking and I wore an antique brooch at my throat. It suited me perfectly, and was much more modest that anything I saw in the shops here.

I got married in the US, and when we came here, my in-laws wanted to make us a Palestinian style wedding. I said "thanks, but no thanks." (Unlike Ms. Palin, we didn't take the money anyway. Can I get through a post without mentioning something political? Probably not.) I am just not into all this hooplah and fancy clothes and dancing. Ya Allah! And they are going to expect me to dance too! I forgot I have that to worry about too.

This last picture was taken out of a window in one of the buildings we were shopping in. It is looking north from the center of Ramallah. As you can see, Ramallah really isn't a big city. Before you get to the hills in the back you will see farms, not city. Actually, I think you can find fields of olive trees less than a 15 minute walk from the center of Ramallah. And I have seen a horse drawn cart going through the center of town and passing the Palestinian Legislative Council's building many times, although I never manage to get a picture of it. And it is not there for tourists or something, just regular use hauling stuff.

MashaAllah

more pictures of people trying to reach Friday prayers

2008-09-21T23:34:00.004+03:00

Ok, I confess to being a little fixated on this topic. Anne Paq's blog has 2 posts of pictures from the Bethlehem checkpoint into Jerusalem, here and here. Her website is full of moving, emotional pictures of Palestine too. The active stills site is also excellent. I hope they will forgive me for posting 2 of my favorites from last week. I love the way she caught the shadows in this one. I want to take pictures like this.

more Ramadan pictures

2008-09-21T11:30:00.002+03:00

If you didn't already see the link on Sunni Sister's blog, check out these photos about Ramadan from the Boston Globe. Surprisingly, there are several from Palestine, including more pictures of Qalandia (Kalandia) checkpoint.

Ramadan lights

2008-09-21T09:46:00.002+03:00

UN-Truth posted a few more pictures of Jerusalem's old city streets decorated with lights. When I lived in Jerusalem years ago, I don't remember them decorating like this. I used to wish that Palestinians decorated with lanterns like I read they do in Egypt. I keep wanting to buy some of these lights when I am out, but my money always runs out before the list of stuff I am supposed to buy does.

hoping to be allowed to pray in al-Aqsa

2008-09-20T10:57:00.005+03:00

This picture was on the BBC this morning.

West Bank Palestinians wait to be granted access through the Israeli checkpoint at Kalandia so they can attend Friday prayers in the al-Aqsa mosque in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem(Photograph: Kevin Frayer/AP)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/middle_east_enl_1221839171/html/1.stm

I'm wondering about you!

2008-09-19T06:10:00.007+03:00

L_Oman from Culture Shocked started a game of tag. She asked:

Am I the only blogger out there that sometimes thinks of other bloggers?
Have I lost it? Gone over the edge? Is it right? Is it ok?

Oh dear! If it is not "right" and "OK," then I am really in trouble because I am always wondering about the other bloggers I read. So L_Oman tagged me. She wants each of us to list 5 other bloggers that we think about.

Post at least five blogs that you read and tell us what you wonder about with them!

So I have been pondering this for a couple days now, and I have no idea how to choose just 5. If you look at my blog roll, you will see that I have way too many blogs I try to keep up with. LOL, my Google reader has twice that many.

Beth used to have a blog called "Indiana Beth," but she recently moved to Jordan and now it's called The United States of Jordania. She hasn't posted a lot lately, and I am wondering how she is adjusting to the big changes and how is her Ramadan going? And Molly from The Confessions of a Multicultural Muslimah just moved to Egypt and Izzy Mo just moved to Dubai, so I am wondering how all three of them are doing.

Najiya from Prairie Heart of Damascus doesn't update very often, but I often wonder what is going on in her world. She teaches English in Syria, and she has written a novel. Cool, huh?

Aaminah Hernández has been updating her blog a lot lately, journaling about how her Ramadan is going and posting some very useful hadith for building an Islamic character. I keep checking her blog to see if she is meeting her goals and if she has gotten over the nasty cold she got as soon as Ramadan started.

Saha has recently returned from Yemen where she was studying, and I have been reading about her trip and some life changing experiences she had in Yemen Journey. The Cairo Gyro is by a sister who is studying Arabic in Egypt, and Damascus dreams was studying Arabic in Syria, although she has not updated in nearly a year. I always want to hear more about their travels and studies. I wonder what it is like. To be honest, I am kind of jealous of their chance to concentrate on their own education, although I don't think I would have been up to what Saha went through.

I always make Southern Muslimah one of the first blogs I check if she has posted. I am jealous of her too, because she has been involved in this wonderful project to assemble packages of food to distribute this Ramadan, and before that they made up backpacks full of supplies for poor kids going back to school. I wonder how she got all that organized and wish I was doing something as good as that too.

In addition to L_Oman's blog Culture Shocked I always read Stranger in this Dunya and Susie's big adventure but they both have been tagged already. I would love to have them over for tea along with AlienBea from Underwater Light , KhadijaTeri and mamamona, so I could hear more about their kids and lives.

Amy from Ibnat al-Hidayah: Daughter of Guidance sounds really interesting. She is about my daughter's age and I wonder how her school work is coming along and how she is coping. I wish I had had a friend like her when I was in college.

I also wonder about a wayfarer's journey... and Outlines since they are both pregnant, may Allah give them safe deliveries and healthy babies, inshaAllah. And I wonder when JD is going to post more baby pictures at Dunner's. What a darling, mashaAllah, mashaAllah!

There are a bunch of Palestinian bloggers that I wonder about, but they don't have the kind of blogs where they play games like tag. I always read Joy in Palestine's blog I Saw it in Palestine. She is a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team and she was living in a very small village called Tuwani south of Hebron where the people are often subject to attacks from settlers. Joy has gone back to the US now, temporarily I think, but her friend Jessica is there writing Ordinary People. Orphans Under Threat is all about the schools and orphages run by an Islamic charity in Hebron that the Israelis are planning not only to close, but to confiscate so no one can use them. That blog is maintained by another CPT member. Then there is Hannah in Palestine and Nora in Palestine. I used the signature "Carol in Palestine" for years and years, but I guess that was not so original, lol. Neither is alajnabiya. I have run across 4 other variations of the name ajnabiya online since I started using that name. :-( Back to my topic, Body on the Line is an American woman teaching at an Najah University in Nablus. I always wonder how all these people ended up in the West Bank. And there is UN-Truth and Our life in Jerusalem, who are westerners in Jerusalem.

From Gaza, with Love, tabula gaza, Contemplating from Gaza and Gaza Gardens: The Save Gaza Blog are all by people living in Gaza. How do they manage? May Allah give them strength and change their situation for the better. Is the Gaza gardens project still going, I wonder? They gave seeds and chickens to people and helped them to be a little more self reliant.

There are 2 more pro Palestinian bloggers that I wish I knew more about, Lawrence of Cyberia and bruised earth, but they both have serious, not chatty blogs. I assumed that Lawrence of Cyberia was a guy, but apparently he's a she. There is a link to a facebook profile on the page, and I have almost been tempted to join facebook just so I can read more about the author of this excellent blog.

I have resisted joining facebook, because I already spend way too much time online, can't you tell?????

Who you telln' to get a life? hmm...... Was I supposed to choose 5?

Is it too late for an American overseas to register to vote?

2008-09-17T12:09:00.004+03:00

If you are an American living overseas, how can you vote in this November's presidential election? I heard about this site yesterday on NPR, and looked at it today. You can fill out the forms to register and request an absentee ballot online and then print them out. Some states will allow you to email them, but you have to look up each state's rules. I was last living in California, which allows you to fax them as long as you also mail the signed forms. If your ballot does not arrive on time, there is also a way to print out a Federal write in absentee ballot, provided you register first. Honestly, I wasn't going to bother to vote, but this business about McCain supporters sending out 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West has me mad.

The site is called Overseas Vote Foundation and here is a video explaining it all.

Ramadan midpoint

2008-09-15T22:42:00.004+03:00

Ramadan is half way over already, and it has been pretty good so far. I set myself what I thought were pretty modest goals, and for the most part I have kept up with them. I haven't sat down at the TV all month, although I did check out some news videos online including the hurricane Ike devastation today. MashaAllah! May Allah help the people effected.

I finished the 16th juz in the English translation of the meaning of the Qur'an this evening, so I'm doing ok there. Today's reading finished Surah al Kahf, which is my absolute favorite surah. The story of Musa (Moses) (alahi salaam) and Khidr (alahi salaam) makes life make sense to me. We think that things we don't like are tragedies, but sometimes they are blessings. Sometimes disasters like hurricanes are opportunities for so much good. They can bring communities together, give us opportunities to be charitable, remind us of how impermanent material things are and how valuable our families are. They should remind us to be grateful for what we have and warn us that it may all be taken away. And they hopefully teach us to practice sabr (patience). When the last hurricane was heading for New Orleans, I read some right wing Christian Zionist's blog who claimed that the hurricane was God's punishment because Condoleezza Rice had been here trying to force Israel to divide Jerusalem to make peace with the Palestinians. Not only does that man's arrogance astound me, thinking that he can speak for God's intentions, but I am always amazed that people think that one event has only one reason and one meaning. If Allah sends a hurricane to blow down my whole neighborhood, perhaps he is punishing some people, testing others' gratitude, removing some evil from others and forcing others to make changes in their lives that they would have been too afraid to try otherwise. We look at all the complexity of the natural ecological systems that brought a hurricane into being and say "God did that," but then refuse to see the complexity of WHY He may have done that. Perhaps I am not explaining my meaning well, because it is late. Ya Rabbi, please help me to benefit from the tests You send me!

My third goal was to memorize al Zilzal and al 'Adiyat, inshaAllah. I have pretty much got al 'Adiyat down, though I still make mistakes. But I haven't even learned to read Zilzal properly yet. It takes me a long time to convince my tongue to pronounce the Arabic correctly.

The last goal was to avoid all the over eating and sweets that are so often part of Ramadan. The sweets have been pretty easy to avoid, since my husband wants qatayyif almost every day, and I don't like it much. I ate one so far. But today I made banana bread, and ate 2 big chunks of it. That's much more tempting to me. But don't worry, the temptation is gone, since my kids gobbled it up as fast as they could. Other than that, I think I have done well.

I missed suhoor twice so far, both times I am sure that I set my alarm but when I woke up it was off and I don't remember turning it off. The first time I woke in time to pray fajr, but the last time I missed it. So I ought to head to bed now so that that doesn't happen again, inshaAllah. I hope everyone else is doing well this Ramadan and meeting their goals.

Pictures of al Aqsa

2008-09-06T22:57:00.003+03:00

UN-truth posted some pictures taken at Taraweeh and Jummah prayers at al-Aqsa mosque yesterday. I wish I was there.

For more pictures, Visual Dhikr has a wonderful 360 degree panoramic view of the inside of the al Aqsa Mosque (not to be confused with the Dome of the Rock with it's gold dome and blue tiles).

Malek's Page on Bayt Al-Maqdis has more pictures of the whole al Aqsa compound, and and explanations and descriptions of the different buildings.

Friends of al Aqsa has a page that describes all of the little buildings around the al Aqsa compound. I used to sit with my friends under the "Dome of the lovers of the prophets" to study Qur'an together, while our little kids ran around and played in the gardens. (They are college students now.) This site used to have a very nice interactive guide, but it doesn't seem to be working for me now. InshaAllah it will be back.

Ramadan ramblings

2008-09-02T10:29:00.005+03:00

It's Ramadan already and I survived the first day. I hope averyone who is reading this and who celebrates/observes the fast of Ramadan will have a successful and rewarding month. The only thing I really did to prepare for Ramadan this year was to cut out most of my caffeine consumption for the last 2 weeks. It's usually caffeine withdrawal that gives me headaches the first few days of Ramadan, so I tamed that addiction ahead of time so that my first day of fasting was blissfully headache free, alhamdulillah. I was really worried about not being able to drink water during the day since the weather has been so hot lately, but as usual it wasn't as hard as I had anticipated, alhamdulillah. I always fear Ramadan, worried that I will struggle, but Allah makes it easier for me when the time comes, alhamdulillah again. It always amazes me that I have such a hard time sticking to a diet all year long, but fasting comes so easy. The thing I struggle with the most is just the lack of sleep. I hate to sleep during the day, but the night just isn't long enough!

The first year I fasted Ramadan was in 1983, technically before I had embraced Islam. I was sort of trying things out that year. I hadn't read the Qur'an yet or leared to pray, but there was something special about Ramadan and the fasting that drew me to Islam. That year Ramadan started toward the end of May, and I think it included the longest day of the year in June too. MashaAllah I feel I was so much younger and stronger then and nothing seemed hard. Now I am worried about the upcoming Ramadans and the long hot days. I miss air conditioning!

Last year I was so prepared for Ramadan. I was already reading Qur'an daily and memorizing. In the last few months I have been doing a lot of backsliding, so my goals this year are to get back to making as many prayers and reading and memorizing like I was last year. So these are my goals for the month:

1. No television! The TV stations in the Arab world seem to think that Ramadan is the month for TV. They put on all sorts of dramatic series and special shows. But I don't want to waste my time on TV. I got this banner from the blog Deja Vu, via Global Voices Online.2. Read the whole translation of the meaning of the Qur'an in English again. I use Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam Malik's translation of the meaning. It was a gift from a dear friend 2 years ago (May Allah reward you dear sister!) and I love it. Last night I finished the first juz, and this aya reminded me of a post I had read on the blog UN-TRUTH called "You know it's Ramadan when...." about the restrictions placed on Palestinians from the West Bank attending Friday prayers in al Aqsa Mosque.

Who is more unjust than the one who prevents people from the Masãjid (place of worship) of Allah , forbids the mention of His name therein, and strives to ruin them ? It is not proper for such people to enter in them except with His fear. For them there is disgrace in this world and grievous punishment in the Hereafter. 2:114

The Israeli's rules for who is allowed to attend Friday prayers are as follows:

Married men between the ages 45-50 and married women between the ages of 30-45 who have received permission from the Civil Administration.
Men over the age of 50 and women over the age of 45 will be allowed to enter freely.

I am digressing from my goals...

3. Memorize al Zilzal and al 'Adiyat. That will give me almost 6 whole pages memorized, plus a few other ayat. Memorizing has never been my stong suit.

4. My final goal is to avoid the endless deserts and rich foods everyone serves during Ramadan. Just because I fasted all day does not mean that I ought to over indulge at night.

West Bank Water Crisis Coverage

2008-08-23T18:37:00.003+03:00

The BBC's website and al Jazeera both had coverage this week about the water situation here in the West Bank. The village I live in is connected to the West Bank water system, and the water has been off several days each week most of the summer. We have storage tanks on the roof of the house so we don't immediately run out of water when the main line runs out, but many times the storage tanks ran dry too. Alhamdulillah we live in a house with a cistern to collect the rain water that fell on the roof during the winter, so we use that when the water is off. Last week the water went off on Tuesday, and our storage tank on the roof was empty by Wednesday night. I have dozens of bottles of drinking water stored around the house, and we use the garden hose from the cistern to bring water to wash and flush toilets. That week the water stayed off until Saturday. This week the water went off on Tuesday as usual, but I did dishes and made everyone bathe with the well water so that the storage tank on the roof didn't run out. And I always use the hose to fill up my washing machine. I am so glad I have an American style top loading machine! My friend down the street lives in an apartment building without a cistern, and it is much harder for her. When her water runs out, it is really hard, since she has 5 kids. Can you imagine not being able to flush the toilets regularly? But I know that we still have it better than all those villages that aren't even connected to a water supply, like those in the article and video below. On the other hand, in one of our neighboring villages, they are connected to the same system as the neighboring Israeli settlement, and their water is on all the time.

I used to mostly use the cistern's water for my garden and cleaning outside, but this year I have let a lot of the garden die. Last year the cistern ran dry before the summer was over, and I can't afford to have that happen again. Much as I love flowers, flushing the toilets is a higher priority.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7571779.stm

West Bank struggles for water

By Wyre Davies
BBC News, Jerusalem

The former United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Ghali, may not have been right when he said in the 1990s that the next major war in the Middle East would be about water, not politics.

His statement, though, accurately reflected the strategic and political importance of water in the region.

For Israelis and Palestinians the control of water is almost as important as the control of land.

This year, much lower than average rainfall has led to drought conditions.

In Israel it is only just beginning to have an impact, but just a few miles away in the occupied West Bank, the crisis is much more acute for the Palestinians living there.

'Humiliating'

Rabab Zorab lives just outside Bethlehem. Her husband has a good job and they have a comfortable home.

But, playing with her one-year-old daughter Justina, Rabab said it was humiliating having to wash at the homes of family members, or to go days without clean clothes because they have no water.

The Zorab family hasn't had running water for more than two weeks.

Like every other family in this apartment block they have "back-up" tanks on the roof.

The tanks, though, are nearly empty despite the family's careful attempts not to use much of the precious water.

Abir Suqar lives in the same apartment block. She also has young children, two small boys, and has nowhere near enough water to do her daily chores.

"There's no water to have a bath or shower," says Abir.

The young mother looks almost embarrassed as she says she is having to buy the boys new clothes because she cannot wash the ones they have.

In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians only have one-third of the minimum daily amount of water recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Official figures show that per capita water consumption is three times less than in Israel, even though Israelis and Palestinians theoretically share many of the same water supplies.

Growing population

It is all about control.

Agriculture is an important industry in Israel and the country has developed some of the world's most efficient irrigation systems.

But the cultivation of non-native crops - like bananas, which consume large amounts of water - is controversial.

Human rights groups accuse Israel of using its occupation of the Palestinian territories to control the supply of water from vast underground aquifers.

Uri Shani, the Director of Israel's Water Authority, says the problem is more fundamental.

"The population of this region - Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Jordan - has grown by more than 20 million in the last century", said Mr Shani.

"All of these people use, consume and drink water."

One of the West Bank Palestinians' greatest grievances is that while they struggle with irregular or unpredictable water supplies, nearby Jewish settlements enjoy the benefits of regular access to running water.

The settlements, considered illegal under international law, are highly controversial and, like water, are seen as one of the biggest obstacles to peace.

The Israeli government insists that all communities in the West Bank - Jewish or Palestinian - have the same access to resources.

'Crisis management'

The Head of the Palestinian Water Authority is Shaddad Attili.

With a shrug of the shoulders, he says that because of the Israeli occupation he is utterly disempowered to do anything about the chronic shortage of water.

" I am the minister for "virtual" water," says Mr Attili, without a hint of a smile.

On a map of the West Bank he shows that the Mountain Aquifer lies largely under Palestinian territory, but says his department is prevented by Israel from sinking wells to extract water.

"All I do is crisis management. I can't even put two ends of a pipe together without Israel's permission", he says, somewhat sarcastically.

Israel insists that it is supplying the Palestinians with more than their agreed share of water, under interim agreements.

In the meantime Israel is helping to ease the pressure on traditional supplies by developing alternative sources of fresh water, especially desalination plants on the coast.

But with more than two million Palestinians in the West Bank not connected to a running water supply, there are concerns that the current drought may lead to an even more unfair distribution of this precious resource.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7571779.stm

Published: 2008/08/20 10:47:39 GMT

The checkpoint is gone!?!

2008-08-22T07:27:00.004+03:00

When my husband told me they Israelis were removing the checkpoint between where we live and Ramallah yesterday, I thought he was joking, but they really did it. Honestly, I would not be surprised if they put it back later, but I hope it stays gone at least until after Ramadan. When was the last time it was possible to get from Bir Nabala to Ramallah without passing a checkpoint? Years and years. Before they put up the wall and this new checkpoint, we used to go to Ramallah through the Qalandia checkpoint. That checkpoint has been there since the mid 90's, although at first it was not always manned. Of course we still can't get to Jerusalem or even upper Beit Haninah without passing Qalandia. But at least I can get to the town of Ram without passing a checkpoint, which I used to be a 25 minute walk. It still will be a much longer trip, but you have no idea what a relief it will be to not have to go through that checkpoint. And, a certain friend of mine has refused to visit me for months because the last time she came here, her car was damaged by the way the checkpoint forced the Ramallah bound traffic to swerve around rocks and drop off the pavement at the checkpoint. So I expect a visit now M!

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCALL14394220080821

BIR NABALA, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel, under international pressure to ease restrictions on Palestinians, removed a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Thursday that had curbed movement outside a main Palestinian city.

The move came ahead of a planned visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice next week to continue to push Israelis and Palestinians to pursue talks Washington has hoped could lead to a peace deal by early next year.

An Israeli military spokesman said soldiers had been instructed to remove concrete blocks and a checkpoint where soldiers inspected traffic leading to Bir Nabala, a town near Ramallah, where the Palestinian government sits.

It was the third such checkpoint Israel has removed this month, meeting requests from the U.S. and Middle East envoy Tony Blair to help peace moves and to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed government.

Tawfiq Nabali, head of the Bir Nabala village council, said the checkpoint that was lifted had restricted movement for more than 50,000 Palestinians living in 15 villages near Ramallah.

"We welcome any step in which the Israeli occupation leaves us alone, living in dignity without checkpoints and racism," Nabali told Reuters.

Palestinians say hundreds of Israeli roadblocks erected in the past eight years in occupied territory stifle their economy and amount to collective punishment.

Israel, which placed most of the barriers after a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 when peace talks failed, says the measures are necessary to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities.

(Additional reporting By Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)

(Reporting by Ammar Awad, Writing by Avida Landau and Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Michael Winfrey)

videos

2008-07-30T09:38:00.003+03:00

I was looking for some more reports about yesterday's news online, and I found these videos on YouTube.

Here is al Jazeera's report on the little boy shot in Na'alin yesterday

Another video of the house in Beit Haninah being blown up. I couldn't find anything on al Jazeera about it.

Here is an al Jazeera report on the court ruling ordering the wall in the village of Jeyyous to be moved, giving the village back some, but far from all, of their agricultural land.

This is an episode of an al Jazeera series called "Street Food." It talks about food in Jerusalem, for both Israelis and Palestinians. It was interesting, but I have to admit that the part I liked best was the video of the markets in the Old City.

A 9 year old boy was killed in an anti wall protest

2008-07-29T19:56:00.004+03:00

The village of Na'alin has been in the news lately, at least the news here. They have been protesting the construction of the wall which will cut much of the agricultural land from the village. These protests seem to always have a group of foreign or Israeli activists who are committed to nonviolence, but their protests are often forcefully dispersed. That is where the young man was shot in the foot with a rubber bullet while he was bound and blindfolded. The officer who was holding him has been suspended for 10 days pending an investigation into whether he actually ordered the shooting. And today a 9 year old boy was shot and killed. It is so sad.

video of Beit Haninah house destroyed

2008-07-29T15:50:00.004+03:00

I read on IMEMC this morning that the Israelis were planning to destroy a large building in Beit Hanina that was built without a permit. There is an interesting post here by an American activist who was staying in the building when the Israelis arrived on Monday morning. From his description, this building was within walking distance of my father-in-law's house. This afternoon I came across these two videos on LiveLeak. I am not sure if they are the same building.

The first is the raw footage of the explosion that brought the house down. LiveLeak reported that,

The city said that the four-story construction was "one of the most severe" building violations ever carried out in Jerusalem, and was in blatant violation of court-orders.

However in the second video former Palestinian Legislative Council member Hatem Abdul Qadr said that the house was destroyed because the owners had only "added a few meters" to the legal building.

Five families lost their homes.

2 minute rant

2008-07-28T06:33:00.003+03:00

No time for blogging for me. We are having a big party today for my daughter to celebrate her tawjihi success. About 50 or 60 women and girls are invited for food and dancing and general partying. So as you can imagine, it has been a busy week. Naturally, there is plenty to do to get ready. Last night, in the evening when it started to get cool, my older daughter and I were preparing to do some baking for the party, when 2 of my sister-in-laws came for a visit. They thought it would be nice to have a chance to talk when there wasn't a noisy party going on, and to see my husband too, since he won't be here for the party. Unfortunatly he wasn't here then either, which they would have known if they had called. So we sat, drank tea, ate fruit, had coffee. Meanwhile, my dough rose over the sides of it's bowl. I finished cooking it at 1:30 AM. There was so much I meant to do last night. Why would someone come to visit the night before the party they are invited to? Seriously, didn't they expect us to be busy? And why won't people here CALL before they come. We have a phone. They have a phone.

Times up. My tea is ready and I have to get to work. Wish me luck.

At-Tuwani

2008-07-25T10:01:00.002+03:00

This video was on Joy_in_Palestine's blog this morning. It is about the Palestinian village of at-Tuwani in the south Hebron hills, where the Christian Peacemakers Teams maintain a presence to try and protect the villagers.

And this video is also about the same area, and the children who have a daily struggle just to get to school.

When I think my life is hard...

2008-07-21T08:59:00.003+03:00

The last 2 weeks we have had no water from the pipes in the house on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Now that I got the pump for the cistern fixed, it is not such a hardship. I am using the water from the cistern only for laundry now, to conserve water from the main for drinking and other uses. That means I fill the washing machine by bringing in a hose from outside through the bathroom window, but alhamdulillah I have a top loading machine that allows me to do that. I don't know what I would do if I had one of those European style front loading models. I am grateful that we live in a single family house with a cistern. There are a lot of apartment buildings around us, and I wonder how they manage when their water runs out. I guess they have pumps though, to pull water out of the main lines, since so much of the time the water pressure is so weak it doesn't even reach our house's roof.

As frustrating as these water shortages are, it pales in comparison to what people in Gaza are going through. Read Contemplating From Gaza's account of a weekend with no water, no electricity, no gas for the stove and no gasoline for the car. And then to top it off, she gets comments from trolls who feel the need to imply that it is her fault that there are rockets fired from Gaza and call her filthy names. Personally, I have my comments moderated, and I won't let anything abusive be published here, but perhaps letting the morons have their say proves a point.

I don't want to see any innocent civilians suffer, not Palestinians nor Israelis.

video of shooting

2008-07-21T06:58:00.002+03:00

Al Jazeera and the BBC both now have the video of the shooting I wrote about last night.

An Israeli human rights group has just released graphic video footage obtained during clashes between Israeli troops and demonstrators protesting against the separation barrier on the West Bank. The video has sparked outrage, as it shows what appears to be an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian at close range. Al Jazeera's Emma Hayward reports.

bound and blindfolded prisoner shot with rubber bullet

2008-07-20T19:24:00.003+03:00

I just saw a shocking video on al Jazeera. I know stuff like this happens, so maybe I shouldn't be so shocked, but still it is amazing to see it happen. Israeli soldiers had blindfolded and bound the hands of a protester in Na'alin village near Ramallah. There have been protests there the last couple months because they are putting the wall through the village's land. This young man had already been beaten, and then one of the soldiers raised his gun and shot him in the foot at seriously close range. When I can find a copy of the video online, I will post it. The footage was filmed by a 14 year old girl from the window of her house. Brave girl. Everyone here should have a video camera with them. After medics treated his foot they realeased him.

The only place so far I have seen this mentioned: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003717.html

La Hawla Wala Quwata Illah Billah
There is no strength nor power except Allah

tawjihi results!

2008-07-19T21:46:00.007+03:00

All the waiting is finally over. The Palestinian tawjihi results were released Friday. The tawjihi exam is taken by high school seniors after they have finished classes. It is a set of comprehensive exams that determine if the student can go on to university and what majors are open to him/her. The minimum passing grade is 51 and 55.4% of this year's seniors passed. I pasted an article below that tells all about the exams.

My younger daughter got a 91.7! SubhanAllah walhamdulillah! She was in the sciences track. They have to choose arts or sciences in 10th grade. She was actually in tears when she got the result, because she had hoped to do better, but I am very pleased and proud of her. This is such a hard system, it is way more stressful than taking the SAT or ACT in the US. The tests are only offered once a year. I think if you fail one, you can take it again the same year, and if you fail more than one you can take them again the next year. But that is it, no more chances.

She took Islamic studies, Arabic, English, math, physics, chemistry, life science and "Industry and Agriculture." She got the highest grade in the West Bank in "Industry and Agriculture," although there might have been others with the same score. Funny thing is, I always thought she hated that class. And while I am bragging, and it is a mother's prerogative to brag, I must point out that all of the tests are in Arabic except the English exam, and the day she started kindergarten she barely knew any Arabic at all. We still mostly speak English in the home.

And there is more good news. Today they announced the first batch of students accepted into Bir Zeit University, and she was accepted into the Sciences department. I think she intends to major in chemistry, although I think her best tawjihi grade was in math.

The tawjihi results were announced at 10 AM on Friday on the local TV station and radio. They also publish all the names and scores of the students who passed in a special addition of the newspaper. I feel so badly for the ones who failed or had a poor result, and everyone knows it. How humiliating. By 11 AM we started to hear fireworks. Many people celebrate by setting off fireworks, real ones, but my husband and I are in complete agreement that we have no intention to celebrate by risking one of our kids' hands or eyes. It was fun to watch other people's fireworks, but I hope it didn't make my daughter jealous. I downloaded a fireworks screen saver, but it wasn't quite the same. Next weekend we will have a big party for her, inshaAllah.

I am so glad that this is all over, but the year after next it will be Number Two Son's turn.

Tawjihi exam a pillar of Palestinian society; results announced Friday

Bethlehem – Ma'an – The results for the university entrance exam, written by Palestinian students in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, were announced Friday at 10am.

The entrance exam, called the Tawjihi, determines not only whether a student will be permitted to enroll in university, but will also limit their selection of majors and classes.

On average, about half of the students sitting the exam pass, this year the number was 55.4%. A passing grade is 51%, and according to the Ministry of Education and Higher Education the median grade for the exam this year was 52%.

The tests are written over the period of twenty days in June, by 77,047 students, including 32,800 in the Gaza Strip and 44,247 in the West Bank. The majority of those writing have just finished their last year of high school, though those who do not pass the first time can write up to nine more exams to try and pass.

The exams are administered once a year, and comprise tests in a large variety of different subjects, including English, Arabic, Science, Math, Religion (students can choose from Islam or Christianity), Palestinian History, Geography, Biology, Physics, Industry and Agriculture.

Students choose the exams they are to take depending on their intended course of studies following high school. If the student fails one exam, then they do not pass the Tawjihi and cannot enroll in university.

The pass/fail results of the tests are announced nationwide over the radio, internet and television. Students are asked to report to their schools for the detailed breakdown of marks.

Following the announcement cities and towns erupt with fireworks and parades of celebrating students driving down main streets.

The Tawjihi has been part of the Palestinian schooling system for years. In the West Bank the exams started when the area was under Jordanian administration, and in Gaza students began taking the tests in the 1990s when the Palestinian Authority took over administration of the area from Egypt.

Up until 2006 the tests were based on the Jordanian curriculum books, but now anything published in the textbooks authorized by the Palestinian Authority is fair game for the test.

The long tradition of the exams, its high stakes for so many students, and the public nature of the results announcements, have together made sure that the tests are a staple of modern Palestinian society.

The Tawjihi is also one of the elements of Palestinian life common to Gazans, East Jerusalemites and West Bankers. When the Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced that the results for Gaza and the West Bank would be announced separately, students protested and asked that they could wait until all results could be announced together.

Even Palestinians in Israeli prisons were permitted to write the exams this year, although their results have not yet been released.

So far this year the highest grade was awarded to a Gazan student, who had an average on the tests of 99.3%

In years past there have been accusations that Israeli troops and road closures have been strategically planned to prevent students from getting to school to take the tests.

who's afraid of airport security these days?

2008-07-05T09:24:00.003+03:00

The last time I flew anywhere was 1994. The world has changed a lot since then, and every time I read about a Muslim having trouble with airport security, I get more nervous about the idea of trying to get on a plane again. Not that I am likely to try it any time soon. I know that certain security measures have to be taken, after all I don't want to get on a plane with any crazies either, but sometimes the security folks go overboard.

Read Tunisianbelle's post Muslim While Flying, for her upsetting experience. This is the first time I have seen her blog, which I found via Global Voices.

10-year-old subjected to torture by Israeli soldiers

2008-07-03T20:36:00.002+03:00

This horrifying piece is from the Defence for Children International/Palestine Section website.

10-year-old subjected to torture by Israeli soldiers

Name: Ezzat H
Age at incident: 10
Date of incident: 11 June 2008
Location: Sanniriya, Qalqiliya
Accusation: None

A 10-year-old boy was subjected to physical abuse amounting to torture for 2.5 hours by Israeli soldiers who stormed his family’s shop on 11 June, seeking information on the location of a handgun. The boy was repeatedly beaten, slapped and punched in the head and stomach, forced to hold a stress position for half and hour, and threatened. He was deeply shocked and lost two molar teeth as a result of the assault.

On Wednesday 11 June 2008, at around 10:30am, 10-year-old Ezzat, his brother Makkawi (7) and sister Lara (8) were in their father’s shop selling animal feed and eggs in the village of Sanniriya, near the West Bank city of Qalqiliya. The children were suddenly startled to see two Israeli soldiers storm in to the shop.

Interrogation and abuse in the shop

One soldier wearing a black T-shirt started shouting in a loud, menacing voice in Arabic, “your father sent us to you to collect his gun”. A terrified Ezzat responded, “My father does not own a gun”. The soldier responded by slapping Ezzat hard across the right cheek and his brother Makawi across his face. The soldier then ordered Makkawi and Lara to leave the shop. Once the younger children had left the soldier demanded once again that Ezzat hand over his father’s gun. Although Ezzat repeated that his father did not own a gun the soldier ordered him to search for it in the sacks containing the animal feed. Ezzat kept insisting that there was no gun in the shop so the soldier slapped him once again, this time across his left cheek.

One of Ezzat’s friends, realising that something was wrong, tried to enter the shop but was kicked by the soldier standing at the door and prevented from entering. Soon a group of local people had gathered outside the shop. Some of the people in the group also tried to enter the shop but were prevented from doing so by the soldier at the door.

The soldier in the black T-shirt asked him once again to produce the gun. Ezzat answered, “We do not have anything”. The soldier responded by punching him hard in the stomach causing Ezzat to fall over on to empty egg boxes. Ezzat started screaming and crying out from pain and fear. The soldier in the black T-shirt started making fun of Ezzat and imitated him crying. Ezzat remained in the shop alone with the soldiers for a further 15 minutes when the soldier in black abruptly grabbed him by his T-shirt and dragged him out of the shop. Ezzat asked the soldier if he could lock up his father’s shop but the soldier said he wanted it to remain open so that it could be robbed. The soldier also threatened to put Ezzat in his jeep and take him away.

Once they were out of the shop, Ezzat was ordered to walk in front of the soldiers to his house, whilst a gun was pointed at his back. The soldiers hit him several times on the nape along the way. On approaching his house Ezzat saw many Israeli military officials surrounding the house and a number of green military vehicles parked outside. One of the olive coloured jeeps had the word “police” written on it.

Interrogation and abuse in the home

After arriving at the family’s home the soldier in the black T-shirt stood Ezzat in the yard and ordered him to search the flower basin for the gun. Before Ezzat had a chance to respond the soldier slapped him so violently that Ezzat fell down face first into the basin. Without giving him the chance to stand up the soldier grabbed him by his T-shirt and lifted him up roughly. He was then instructed in Arabic by another soldier to head to the guestroom.

On approaching the guestroom Ezzat could see his father standing by the door. The soldier slapped him on the neck and Ezzat fell to the ground. As Ezzat stood up the soldier slapped him a second time making him fall to the ground once again. All this happened in front of his father. He then grabbed Ezzat by his T-shirt and lifted him in to the air. The soldier told Ezzat’s father that he was going to take his son to prison. He also threatened to take Ezzat’s 19-year-old sister to prison. Ezzat was then pushed forcibly in to the guest room where his mother and four of his other siblings including his sisters Diana (19), Raghda (18), (Aya) 15 and brother Jihad (3), were being held. His mother was crying. Ezzat was also crying and when asked by his mother why he was crying, he said it was because he had been hit by the soldiers. His mother asked the soldiers to stop beating her son and to beat her instead.

After several minutes Ezzat was taken out of the guestroom and slapped several times by the soldier in black, once so hard that he fell to the ground. After being moved to several locations in the house Ezzat was told to stay in the boys’ bedroom. The same soldier then left the room but would return every five minutes to slap Ezzat and also to punch him several times in the stomach. Each time this took place Ezzat would shout and scream out in pain and burst in to tears. The soldier would then imitate him and make fun of him. The soldier hit him around six times.

Destruction of property and use of stress positions

A short time later, five soldiers entered the room and proceeded to destroy the family’s property using hammers. In all, the soldiers destroyed wooden ventilation panels in the attic, a small refrigerator in the bedroom and it contents, damage to the kitchen, a fan and the fireplace.

Ezzat spent one hour in the bedroom alone with the soldiers. In that hour he was ordered by the same soldier to stand on one foot for half an hour, with his back against the wall and with both his hands lifted up in the air (see picture). Ezzat was exhausted by this but was too scared to put his foot down on the ground. Eventually he was told by one of the other soldiers that he could put his foot down. He was then asked to sit down in a squat position. He managed to remain in this position for two minutes and then had to stand up. A female soldier then walked in to the room and asked him to sit on the refrigerator box.

Shortly after the soldier in the black T-shirt returned accompanied by Ezzat’s older sister Diana. He proceeded to ask Ezzat whether he cared for his sister to which Ezzat responded, “Yes I do”. The soldier then asked him to tell him where the gun was hidden and that if he told him where it was hidden that he would not tell Ezzat’s father. The soldier left the room with Ezzat’s sister. He then returned to the room on his own and hit Ezzat all over his body. He left the room once again and after a while came back offering Ezzat 10 Shekels in return for telling him where the gun was. Ezzat responded that he did not care about money. This made the soldier extremely angry and he took off his helmet and started throwing it at Ezzat from two metres away. Ezzat was in extreme pain. The soldier continued to hit him with the helmet and then left the room once again returning to slap him across his face and on his stomach. This continued for some time with the soldier leaving the room and returning to hit Ezzat and to question him over the gun.

Interrogation of family

Ezzat then witnessed the soldier in the black T-shirt and the female soldier leading his sisters and mother to one of the rooms close to the boys’ bedroom. They closed the door of the room but Ezzat could hear the soldiers shouting at them. He overheard the soldier telling the female soldier to hit his mother because she was refusing to take her clothes off to be searched. After the incident was over Ezzat’s sister informed him that they were all strip searched by the female soldier, while the male soldier waited outside.

Meanwhile, a soldier wearing black sunglasses entered the bedroom in which Ezzat was being held. He walked in pointing a rifle, a few centimetres away from Ezzat’s head. Ezzat was so terrified that he began to shiver. The soldier laughed and made fun of him. He asked Ezzat to tell him where the gun was and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t. Ezzat continued to maintain that there was no weapon hidden away. The soldier, getting agitated shouted at Ezzat, “for the last time, tell me where the gun is before I shoot you". Ezzat repeated that he did not have a gun. Hearing this, the soldier lowered his rifle and left the room. After about five minutes the soldier in the black T-shirt entered the room along with four other soldiers and said that they were leaving but would return.

The soldiers spent two and half hours in the house in total. After the incident Ezzat spent the night at his uncle’s house because he was too scared to sleep in his home. As a result of the physical assault Ezzat lost two of his molar teeth and is deeply shocked by the incident.

DCI/PS Statement

DCI/PS is appalled that Israeli authorities would subject a 10-year-old child to beatings, position abuse and threats over the course of several hours. The treatment of Ezzat falls within the definition of torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as defined in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which Israel is a State Party. The treatment of Ezzat also infringes numerous other international conventions to which Israel is bound¹, as well as Israeli military and domestic law².

DCI/PS again calls on Israel to immediately ensure its compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture and to thoroughly and impartially investigate the allegations of torture and abuse of Ezzat and bring those found responsible for such abuse to justice.

DCI/PS also calls on the EU to make the upgrade of EU-Israel bilateral relations conditional upon measurable and confirmed progress by Israel to uphold the EU human rights standards in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

-------------

1. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – article 5; Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) – articles 27 and 31 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) – article 7; and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) – articles 2(2), 3, 16 and 37(a).

2. Israeli military law establishes the specific offence of “ill treatment” which prohibits the beating or other abuse of any person in a soldier’s custody: see Military Adjudication Law, 5715-1955, Article 65. See also articles 378-382 of the Israeli penal code.

** Take Action **

Please send appeals in English, Arabic, Hebrew or your own language to Israel and/or the EU:

Israel

Urging Israeli authorities to comply with the UN Convention Against Torture and thoroughly investigate the allegations of torture and abuse of Ezzat and other Palestinian detainees and bring those responsible for such abuse to justice.

Appeals to:

President of the State of Israel
Shimon Peres, President of the State of Israel
Office of the President
3 Hanassi St., 92188
Jerusalem, Israel.
Tel: +972 2 6707211
Fax: +972 2 5610033
Email: president@president.gov.il
Salutation: Dear President

Prime Minister of the State of Israel
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister
Telephone: +972 2 6753277
Telephone2: +972 2 6753547
Email: eulmert@knesset.gov.il
Saluation: Dear Prime Minister

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ms. Tzipi Livni, MK
9 Yitzhak Rabin Blvd., Kiryat Ben-Gurion, Jerusalem 91035
Fax: + 972 2 5303367
Email: sar@mfa.gov.il
Salutation: Dear Foreign Affairs Minister

European Union

Urging the EU to pressure Israel to immediately ensure its compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture and thoroughly investigate the allegations of torture and abuse of Ezzat and other Palestinian detainees and bring those responsible for such abuse to justice.
Urging the EU to make the upgrade of EU-Israel bilateral relations conditional upon measurable and confirmed progress by Israel to uphold EU human rights standards in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Making the EU aware of the recent inclusion of Palestine/Israel as a priority conflict for the implementation of the EU Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict, and of the subsequent reporting tasks on child rights violations incumbent upon EU diplomatic missions and EU institutions in the field.

Appeals to:

Mr. Bernard Kouchner, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères français
37, quai d’Orsay, 75 007 Paris, France
Email: bernard.kouchner@diplomatie.gouv.fr

Personal Representative for Human Rights (CFSP) of the EU Secretary General/
High Representative Javier Solana
Ms. Riina Kionka
175 Rue de la Loi BE 1048 Brussels, Belgium
Fax. : +32 2 281 61 90
Email : riina.kionka@consilium.europa.eu

The Commissioner for External Affairs and European Neighbourhood Policy
HE Ms. Benita Ferrero- Waldner
Email: relax-enpinfo@ec.europa.eu

waraq diwali

2008-07-03T16:56:00.003+03:00

Want to spend a lot of time making dinner? Start outside picking the leaves.Try not to let the cat trip you while you pick a million of them.
Spend all day rolling them. It has to be enough for 7! No, it was 8 that day, since My New Son-In-Law was here too.
They are no longer than 2 joints of my finger. Kaliliyya women have a contest to see whose are smallest!
Hours and hours of preparation, and they are gone in 15 minutes.

What's for dinner tomorrow?

water

2008-07-02T16:26:00.006+03:00

(May 2008)
It doesn't rain here all summer long. We probably won't have any significant rain again until late October, or even November. In the spring we have a lush growth of wild flowers as most wild plants rush to finish their growing season before the heat of summer and lack of water kills them off. By now, the beginning of July, the fields are brown and dry.

(May 2008)

Water is naturally a scarce resource here. It is one of the issues of contention between the Israelis and Palestinians. I was pleased to see that the BBC's website had an article about Israeli Human rights group B'Tselem's latest report about the water shortage in the West Bank. The report says that the already unfair distribution of water between Palestinians and Israelis will be further aggravated by this year's drought. Here are the figures from the report:

According to the World Health Organization, the per capita minimal amount of water needed for household and urban needs is one hundred liters a day. Due to the chronic water shortage, water consumption in the northern West Bank has dropped to one-third this amount. In Tubas, per capita consumption is 30 liters; in Jenin, it is 38 liters. In Nablus and the Southern Hebron Hills, the figure is slightly higher than fifty liters a day.

Average per capita consumption throughout the West Bank is 66 liters, two-thirds of the minimal amount needed according to the WHO. These figures include water for livestock, meaning that the water consumed for personal use is even less.

In comparison, average daily water consumption in Israeli cities is 235 liters, and 214 liters in local councils, 3.5 times higher than Palestinian consumption in the West Bank.

Every year we have water shortages in the summer, but this year seems worse than usual. Do you see the black barrels on the roof in the background of this picture?

All the houses here have those barrels to store water. They are supposed to ensure that if the water from the main line runs out, there is still water for the house. They are placed on the highest part of the roof to increase the water pressure into the house. Lately the water has stayed off so long we end up with no running water. Yesterday when I woke up, there was just enough water left to flush the toilet once. It was off all day yesterday. We have a cistern under the house that collects the rainwater that falls on the roof each winter, to use as a backup, alhamdulillah, but it isn't clean enough to drink. There is a pump to get the water out, but it quit working last year. My husband and the landlord don't seem to be able to agree whose job it is to get it fixed. So it still doesn't work. I can still siphon water out, but it is slow, and I have to carry it in buckets. Just carrying enough water to flush the toilets for a family of seven is a pain. I also drag my dishes outside to wash them when the water is off.

When the boys were in school, I ended up washing their uniforms out there too. (The cat fell in to the wet laundry the second after I snapped that picture.)I have dozens of bottles stored in the kitchen and bathrooms for days like this, for washing and drinking. But last night the water only came on very weakly, and didn't have enough pressure to get up to the roof to fill our barrels. So, no water again today. At 7AM I filled a couple bottles at the main line, but the water was murky and yellow. By 9 AM I was pleased to find that while the pressure was still weak, the water looked clear enough to drink. I had hoped it was going to come on stronger, but by noon there was no water again. So now it is time to drag my dinner dishes outside in the late afternoon sun to wash them again. And then if I have the energy I will bring in enough water to at least wash my hair.

I used to tell my kids when we were growing up that we have just enough water to make our lives reasonably comfortable, but not so much that we forget to be grateful for it.

Alhamdulillah.

June blooms

2008-06-30T20:25:00.006+03:00

My garden isn't as nice as it has been in previous years. It got too hot this spring, and water has been a problem. And to tell you the truth, I have been neglecting it on purpose for the last year and a half or so because we were talking about moving. When the wall went up and they made a checkpoint on the only way out of our little area, my husband started talking about moving. My kids all thought it was a great idea, especially the older ones, so they wouldn't have to cross the checkpoint every day to go to school. My first reaction was to panic. I didn't want to leave my garden! I mourned my garden as if I had already lost it, planned which plants I would dig up and take with me if our new place had a yard, and which ones I could grow in pots if it didn't. I got used to the idea, I got comfortable with it, and then my husband decided we would stay. He decided we should stay right when I decided I wanted to go. My life feels very confined these days. I hate that checkpoint, I hate that wall. I only leave our little enclave once or twice a month. Anyway, I didn't plant any annuals this year, but there are still some perennials hanging on. There are hollyhocks all over. They are hard to get rid of actually. They self-seed themselves, and they have a foot long taproot that is hard to pull up. They are beautiful, but I wish they would stop growing in weird places like in the crack between my front steps and the sidewalk. I love how the light makes the petals glow.The oleander bushes bloom prolificly. The flowers are large and showy.Even the mess they make on the sidewalk is kind of pretty.
We have several varieties of geraniums.
If (or rather when) they don't get enough water they lose their bottom leaves, but if I cut them back they grow right back.
I love this purple one. We add a leaf from it to freshly made lemonade. It gives it a wonderful taste.
These pretty bells are blooming now too, although this picture is from a couple years back. I have no idea what they are called, but the plant is a succulent and tolerates a dry soil.
I have exactly one carnation blooming now. They are not at all happy to tolerate the lack of water this year. That's an old picture again.
The only wild flowers that bloom at this time are thorny and dangerous looking.That one is pretty weird, isn't it?How did he get in here? This cat follows me all over the yard while I am taking pictures. But he is hard to get a clear picture of, since he is always moving.

10 things I hope for meme

2008-06-30T11:22:00.004+03:00

Princess Najeeba tagged me for 2 memes, the six word memoir which I have already done, and the "10 things I hope for" meme. I will do the second one, but I am not going to tag anyone, since a lot of the blogs I read have already done them.

The Rules
1. On your blog, post the Rules & Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post
4. Post 10 things you have HOPE for in your life.
5. Tag six more blogs with links
6. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to tag others!

I stuck to personal stuff for my 10 hopes. I wouldn't have thought that I was a very hopeful person at this point in my life, but once I started writing these, I thought of a million.

I hope for Allah's mercy, and to enter Jennah and avoid hell fire and the punishment of the grave. I don't deserve any of that, but I try to never lose hope.
I hope my children will be good Muslims.
I hope everyone I have hurt in any way will forgive me.
I hope I will see my mother again. I miss her so badly it hurts.
I hope my family will come to understand Islam, and embrace it. There is nothing more important, more real, in my life than my faith, but I have done a lousy job of conveying that message to my family. May Allah forgive me and bless them.
I hope my younger daughter will get a good result for her tawjihi exams. (Those are the exams that students here take at the end of high school. It will determine what college she can go to and what majors she will be able to apply for.) She took the last test this morning.
I hope that I will one day have an easier, closer relationship with that daughter. I love her as much as my other children, but we have that whole teenage attitude thing going on. Her attitude drives me nuts some times, and I say waspish, unhelpful things that hurt her feelings. It is a vicious cycle I hope we can break soon.
I hope I can get through my older daughter's upcoming wedding without hurting her feelings or making a fool of my self. I wept uncontrollably through most of her engagement party, and still feel humiliated by the memory.
I hope I will be a good mother-in-law.
I hope each of my children will find good wives and husbands who will make them happy and help them be good Muslims. (NO HURRY, THOUGH!)

Any body else want to do this meme? If so, you're tagged!

ongoing ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem

2008-06-29T20:42:00.003+03:00

Please read the story of Mona, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, who recently lost her residency permit to live in the city she and her ancestors were born in.

June trees and vines

2008-06-28T16:15:00.005+03:00

Our house is surrounded by fruit and olive trees and grape vines. I mark the seasons by when they bloom and produce fruit. The askadinia of May are finished now.
At the beginning of June the plums began to ripen.Remember the blossoms in March?Now all the plums are ripe and almost gone. They are delicious.
The pomegranates are getting fat, but it will be a while before they are ripe.
These figs were small at the beginning of the month. I need to walk down to the tree to see how they are now.But what we have the most of is grape vines. (Those are olive trees in the back ground.)Lots of grapes.Lots and lots of grapes!They aren't ripe yet, but soon. My daughter likes to pick them like this and eat them with salt. Some people pickle them.I am still picking loads of leaves for stuffing.
I get tired of making stuffed grape leaves, because my hands are too slow, but I don't get tired of looking at the leaves and the way the light reflects and filters through them.And it is nice to be under the leaves because the sun is too hot lately.My daughter took this last picture a couple years ago.

West Bank poverty makes boys work

2008-06-24T09:08:00.003+03:00

I saw this article from the Philadelphia Enquirer posted on Annie's Letters.

West Bank poverty makes boys work

By Muhammed Muheisen

Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Deep in the mechanic's pit, 12-year-old Jihad Robin found refuge, secretly smoking cigarettes on a break from his job in a car-repair shop.

He left school at age 9 when teachers told him that because he couldn't read, he would have to fall back two grades. His parents, unable to make ends meet, forced him to go to work.

The West Bank has high unemployment, with the Palestinian economy still struggling from fighting with Israel and restrictions on travel because of security checkpoints that Israel says are needed to stop suicide bombers.

So stories like Jihad's are common. Palestinian government regulations set the minimum working age at 15, but the law is not enforced. The most recent available figures show that about 35,000 children ages 15 or younger worked full time in 2006, up from 18,000 in 2004, said Mamoun Eid, an official in the Palestinian Labor Ministry.

Still, West Bankers say the problem is less acute than in some poor countries, because Palestinian parents put a high premium on keeping their children in school.

Jihad works nine hours a day, six days a week at the garage outside the city of Ramallah. He lifts batteries and heavy parts, and sometimes fixes electrical systems.

"I prefer the younger ones," said the boss, who would give his name only as Abu Nidal in case the publicity provoked a crackdown on hiring minors. "They are smarter, and they learn most quickly. And they cost less." Jihad's daily wage of $9 is a third of what his adult coworkers make.

In a nearby workshop, blacksmith Tayseer Qayem employs 15-year-old Mansour Farhat, who left school in third grade. Qayem, 29, said that he opposed child labor in principle and that he hired Mansour to keep him off the streets and out of trouble.

Like many of the children who work in the garages, Jihad hopes one day to own his own.

That's what his employer did, starting work at age 10 and working his way up.

Jihad's bigger dream is to become a pilot and "fly to New York," he says. "Sometimes I get so tired - it's so hot and the stuff I carry is so heavy."

He steals or mooches cigarettes for his breaks, trying not to be seen. "If they catch me, they will take me to my father who will beat me for smoking," he said. After work, he goes home to play hide-and-seek with neighborhood friends.

Other children in the Ramallah area work collecting scrap metal, scavenging through garbage, delivering groceries to homes, and peddling gum, tissues and pens to motorists at intersections.

In another Ramallah auto shop, 16-year-old Awwad Awwad fixed the wheels of an orange Daewoo. He has had the job for two years. His face smeared with grease, he says the job exhausts him, but adds proudly: "I feel like a man, not like a child."

more about the destruction of Beit Hanina's olive groves

2008-06-24T07:16:00.002+03:00

This is the only other mention I found online of the destruction yesterday in Beit Hanina. I wish there were more pictures, but the article says that the Israelis have declared it a closed military zone to keep people out.

IOA bulldozes thousands of dunums of Palestinian lands

[ 23/06/2008 - 05:04 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation authority's bulldozers on Monday morning started destroying thousands of dunums of Palestinian lands in Beit Hanina village in occupied Jerusalem.

Saleh Da'ajna, head of the village's municipal council, said that the IOA bulldozers were paving the lands for construction of the separation wall.

He pointed out in a statement to the PIC reporter that the destruction was going on in the southern area of the village.

Da'ajna said that the Israeli occupation forces were blocking village inhabitants from approaching their lands in the area after it was declared a closed military zone.

The municipal council announced that the separation wall seized 2,000 dunums of village lands in the first phase and the new construction would confiscate 5,500 dunums more.

Israeli army uproots 500-year-old olive grove in Beit Hanina near Jerusalem

2008-06-23T19:00:00.004+03:00

Source Uploaded by Steph PS on 7 Jun 07, 2.10PM PDT.

A friend called me a couple days ago and told me that the Israelis were going to cut down or remove some groves of olive trees in Beit Hanina to make way for the wall. Some of the trees were her father's. I bought oil from them just last fall. We talked about going over there to take some pictures and I looked around online to see if there was anything about a protest. Unfortunately I just read that they already cut them down this morning. Imagine killing 500 year old trees to put up that horrible wall. Here is the article from Ma'an News Agency.

Jerusalem – Ma'an - Israeli army bulldozers uprooted more than two hundred olive trees in Beit Hanina north of Jerusalem on Monday morning amid resistance by Fatah activists and other national forces.

Spokesman for the leadership of the Fatah movement in the territory of Jerusalem Dimitri Diliani said that Israeli soldiers went into the valley in the southern town of Beit Hanina and razed the 500-year-old olive grove.

He added that Fatah activists in cooperation with other national forces tried to stop them.

He said that the Israeli authorities aim is to confiscate the lands surrounding Beit Hanina as part of their policy to pressure the Arab community of Jerusalem and its surroundings.

Diliani added that a sit in will be staged in Beit Hanina on Monday afternoon in protest at the land confiscation. A peaceful protest is also due to take place on Friday to demonstrate against Israeli practices against the residents of the town.

The secretary of the Fatah movement in Beit Hanina, Muhammad Hamed Matur, said that Israeli forces have used excessive force against citizens who are defending their land.

Hatem Gharably, a member of the Fatah movement, pointed out that the Israeli aithorities have confiscated two-thirds of the town's land and are now trying to take over the remainder.

Gharably added that the townspeople are determined to oppose such Israeli practices. He appealed to the international community to take on its responsibilities in the defense of the citizens and their property.

gas prices!

2008-06-18T10:15:00.002+03:00

You think prices are high where you live? Laila from Raising Yousuf wrote today about the price of gasoline in Gaza being about $35US per gallon, 600 Shekels per 20 liters! That is if you can get it at all. Shameful, shameful, shameful. How can people live their comfortable lives and support Israel unconditionally while they strangle life in Gaza. The BBC is reporting this morning that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease fire starting Thursday. Let's pray it works.

visiting

2008-06-17T13:11:00.003+03:00

I went to visit my sister-in-law a few days ago, and snapped a few pix I wanted to share. She has a pretty view of the local mosque from her front yard.
Behind the house there is a field where they had just harvested grain. I don't know if it was barley or wheat, but I know they grow both in this area. My husband brought me a sack of freshly ground barley last week, which I have been adding to my bread recipe. It makes the bread a bit heavy, brown and flavorful. I wish I could have taken better pictures, but when you are visiting someone, it's not nice to wonder off taking pictures of the neighborhood. If you look carefully, you can see some sheep in the field, eating what was left. The bags are full of grain. There were a couple of horses wandering around too, and even a camel, but they left before I could excuse my self to go take the pictures.
The biggest problem was that it was almost maghrib (sunset) and the area I wanted to shoot was due west.
Maybe I will invite my self over one morning to get a better picture.
The farmer drove his car around after the sun went behind the hill, gathering the grain.
A few days before, I had visited a friend that lives in a neighborhood that has been cut up by the wall.
Can you see the truck with the furniture below? He is selling the furniture as he drives through the neighborhood, calling out over a loudspeaker as he drives along. I don't know who buys their furniture off of the back of a truck. They are often the gaudiest kinds. Some places they sell vegetables that way, and there are trucks that go around picking up empty gas cylinders to refill. There even used to be a man in our neighborhood who sold carpets in the street, but he carried them on his shoulders and walked up and down the hills with them. Now that is a tough job.

a common caper

2008-06-16T14:35:00.003+03:00

The first time I ever saw these flowers was when we moved into the house we live in now. They grow wild in a couple places against the walls of the house, and along the driveway. They have vicious, curved thorns like tiny cat's claws, that grab on to your clothes and skin if you brush too close to them. The thorns are so sharp they will even go through a leather glove. But the plant it self is beautiful, with purple stems and neat green leaves. The flowers are spectacular. My husband and in-laws were always asking me why I didn't cut them down, but most of the time I let them grow because they are so beautiful. And because every time I did try to cut them down I got stabbed a few times. There is one bush that is so big that it practically takes over one section of the walkway at the back of our house, so I have to cut it down occasionally so that people can get past it without getting snagged. Last fall, after I cut it back and got a few thorns in my hands, I decided to kill that one. Fat chance! I poured a couple tea pots full of boiling water into the crack where it's roots grow between the house and the sidewalk. This spring it came back as if nothing had happened! They are tough plants. No matter how many times I cut them to the ground, they just come back. And they seem to only grow next to rocks. I don't think I have ever seen one growing in open soil, they are always up against or between rocks and walls. There is even one growing out of a wall beside my front door. I think it has its roots into the well that is under the front veranda. I have been trying to get rid of that thing for nearly 10 years. A few months ago I downloaded the PDF version of The Subjective Atlas of Palestine, and finally learned its name. It is called a Common Caper! This is the plant whose buds are pickled and sold in jars. I have never had capers before. You can read all about them on Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages or this page. And if you like to cook, especially if you sometimes learn recipes with the names in languages other than English, you should check out Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages and bookmark it. He has a page for every herb or spice I have ever heard of plus lots I never heard of, and each one has a detailed description, pictures of the plant and the name in many languages. And you can search according to a phonetic spelling of the Arabic name.

Elderly couple beaten by settlers

2008-06-13T09:17:00.004+03:00

Today the BBC website had an article about an elderly Palestinian couple and their nephew from the village of Susiya south of Hebron being beaten by settlers. Accompanying the article is a bit of video showing the beginning of the attack. It is not a great video, but it is shocking to see strong young men, faces covered and wielding bats, base enough to beat a 70 year old man and a 68 year old woman. They were attacked for grazing their goats too close to an Israeli settlement. It is a shame that the BBC didn't mention that the family has papers to show they own the land or that they are living in tents because their homes have been bulldozed repeatedly, according to joy_in_palestine's account.

Kaffiyehs, caps and inadequate coverage

2008-06-06T09:45:00.000+03:00

I get sick of people trying to tell me what "my" symbols and choices "really mean." First you have all these people telling me that my hijab is a symbol of oppression, when I not only willingly chose it but had to fight for the right to wear it. Now someone is trying to convince the world that everyone that wears a keffiyeh is showing support for terrorism. I have been amazed this week to see all the coverage in the media and blogs about Rachael Ray wearing a fake keffiyeh in a Dunkin Donuts ad, and their subsequent pulling of the ad.

Personally, I feel a little sorry for Dunkin Donuts. The last thing any company would want to do is make a political statement that will adversely affect their sales. They had to decide whom they stood to lose more from, the radical Christian Zionists or the pro-Palestinian people. It's a lose-lose situation for them. It's the people like Michelle Malkin et al who offend me, for trying to equate every expression of Palestinian nationalism as a threat to world peace. But as much as I would have loved DD to have stood against the pressure and resist this stupidity, I am not surprised they decided to try to cut and run.

Now there is a plan to boycott Dunkin Donuts. I understand the desire to "teach them a lesson" with the boycott, but it is more like an attempt to punish rather than an attempt to teach. And people usually resent those who try to punish them for their unintentional mistakes. IMHO I think more would have been accomplished by publishing some fact sheets about Palestinian culture and history, and mailing them to members of the DD board and executives and handing them to the DD employees while buying some donuts! How do you expect people to respect and sympathize with you when you are busy threatening their livelihood? We are never going to be able to beat the world into submission, but we can show them reality and appeal to their consciences.

The kafiyya has been used as a symbol of Palestinian national pride and resistance for years, but what I find most ironic is that these days in Palestine, it seems to be becoming a symbol of Fatah. My son used to wear one when the winter was cold, but this year he refused to because people on campus see it as a sign of support for Fatah and Mahmood Abbas against Hamas. You know, the guys American and Israel see as the "good Palestinians" the "partners in peace." The ones that were supposed to win the election. (My son, like DD, would prefer not to make any political statements with his clothes. I think he hates all the politicians equally.) Actually, I commented to my family that when I was in Ramallah one cold day last winter, I thought there was a lot less men with kafiyyas around. It used to be that all the older men wore them when it was cold. They weren't amazed by my brilliant powers of observation, but whatever.

You know the folks the US and Israel consider the big, bad, boogie men terrorists? Yes, the Hamas followers. Do you ever see those guys wearing keffiyehs at their rallys? No, those guys wear green baseball caps.Even the women sometimes wear green baseball caps.
They look just like the John Deere hat my Gran'pap used to wear sometimes. Wait! You don't think he was secretly a Hamas supporter?
And these kids, what other reason could they have for wearing green hats in a Saint Patty's day parade?

Uploaded by P.J.S. on 5 Aug 07, 3.20PM PDT.

And the Okland A's better change their away uniform caps before Michelle Malkin decides they are secretly supporting Hamas.
(Hey, John Deere folks, don't be mad at me. I am actually thinking of getting the game in the picture above for my son who loves every sim and tycoon type game.)

Actually the thing that pisses me off the most about this whole business is how much publicity it is getting. Have you heard of the situation of the Hebron orphanages and schools that Israel is trying to shut down? No? Because it is getting very little press, but it is much more serious. There is an Islamic charity in Hebron (al Khalil) that was founded before Hamas, but the Israelis say it is a "Hamas charity." This charity runs 2 orphanages, 3 schools, a library and it has commercial properties to support the schools and charities including a couple bakeries and a dairy. The Israeli authorities say they don't want Palestinians to be "grateful" to Hamas for providing these important services, so they have issued orders to close them down and evict all the people and businesses. To top it all off, they say they have a right to confiscate all of the property! They have shut down the bakeries and some of the businesses, who rented from the
charity. They raided the sewing workshop connected to the girls' orphanage at 1 AM, and stole the sewing machines, fabric and supplies. They cut up the tables to get them out the door. They even took the silverware from the kitchen! Some members of the Christian Peacemakers Team in Hebron have been staying in the orphanage and they filmed the raid. They are trying to prevent the orphans from being thrown out on the street. Seriously, how do the Israelis think this will make them more secure? Won't the kids who go through this trauma be **more likely** to be pushed into violent resistance?

The only place I have seen this covered in the mainstream media is one report on a BBC domestic radio station. There is nothing about it in print on their website that I saw or on the World Service (the international radio). You can hear the report here or go to http://hebronorphans.blogspot.com/ for more info.

Isn't this the sort of thing that we should all be blogging about????

It's a sad world. Innocent kids are going hungry in Gaza, sitting without lights and being denied health care. Orphans in Hebron are at risk of losing the roof over their heads and the food on their tables. But everyone is in an uproar about Rachael Ray's paisley scarf.

Milestones

2008-06-05T14:42:00.003+03:00

My younger daughter graduated from high school last week. InshaAllah we will have 3 in university next fall, since my oldest changed his major and isn't quite finished. I liked her school's graduation ceremony better than those of her older brother and sister, because they somehow made the old guys from the board of education make shorter speeches. Yay for brevity! I had better get used to graduations. I only cried a little at this one. Next year, inshaAllah #1 son should get his degree, then the year after #2 son finishes high school and my older daughter should get her degree, if she doesn't let getting married sidetrack her plans. INSHAALLAH. She is a pretty determined girl, so I guess if anyone can do it, she can. #3 son has another 6 grades left, so it will be a while yet for him, alhamdulillah. When I was their age, I was in such a hurry to grow up, but these days I keep wanting to scream "STOP!" Does anyone remember that commercial, "If they could only stay little 'till their Carter's wear out"? I am jealous because my friends are still looking at sweet little dresses with ruffles and bows for their daughters, and I have to start looking at wedding dresses. Well, I guess those might have ruffles and bows too...

MY younger daughter had another sort of milestone today. I downloaded Barack Obama's speech to AIPAC this morning, and we listened to it together. She was a real Obama fan, and although she knew that anyone who had any chance to become president in the US would have to be pro Israel, his speech shocked her none the less. She looked hurt when he said "Israeli children have to take a deep breath and summon uncommon courage every time they board a bus or walk to school." There was no mention of the fears Palestinian kids face. She has had to pass through checkpoints all 13 years she has been in school here. She went to school with the same friends from kindergarten to 10th grade, when it got too hard for to go back and forth every day. She ended up staying at my mother-in-law's house for the last quarter of 10th grade, so she didn't have to cross the Jerusalem checkpoint twice a day. Then for 11th grade she switched to another school in Ramallah, much farther from home, because of that horrible wall. For the last 2 years she has had to pass through downtown Ramallah on her way home, like her older sister, and hope they miss running into things like this:

That day they both just got home before the trouble started.

When Obama got to the part about how Jerusalem must remain Israel's undivided capital, that was it. I think her heart broke. It's hard to know the person you want to put your trust and hope in has no concern for you. No concern for international law or UN resolutions either, apparently. Not the ones that call on Israel to give back the territory occupied in 1967.

None of that was a surprise to me, but it was kind of odd to hear him laud President Reagan's strong diplomacy. A democrat praising Reagan? Global climate change must have made you-know-where freeze over.

Traveling in Beit Hanina

2008-05-29T16:20:00.001+03:00

Said Rhateb was born in 1972, five years after Israeli soldiers fought their way through East Jerusalem and claimed his family's dry, rock-strewn plot as part of what the Jewish state proclaimed its "eternal and indivisible capital". The bureaucrats followed in the army's footsteps, registering and measuring Israel's largest annexation of territory since its victory over the Arab armies in the 1948 war of independence. They cast an eye over the Rhateb family's village of Beit Hanina and its lands, a short drive from the biblical city on the hill, and decided the outer limits of this new Jerusalem. The Israelis drew a line on a map - a new city boundary - between Beit Hanina's lands and most of its homes. The olive groves and orchards were to be part of Jerusalem; the village was to remain in the West Bank.

The population was not so neatly divided. Arabs in the area were registered as living in the village - even those, like Rhateb's parents, whose homes were inside what was now defined as Jerusalem. In time, the Israelis gave the Rhatebs identity cards that classified them as residents of the West Bank, under military occupation. When Said Rhateb was born, he too was listed as living outside the city's boundaries. His parents thought little of it as they moved freely across the invisible line drawn by the Israelis, shopping and praying inside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel's system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem's council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb's children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an "absentee" who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. "They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state," he says. "Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house. That's what forced my older brother and three sisters to live in the US. They couldn't bear the harassment."
from "Worlds Apart" by Chris McGreal in The Guardian

For years I have thought that someone like the BBC or Al Jazeera should do a piece about the situation of the people who live in Beit Haninah, especially "Beit Haninah al balad," also called "Beit Haninah tahht," Lower Beit Haninah. The village of Beit Hanina was occupied by Israel in 1967. It was outside of the Jerusalem municipal borders while under Jordanian and British Mandate rule, but Israel incorporated part of the land into the much enlarged municipal borders. As the excerpt above mentions, most of the village's land was incorporated into Jerusalem, but the oldest part of the village where most of the people lived was left in the West Bank. But lines on maps were not easily seen on the ground, before this decade at least, and the people of Beit Hanina went on trying to live their lives as normally as possible. The village grew over the years, as villages usually do. Many Hanayyna (people from Beit Hanina) built on their lands that had been annexed to Jerusalem, and "Upper Beit Hanina" became more built up than the older area down the hill. The close, interconnected families of Beit Hanina were spread out on both sides of the border.In the last 10 years, I don't remember precisely when it was completed, the Israelis built a highway that cut through Beit Hanina, between the Upper and Lower neighborhoods. This was one of those roads meant to connect the settlements to Jerusalem, and only Israelis and Jerusalem residents are allowed on it, even though it is in the West Bank. There were a couple overpasses, so that the new highway went over the roads connecting the two halves of the village. Some land was confiscated for the highway, some trees and houses were lost, but mostly life went on as it had before.

(click on the images for larger versions)

After the outbreak of the al Aqsa intifada in September of 2000 and the completion of that road, Israel started cutting off more and more of the roads that connected Jerusalem to the West Bank, so they could control who entered and exited through the checkpoints at the main roads. The old road between lower Beit Haninah and Bir Nabala just to the north was for a while a way to bypass the checkpoint on the main road between Ramallah and northern East Jerusalem. So the Israelis blocked the road to Bir Nabala with a large mound of rocks, earth and garbage scraped up from the land around it. You could walk around it or climb over it, but you couldn't drive through it. There are a lot of people in Bir Nabala who are in the construction business, and occasionally one of them would brave taking a bulldozer and clearing a path through for cars, but the Israelis would just come back and build the earth mound again. I used to feel sorry for the people in the last house on the road just before Bir Nabala, because it was sort of isolated and much closer to Bir Nabala. If they wanted to use a car to bring their grocieries to the house, they would have to go to Beit Haninah even though Bir Nabala was much closer. But I think for the majority of the residents of Lower Beit Haninah life went on without much change, because their "center of life" was very much focused on Jerusalem.

I have used Google Earth to measure the distance between two places in Beit Haninah to illustrate how upper and lower Beit Haninah have been cut off. The distance by road between point A in lower Beit Hanina and point B in Upper Beit Hanina on the map below is 0.48 miles (0.77km).
Then one day, the Israelis removed the earth mound between Bir Nabala and Beit Hanina, and instead blocked the underpasses that connected Upper and Lower Beit Hanina. That created a serious disruption in the Hanayyna's lives. Now, to get from one neighborhood to the other, they had to take a much longer route through Bir Nabala and the Ram checkpoint. What used to be a short drive of only a half a mile became over 4 1/2 miles (7.8km). Sure, 4 1/2 miles might seem short to you, but the road to Bir Nabala was very poor, and the cars had to go very slowly and if 2 cars passed each other, one of them had to drop its wheels off the pavement on one side. Then they had to wait to pass through the checkpoint, which was often crowded and time consuming. That is if they could pass at all. Anyone with a west Bank ID couldn't pass even if they owned land or even lived in the Jerusalem side, like the man in the story above. At first, the barrier was just another earth mound, and you could walk over it. Some people would dig it out a bit to make it easier for the old ladies and children to climb over. There were lots of kids who climbed over, because the Beit Hanina's girls' and boys' schools were on opposite sides! People from lower Beit Haninah were cut off from easy access to their property, jobs, better medical care, worship in their holy places and the city that was at the center of their lives. And of course families had a harder time visiting each other. But as long as the road was only blocked by stones and dirt, they kept going over it, on the lookout for the Israeli soldiers who occasionally sat on the road on the Jerusalem side.

So the Israelis decided they needed a better way to block the road.
And then as a testament to the Palestinian stubborn insistence to be able to live their lives on their own lands, they blocked it even more.
At the same time, walls and fences were built all along the Israelis-only road above. Don't forget, both sides of this barrier are occupied territory according to international law. The road that is blocked was just used for Palestinians from one Palestinian neighborhood to enter another Palestinian neighborhood, trying to maintain the way of life they had for ages.

And then it got worse.

The road between Bir Nabala and Ram was cut off not once, but twice by The Wall. There are pictures of the place the road now dead ends in this post of mine. The Israelis cut a road through a hill north of Bir Nabala to give the people of these encircled villages a route to Ramallah. It is a very nice, smooth road, until you get a bit past the new checkpoint. Then you are forced to drive slowly on a narrow, bumpy road to detour around the northern most point that Israel has added to the Jerusalem boundaries, around the old airport where Israel is considering putting a new settlement for Orthodox Jews. To go from Lower Beit Hanina to Upper Beit Haninah requires driving up the newly repaved road to Bir Nabala and passing through the new checkpoint, driving north of the airport on a road so narrow that 2 cars cannot pass with all their tires on the pavement, twisting and tuning though small roads in a densely populated residential area along the edges of Qalandia refugee camp, until you get to the Qalandia border crossing. Cars with West Bank license plates cannot cross into Jerusalem, so unless you have the right license plates, you have to get out and walk through the Qalandia crossing terminal. See this video to get an idea of what you have to go through there. Then you can get in another car and head south toward Upper Beit Haninah, but you will have to pass one more checkpoint before you get there!

The trip between 2 neighbors less than a half a mile apart is now 10 long, tiresome miles (over 16km) plus 3 checkpoints.

Seriously, could you live like this? What would you do if this was your neighborhood and your family that was separated like this?

All of the pictures in this post are from http://www.beithanina.org 's photo albums . Another good site dedicated to Beit Hanina is http://hanini.org/.

orange

2008-05-25T15:04:00.004+03:00

A friend of mine brought me seeds for these flowers a few years ago.
It was a wildflower mix, but these are much bigger than most of our local wildflowers.
I saved seeds and grew them again the next year.
They didn't do quite as well.
I didn't plant any this year but one "volunteer" grew back anyway.

a ruined mosque and the rest of the al Jazeera documentary on Jaffa

2008-05-19T21:59:00.004+03:00

Al Jazeera has posted the second part of their documentary on Jaffa. This one deals with the aftermath of the war in 1948, looking at the lives of Jaffa residents who became refugees and those that stayed behind.

About half way through the last of the clips below, it tells of 2 mosques that were left after the Israelis destroyed the neighborhoods around them. One has been renovated, but the other is in a sad state. The Siksek mosque was built by members of the Siksek family over 100 years ago. The Israelis confiscated it, and sold it into private ownership. It was most recently used as a store room for a plastics factory. The reporter who did the documentary entered the mosque with a descendant of the family who built it, and he cried when he saw the destruction. I wish they had some clearer pictures of the interior, but here are 2 screen shots of the mosque incase you don't have the bandwidth to watch the video.

Here are the videos:
Palestine Street - The Bride in Exile - 15 May 08 - Part 1

Palestine Street - The Bride in Exile - 15 May 08 - Part 2

Palestine Street - The Bride in Exile - 15 May 08 - Part 3

Palestine Street - The Bride in Exile - 15 May 08 - Part 4

alJazeera documentary on Jaffa

2008-05-18T08:34:00.003+03:00

Al Jazeera has put online the first part of a documentary about Jaffa before and after the naqba. It is called Palestine street - The Lost Bride. I thought calling the street that already has several other names "Palestine Street" was kind of a lame idea, but the documentary was interesting. These 4 parts are only episode one. I love that al Jazeera has some of their programs up online, but I wish they could make it a little easier to watch the longer shows that are broken up into parts, by making a playlist for them so you don't have to hunt for the next part, or at least not saying that it is a "2 part documentary" and then dividing part one into "4 parts." Anyway, here it is all lined up for you.........

Palestine Street - The Lost Bride - 14 May 08 - Part 1

Palestine Street - The Lost Bride - 14 May 08 - Part 2

Palestine Street - The Lost Bride - 14 May 08 - Part 3

Palestine Street - The Lost Bride - 14 May 08 - Part 4

Back to our regularly scheduled flowers...

2008-05-17T10:08:00.003+03:00

I don't usually do so many political type posts, so, inshaAllah I will be going back to my usual mix. If I only concentrate on the politics, I get too depressed to get through my day.

One night last month my son came in saying that there was a "flower full of black bees." I don't know what kind of insect these are or why they were all having a pajama party on this one flower, but I snapped a picture with the flash, and by morning they were all gone.

Settlement on a mosque!?!?! Hebron / al Khalil

2008-05-17T10:03:00.002+03:00

Buried, originally uploaded by subterranean_.

"From the rooftop of a Palestinian home you can see how the settlers are effectively building new homes on top of existing Palestinian houses and holy places. In the case of the Mosque below, because it could not be razed without fierce resistance, the settlers simply built above it.

The new settlers in the buildings above have recently arrived from Brooklyn, New York."

The situation in Hebron / al Khalil in the West Bank is one of the most shocking and extreme. Like many West Bank towns, it has settlements all around it, but there is also a settlement right inside the city. I have been reading about it for years, but this photo seriously shocked me. HOW can they build OVER a mosque??? Please look at this photo set on Flickr for more pictures and explanations.

West Bank Part Two: Hebron

This is a Door

2008-05-17T09:50:00.002+03:00

This is a Door, originally uploaded by subterranean_.

"This sewage system is the only means of school children crossing from one side of their town to the other. The school is located on this side of the barrier, and most of the children live on the other side.

The water is filthy, hazardous and utterly disgusting. "

This photo set on Flickr is about the wall. The pictures are well labeled and worth the time. I have been wanting to take a picture of the CTRL + ALT + DELETE graffiti for ages, but I have no other reason to get out of the car in that area. It is right near the Qalandia checkpoint and refugee camp.

Road 443

2008-05-17T08:50:00.002+03:00

Please watch these excellent videos about Road 443. This road was built in the West Bank, on Palestinian land. When it was built, the people living next to it were told that they would benefit from it, but now they are not even allowed to use it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this first video really explains the situation.

The second half shows some of the non-violent demonstrations against this injustice.

Judaizing East Jerusalem

2008-05-15T16:36:00.005+03:00

Today we are commemorating the nakba of 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and dispossessed of their homes and land, but the nakba was not a one time event, it is a continuing process. 240,000 more Palestinians were made refugees in and around 180,000 of the refugees from 1948 were forced to move again. Even today, Palestinians from Jerusalem are being forced from their homes.

Israel

claims all of East and West Jerusalem as its "eternal and undivided capital," and in order to secure its hold on the land,

Israel

has pursued a consistent policy to create and maintain a Jewish majority in the city. This demographic battle has 2 strategies, first to encourage Israeli Jews to move into East Jerusalem, and second to move out as many Palestinians as possible.

The UN plan that partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state did not include Jerusalem in either the Israeli or Palestinian state, it was a "corpus separatum" to be governed by an international body, since the city contained the holy sites of Jews, Christians and Muslims. The fighting in 1948 left the western part of the city in Israeli hands and the Old City and East Jerusalem were incorporated into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. When the eastern part of the city was captured in 1967,

Israel

declared sovereignty over both sides of the city and redrew the boundaries of the eastern side to include some undeveloped West Bank land and to exclude some of the Arab villages that had been considered part of Jerusalem prior to 1967. This was the first step in the process of Judaizing Jerusalem.

According to international law, all of the territory captured in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem, is occupied territory and its inhabitants are protected by 4th Geneva Convention which insists on the right of return and forbids collective punishments among other things. Three United Nations Security Council Resolutions are directly related to the status of Jerusalem.

* In response to Israel’s occupation of foreign territory,

United Nations Security Council Resolution

(UNSCR) 242 of 1967 calls for the “Withdrawal of

Israel armed forces from territories occupied in

the recent conflict.”

• In response to Israel’s expansion of Jerusalem’s

borders, UNSCR 252 of 1968 states that the Security

Council “Considers that all...actions taken

by Israel...which tend to change the legal status

of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that

status.”

• In response to Israel’s attempt to annex Occupied

East Jerusalem, UNSCR 476 of 1980 states

that the Security Council “Recommends that all

actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power,

which purport to alter the character and status of

Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a

flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention relative

to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time

of War and also constitute a serious obstruction

to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting

peace in the Middle East.”

Palestinians in the annexed parts of East Jerusalem in 1967 were given "permanent resident" status in Israel. Residents who were not present at the time of the census after the war were excluded, including those that had gone abroad temporarily for work or educational reasons and those that fled from the fighting. Around 8,000 Jerusalemites lost their right to go home as a result of this. Permanent residents could become citizens if they were willing to swear allegiance to of the State of Israel, but unsurprisingly, few did. Jerusalemites were issued an ID card different from the IDs given to West Bank residents, and they have the right to live and work in Israel without other special permits and receive public education. They can buy land and vote in local elections. Since a 1988 Supreme Court ruling, they are also eligible for the national health insurance and social security benefits. And of course they pay taxes. A special permit is needed by Permanent Residents to leave and re-enter the country, and residency is not automatically granted to their spouse and children.

Israel has been changing the demographic balance of East Jerusalem by moving Israeli Jews into the area and pressuring Palestinians out. In an article in Forced Migration Review by Elodie Guego, the process of land confiscation and limits to Palestinian neighborhoods' growth is described:

Between 1967 and 1994 Israel confiscated 24.8 square kilometres of land in East Jerusalem, 80% of it belonging to Palestinians. Land expropriation is continuing. Today a mere 7% of the area of East Jerusalem remains available to Palestinians. Confiscated land has mostly been used for the construction of Jewish settlements and settlers’ bypass roads, in violation of international humanitarian law prohibiting an occupying power from transferring part of its own population into territory it has occupied. The Jerusalem Municipality has expediently used zoning restrictions to establish ‘green areas’, supposedly set aside for environmental and recreational purposes, but actually deployed as a tactic to remove the land from Palestinian use and create a reserve for Jewish housing.

The Town Planing Scheme (TPS), another key instrument of ‘quiet transfer’, restricts building permits in already built-up areas, the only areas available for Palestinian use. TPS has been used to restrict the development of Palestinian neighbourhoods. Palestinians are only permitted to build one- or two storey buildings while adjacent Israeli housing units may have up to eight floors. Palestinians must go through a complex and time-consuming administrative process to obtain a building permit. These cost around $25,000 – a considerable obstacle as Palestinian incomes are significantly below those of Israelis. Palestinians obtain a disproportionately small percentage of the building permits issued every year by the Jerusalem Municipality. Only 7.5% of the homes legally built during the period 1990-1997 belong to Palestinians.

It is ironic that despite promises to stop building settlements as part of the so-called peace plans (Oslo and the Road Map) the Israeli government has insisted that the settlements had to be allowed to expand for "natural growth," but Palestinians living in East Jerusalem on land they owned before 1967 are not usually allowed to build to accommodate their growing families. Even adding one room to an over crowded house is hard to do legally. The result is a housing shortage in Palestinian neighborhoods and extremely high prices for land and rents. As a result of the difficulty of obtaining permits, as many as one third of buildings in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are "illegal" according to Israeli law. These unlicensed houses are at risk of being demolished by the Israeli authorities. A fact sheet published by the Palestinian National Authority Ministry of Information explains the situation:

Between 1994 and 2006, 706 Palestinians houses were demolished.

While illegal construction also takes place in West Jerusalem, demolition orders are much less likely to be issued. In 2004 for example, the Jerusalem Municipality demolished 53% of illegal structures it located in East Jerusalem, compared to 26% in West Jerusalem; 95% of the demolition orders it issued against illegal structures in East Jerusalem were carried out, while only 65% of these orders were carried out in West Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem residents also receive less in the way of municipal services from the Jerusalem municipality. According to the same fact sheet:

While Palestinian Jerusalemites pay the same tax rates as their Israeli counterparts, whose per capita income is approximately 8 times higher, there are stark differences in the level of municipal services available to the two groups. Despite forming 33% of the city’s residents, just 12% of the municipal budget is allocated to East Jerusalem, while the rest goes to West Jerusalem.

The spouses and children of permanent residents are not automatically granted permanent resident status. If a Jerusalemite marries a resident of the West Bank, they have to apply for "family reunification," for the West Bank ID holder to be allowed to live in Jerusalem. In the Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, Katherine M. Metres says, “The Israeli government's policy on family reunification is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is designed to pacify gullible human rights critics while frustrating Palestinians.” Until April 1994, it was "generally known" that Female residents' applications for their non resident husbands were usually refused. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel challenged that policy in an Israeli court, and now women can apply for family reunification. However, if the husband has any sort of security record, he will be refused. Ms. Metres explains:

Since a majority of young West Bank men have been incarcerated at some point during the intifada, a huge section of the population remains ineligible.

Refusing to let persons with "security records" live in Jerusalem puts Israel in violation not only of international law but also of minimum standards of fairness. First, the Israelis as an occupying power in East Jerusalem are prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention from altering the normal life of the civilians in such matters as residency with their families. Second, the security record of the relative submitting the application should never be considered as relevant, since the request is on behalf of a different person. Third, few persons with a security record have ever had an opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law since they were held without trial in "administrative detention." And finally, prisoners who actually received legal process have served their sentences. They should not be doubly punished, nor should their families.

Since May 2002, Israel has stopped accepting applications for family reunification for Jerusalem residents.

Children are registered according to their father's ID. A female Jerusalem resident cannot register her children on her ID. Children born in the West Bank cannot be registered on their parent's Jerusalem IDs. Those who are not registered on a Jerusalem ID will not be able to access public education or the healthcare Jerusalem residents are entitled to, even if their parents live and pay taxes in Jerusalem. When a child reaches 16, if he has not secured his own Jerusalem ID, he will not be able to pass though the checkpoints to enter Jerusalem even to visit his Jerusalem resident grandparents without a special permit. This whole policy is designed to pressure families where one spouse is from outside Jerusalem to leave Jerusalem.

As a result of the housing shortage, soaring land and rent prices, painfully high taxes and difficulty in obtaining family reunification, some Jerusalemites chose to move to the villages just outside the Jerusalem municipal boundaries. Then in 1995, Israel began taking the Jerusalem IDs of people who could not prove that their "center of life" was in Jerusalem. If they could not prove that they had lived and worked in Jerusalem during the previous 7 years, they might find themselves no longer allowed to live in the place they were born, or even to have to apply for a permit to visit their family home! This new rule was applied retroactively, and no warning was given so that residents could protect their status. To obtain birth certificates, family reunifications or travel permits, a long list of electric bills, tax papers and school records may have to be produced. Representatives of the Ministry of the Interior occasionally showed up at the listed homes of applicants to verify if the permanent resident was really living there. Accepting citizenship in another country is also grounds for the Ministry to revoke a permanent resident's ID. Traveling carrying the travel document Jerusalem residents are provided is difficult, and often involves long waits for visas, so many Jerusalemites who were able to take western citizenships took them, only to find they could no longer go home. However Israelis have no problems having dual citizenship.

Fearing the loss of their Jerusalem IDs many Jerusalemites moved back into the city, putting further pressure on the housing situation there, and leaving many vacancies in the villages on the boarders of Jerusalem, which had previously been experiencing a building boom. Other people who had lost their IDs were faced with a challenging life. They could stay in Jerusalem illegally, never leaving the city and trying to avoid the internal checkpoints that might be set up at a moments notice, or they could stay outside, cut off from their family home, jobs and places of worship. The "center of life" policy was suspended after 4 years because it was actually encouraging Palestinians to move back into Jerusalem, but it was revived after the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in 2002. The revoking of IDs has certainly continued. In 2006, 1,363 Jerusalem residents lost their IDs, 6 times more than the year before.

The Wall is the latest method of eliminating Palestinians from East Jerusalem. It runs right through many Palestinian neighborhoods, leaving many permanent residents out side. For instance, the Shofat refugee camp and West Anata, with 55,000 mostly Jerusalem residents, were left outside the wall. Families are separated and people are cut off from their jobs, schools, health care facilities and holy sites.

Israel is slowly, quietly, continuing the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents. While the world ignores the situation, the nakba in Jerusalem continues with out any massacres and headlines.

Resources:

Jerusalem / al Quds Factsheet

http://www.minfo.gov.ps/English/factsheet/e%5B1%5D.Jerusalem_FINAL.pdf

‘Quiet transfer’ in East Jerusalem nears completion

by Elodie Guego

http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR26/FMR26contents.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Jerusalem#Residency

Israeli Ethnic Cleansing Undiminished in Jerusalem

By Katherine M. Metres in the Washington report for Middle East Affairs

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0994/9409012.htm

(Click map to enlarge)

map from http://www.minfo.gov.ps/English/factsheet/e%5B1%5D.Jerusalem_FINAL.pdf

1000 year old mosques destroyed in the wake of the Nakba

2008-05-14T21:21:00.006+03:00

from Palestine Remembered
from archnet.org

Photographer	K.A.C. Creswell
Copyright	© Creswell Archive, Ashmolean Museum

I read an interesting article in Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, about the destruction of 3 ancient mosques after the nakba and the creation of the state of Israel. They were in Yibna (Yavneh), Isdood (Ashdod) and Majdal (Ashkelon).

History Erased

_{By Meron Rapoport}

In July 1950, Majdal - today Ashkelon - was still a mixed town. About 3,000 Palestinians lived there in a closed, fenced-off ghetto, next to the recently arrived Jewish residents. Before the 1948 war, Majdal had been a commercial and administrative center with a population of 12,000. It also had religious importance: nearby, amid the ruins of ancient Ashkelon, stood Mash'had Nabi Hussein, an 11th-century structure where, according to tradition, the head of Hussein Bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was interred; his death in Karbala, Iraq, marked the onset of the rift between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Muslim pilgrims, both Shi'ite and Sunni, would visit the site. But after July 1950, there was nothing left for them to visit: that's when the Israel Defense Forces blew up Mash'had Nabi Hussein.

This was not the only Muslim holy place destroyed after Israel's War of Independence. According to a book by Dr. Meron Benvenisti, of the 160 mosques in the Palestinian villages incorporated into Israel under the armistice agreements, fewer than 40 are still standing. What is unusual about the case of Mash'had Nabi Hussein is that the demolition is documented, and direct responsibility was taken by none other than the GOC Southern Command at the time, an officer named Moshe Dayan. The documentation shows that the holy site was blown up deliberately, as part of a broader operation that included at least two additional mosques, one in Yavneh and the other in Ashdod.

the rest of the article is here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/878851.html

Yibna was said to be the site of Abu Hurierah's tomb (RA), but I have also read that his tomb is in Syria and Hussein Bin Ali's tomb is in Cairo, so Allahu 'alim.
The following list is from "Role of Palestinian Civil Society in the Protection of Holy Sites in Palestine" by Mr. Adnane Ibrahim Hassan Al Subah There is also a list of Christian sites that were destroyed, damaged or confiscated.

Mosques converted into facilities for other purposes

1- Al Bassa mosque - ‘Akka jurisdiction - (Shlomy) converted into a sheep enclosure.

2- Zaib mosque - ‘Akka jurisdiction - (Akhzif) converted into a storehouse for agricultural tools for the Aghzif Park.

3- Ain Zaitun mosque - Safad jurisdiction - converted into a cattle enclosure.

4- Al Ahmar mosque - Safad - converted into a meeting place for artists.

5- As-Souk mosque - Safad - converted into an exhibition hall for statutes and photographs.

6- Al Qal’a mosque - Safad - converted into the headquarters of the Safad municipality.

7- Al Khalissa mosque - (Kriat Shmona) - converted into a municipal museum.

8- Dar Al Baida mosque - East-north and south of the petrol station- converted into block of offices.

9- Al Burj mosque -‘Akka - converted into a university students’ affairs office.

10- Ain Hawd mosque - Jurisdiction of Haifa - converted into a restaurant and a bar.

11- The old mosque in Qissaria - Jurisdiction of Haifa - converted into an office for the architects of the Development Company

12- The new mosque in Qissaria - Jurisdiction of Haifa - converted into a restaurant and bar

13- Al Hamma mosque- the Golan - closed and used by the adjoining restaurant as a storage facility for alcohol and foodstuffs.

14- Siksek mosque - Yafa - the ground floor is used as a plastic plant and the first floor as a gambling joint.

15- Attabia mosque - closed down and used by a Christian as a house.

16- ‘Asqalan mosque - one side of it is a museum and the other is a bar restaurant.

17- Al Maliha mosque - Al Quds - part of the mosque is used as a house by a Jew and the terrace of the mosque is used to hold festivities for the neighbours.

18- The Great Mosque - Bir Sab’a - in a state of neglect but was previously used as a museum.

19- The Small Mosque - Bir Sab’a - converted into a shop run by a Jew.

Mosques and mausoleums converted into synagogues

1- Yaqub mosque and mausoleum - Safad - converted into a synagogue.

2- Yaquq mausoleum - jurisdiction of Tabariya - converted into a Jewish mausoleum called “Habquq.”

3- Sit Sukaina mausoleum - Tabariya - converted into a Jewish mausoleum called “Rachel.”

4- Sheikh Denial mausoleum - Dana, east of Tamra Azza’bia - Jurisdiction of Bissan- converted into a Jewish mausoleum called “Dan.”

5- Al ‘Afula Mosque - converted into a synagogue.

6- Kafrita mosque - Kafr Atta- converted into a synagogue.

7- Sheikh Chahada mausoleum - religious Jews visit this mausoleum with the intent of converting it into a Jewish mausoleum called “Zion Ibn Gideon.” Several violations have already been committed there.

8- Samaane mausoleum - northwest of Qulaiqila - converted into a Jewish mausoleum by the same name.

9- Benyamine mausoleum - north of Qulaiqila - converted into a Jewish mausoleum by the same name.

10- Ali Mausoleum - Alyazur - converted into a synagogue.

11- Mausoleum of Abu Huraira in Yibna - jurisdiction of Ramla - converted into a Jewish mausoleum for Rabbi Gimlael.

12- Mosque of Prophet Robin - South of Yafa - converted into a Jewish mausoleum called “Raobin Ibn Yaaqub.”

13- Mausoleum of Sheikh Gharbawi - west of Al Midia village - Modi’ine - converted into a Jewish mausoleum for Matatyahu.

Closed, Neglected and Demolished Mosques and Mausoleums

1- Umm Al Faraj mosque - jurisdiction of ‘Akka - (Ben Ammi) - demolished on 4/12/1997.

2- Wadi Al Hawarith mosque - jurisdiction of Tulkarem - (near Al Khudaira) - demolished by some Jews on 03/02/2000.

3- Sheikh Ni’ma mosque - Safad - demolished, but the minaret is still standing.

4- Al Khudar mausoleum - Al Bassa - Shlomy - in a state of neglect.

5- Al Zaidani mosque -Tabariyya- closed and in a state of neglect.

6- Al Bahar mosque - Tabariyya - closed and in a state of neglect.. The municipality of Tabariyya restored it for the purpose of using it as museum but it was burnt by a Jew on 6/2/2000.

7- Hittine mausoleum - jurisdiction of Tabariyya - (Kafar Zitim) - closed down several times by the Israeli land administration.

8- ‘Umqa mosque - ‘Umqa colony - closed, in a state of neglect and in danger of collapse.

9- Sheikh Mohammed Kwikat mausoleum - Bait Haemaq - in a state of neglect.

10- Prophet Yirchaa’s mausoleum - (Mitsoddat Yushaa) - jurisdiction of Safad- in a state of neglect.

11- Two mosques in Khan Jub Yussuf (Kibbutz Amead) - in a state of neglect.

12- Sheikh Ibriq mausoleum - Haifa coast - in a state of neglect.

13- Sheikh Ibriq mausoleum - Tabuun - in a state of neglect.

14- Prophet Hochan’s mausoleum - Hocha, north of Ibtine - jurisdiction of Haifa- restored by Muslims.

15- Mosque of Ibtine - jurisdiction of Haifa - in a state of neglect.

16- Ahmed mosque - ‘Akka - in a state of neglect.

17- Sumairiyya mosque - jurisdiction of ‘Akka - closed down by the Israeli Land Administration.

18- A mausoleum in Al Manchiyya - ‘Akka’ - inhabited by a Muslim family to preserve it.

19- Al Manchiyya mosque - in a state of neglect.

20- The Small mosque in Haifa - in a state of neglect ; Muslims are not allowed to restore and use it.

21- Assuhaili mausoleum - Balad Cheikh - Haifa - in a state of neglect.

22- Allujun mosque - Mjido- formerly converted into a carpenter shop, but now in a state of neglect.

23- Maalul mosque - jurisdiction of Nassera - demolished to a large extent and only a small portion remains.

24- A mausoleum in Tirat Al Karmal - Haifa jurisdiction - in a state of neglect.

25- Sarfand mosque - Haifa- (Hebonim) - in a state of neglect.

26- Ajzim mosque - coast of Haifa - closed down by the Israeli Land Administration. Anyone who violates the Israeli order risks going to prison.

27- Sheikh Ali mausoleum - Jab’- Coast of Haifa - in a state of neglect.

28- Umm Al ‘Alaq mosque - Rouha - (Rimat Handif) - in a state of neglect.

29- New mosque - Qissariya - demolished.

30- Sheikh Ahmed’s mausoleum - Al Khudaira - in a state of neglect.

31- Jamal Eddine Aqouch - south of Bir Sekka - in a state of neglect.

32- Saidna Ali mosque - Al Haram - (Herzelia) - restored by the Muslims and used for prayers.

33- Assadeq mausoleum - Majdal Sadeq - South of Kafr Qassim - jurisdiction of Ramla - in a state of neglect.

34- Prophet Yahya’s mausoleum - Al Muzairi’a - jurisdiction of Ramla- in a state of neglect.

35- Abi Al Awan’s mausoleum - Jamjuliyya - in a state of neglect.

36- Suraqa’s mausoleum - west of Qulaiqila - neglected.

37- A mausoleum in Al Midahdira - west of Tirat Bani Saab - in a state of neglect.

38- Maska mosque - west of Tirat Bani Saab - largely demolished.

39- Al Yazur mausoleum - jurisdiction of Yafa - in a state of neglect.

40- Ahmed Iqbal Usdud’s mausoleum - jurisdiction of Gaza - in a state of neglect.

41- Usdud mosque - jurisdiction of Gaza - partly demolished, in a state of neglect.

42- Sheikh ‘Awad mosque - ‘Asqalane - jurisdiction of Gaza - in a state of neglect.

43- Tamim Addari’s mausoleum - Bait Jibril - jurisdiction of Hebron - in a state of neglect, it was burnt three years ago.

44- Zakaraiyya’s mosque - north of Bait Jibril - in a state of neglect.

45- A mosque in Dir Sheikh - Al Quds mountains - in a state of neglect.

46- Ain Karem mosque - Al Quds - in a state of neglect. and used by drug addicts and prostitutes.

47- Lafta mosque - Al Quds - in a state of neglect.

48- Al Mijirmi’s mausoleum - Tantura - coast of Haifa - in a state of neglect.

49- Al Falluja mosque and mausoleum - jurisdiction of Gaza - the mausoleum was demolished one year and a half ago.

50- Mausoleum of Mohammed Al ‘Ajami - Al Majdil - Tabariyya - in a state of neglect.

Zionist Desecration of Cemeteries

1- Bulldozing of the cemeteries of ‘Aqer in the vicinity of Ramla, Salma, ‘Abbassiyya near Yafa, ‘Asqalane, and Istiqlal in Haifa. Houses, commercial centres and industrial zones were built where these cemeteries used to be.

2- Another group of cemeteries was converted into a rubbish dump, such as the cemeteries of Khayriyya and Yazur at the entrance of which a sign reads “Rubbish Dump”.

3- Other cemeteries were bulldozed to lay roads, set up animal farms or public parks.

4- The Ain Ghazal cemetery was converted into a municipal dump.

5- The Ain Hawd cemetery was converted into a parking lot.

Al Jazeera reports on Palestinian refugees and the Nakba

2008-05-14T14:53:00.003+03:00

Al Jazeera English has presented several interesting reports this past week, in memory of the Palestinian nakba and the founding of the State of Israel.

Palestinian villages lost in 1948 war - 13 May 08

Palestinians struggle with land ownership - 13 May 2008

Aging Palestinians reflect on the past - 13 May 2008

The Promised Land? - Pioneers - 5 May 08 - Part1

The Promised Land? - Pioneers - 5 May 08 - Part 2

The Promised Land? - Conflict - 12 May 08 - Part 1

The Promised Land? - Conflict - 12 May 08 - Part 1

And in case you think that alJazeera is just Arab propaganda and never presents an Israeli point of view, you may watch these.

Riz Khan - Palestinian 'Right to returm' - 13 May 08 - Part1

Riz Khan - Palestinian 'Right to Return' - 13 May 08 - Part2

Slideshow: Inside Shatila

2008-05-14T11:52:00.003+03:00

The BBC has a slide show of pictures from Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. You might have to keep pausing it to both read the text and get a good look at the pictures, but it is definitely worth a look.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7398071.stm

valley views

2008-05-11T23:06:00.005+03:00

My no frills, point-and-shoot camera can hold 11 pictures in it's memory at its best resolution, so each time I take a walk, I am limiteds to 11 pictures. It's so frustrating. So here are the 8 best for today. On the other side of that hill is Jerusalem.
I would love to be able to look at this view every day. But it is a heck of a walk up the hill. Until we get a car, I will stick to living in the ugly, built up valley where the public transportation is.
This house is all tumbled down on one side, but the other side is newer, and lived in. I guess they can't bare to tear down the house their grandfathers built.I love the rock walls and the old trees.
A few last wildflowers bloomed along this wall.I am seriously too tired to think of any more captions....
and I think I went too far with the sharpening on this next one. It looks weird somehow, doesn't it?Good night, and Happy (American) Mothers day to my Mom and all the other mothers out there!

Sour

2008-05-10T18:44:00.007+03:00

Spring is the time for sour foods in Palestine. Everyone seems to love sour stuff. Many people around here have almond trees, but no one seems to leave them on the trees to mature. They are eaten when they are fuzzy and green. Now "karas" are in season. They are crunchy, unripe cherries. My kids love to dip them in salt like they do with the green almonds. My youngest will even spend his pocket change at the vegetable store to snack on them like candy. Unfortunately, we don't have a karas tree.
They will eat the unripe plums in the same way. Remember the blossoms from a few months ago? Now they are getting big.
When the clover was in bloom, I used to see many children in the neighborhood eating the flower stems, which are tart. Sometimes we put the leaves in salads, but generally I prefer to look at my flowers!Now they all break off the curly little tendrals of the grape vines to munch on. These askadinia (loquats) are the first fruit in our yard to ripen (except for lemons, which are ripening year round).
They are sour even when ripe and juicy.
While I was out taking pictures of the askadinia, I saw part of the air show the Israelis were doing to celebrate their 60th year. They kept flying over low and loud.
Sixty years to celebrate for them, 60 years of broken dreams and mourning for us.

The embroidery in the background in 2 of the pictures above is from a traditional Palestinian thob, worn by many women here for both special occasions and every day dress. This particular one had been worn so much that the embroidery was fraying and the owner wanted to throw it out. I rescued it, for I don't know what. I just couldn't see throwing something that had that much work in it away.

Still Crying And Shooting After All These Years

2008-05-08T12:21:00.002+03:00

Lawrence of Cyberia has yet another good post I want to recommend. It is about the Israeli policies that lead to so many Palestinian children's deaths. I wish I wrote well researched and useful articles like this. Fair warning though, if you are like me, you may want to avoid looking at the pictures. Definitely not the kind of pictures I put on my blog.....

Can't get the blues

2008-05-08T11:12:00.004+03:00

I don't mean me, I get the blues all the time. When I do, I like to wonder around in my yard taking pictures of flowers. But my camera seems to have a hard time with blue flowers. This is a blue wildflower.No matter what I do, I can't get the color right. It is supposed to be a light blue. I tried changing the white balance on the camera, and a dozen other things on the computer, but this is the best I could do. It's not right.Most of the wild flowers are finished now, and they end up as ugly dried up weeds that I have to pull up. Some go out with a flourish though. These are bigger than your fist.
At the very front of our yard, where I rarely go, there is this big patch of what look like wild morning glories. Most are small.But a few are about 2 inches across.In the summer, the few wildflowers still around will be thorny.Lovely, but not fun to pull up.(That was taken another year. The daisies are all finished because of the hot weather we had.)

the queen of procrastination

2008-05-08T09:21:00.010+03:00

I am the queen of procrastination. I have so many ideas to blog about, but I never get it done. I plan the post in my mind as I am going through my boring day, take the pictures and prepare them to post, but then I stop. I read my favorite blogs, I follow link after link, I look and look at other people's creativity, I OD on news, but I postpone doing my own writing. I was like this in school too. I loved doing research, and I usually got very good grades on my writing, but it was torture to get my self to sit down and do the actual writing. My husband would say that writing this blog is just my way of procrastinating when I ought to be doing the laundry, dishes, scrubbing floors or one of the million other dull duties that bore me to death. So I am actually procrastinating at my procrastination!

Time just seems to rush by me, and I am always wondering how did it get this late and how did I get so old already. When the first wildflowers bloomed this year, my youngest would occasionally bring me home little bouquets he picked as he walked through he fields on his way from school. My kids all know how much I love these flowers, and they all used to bring me hands full. I used to have a collection of tiny vases I saved for them. But now it is only my youngest who sees a flower and thinks he has to bring it for Mama. I wonder if he will next year? He just turned 12 in March. I planned to post a picture of the cake I made for him then, but it has been sitting, waiting on my hard drive for over a month. I tried to make it special, since it was the last little kid birthday. He will be a teenager next year. No more babies, they are all young men and women. My baby is going to be a teenager, my oldest should graduate from college next year, my older daughter is getting married in the fall, and my younger daughter is about to graduate from high school, INSHAALLAH.

Last month a friend of mine came for a visit to the West Bank. Holly and I met online years ago, and in person once about 8 years ago. This was the first time I had seen her and her son since then. MashaAllah, he is a little older than my youngest son, but it was a shock to see that he was a young man now with a deeper voice and a big thick novel to read, instead of the hyper little boy of 8 years ago. We sat in the Star's and Buck's cafe in Ramallah, and talked over all the ways our lives differed. I loved it, and hope it won't be another 8 years before we see each other again. I should have taken a picture or two of that cafe, it really was a nice place. We sat by a window overlooking the manara, the central "square" in Ramallah. (It's always called Manara square, but it's a circle!) I took one picture of the manara out the window, because it looked so nice and clean. Not only had they finally taken the Christmas decorations down (which I am sure were still up at the end of February), but someone had scrubbed off the election posters the had been slapped all over it almost two years ago. I guess I am not the only one who takes a while to get around to doing things.

"Gaza 'ala bali - Gaza on my mind"

Pomegranates

2008-05-04T19:13:00.009+03:00

And it is He who sends down rain from the sky, and We produce thereby the growth of all things. We produce from it greenery from which We produce grains arranged in layers. And from the palm trees - of its emerging fruit are clusters hanging low. And [We produce] gardens of grapevines and olives and pomegranates, similar yet varied. Look at [each of] its fruit when it yields and [at] its ripening. Indeed in that are signs for a people who believe. Al-Anaam 6:99
The pomegranate trees in my yard are blooming. Since I grew up in Pennsylvania, I always thought of pomegranates as a strange and exotic fruit, and they have a strange and exotic flower too.
The buds open into a hard base for the flower, as hard as cardboard or wood, and the petals look like bright orange crepe paper.Pomegranates are mentioned 3 times in the Qur'an. Surah ar-Rahman says they are one of the fruits in the gardens of paradise.When the flower is finished, the petals fall off, and the base begins to swell, growing into the fruit.And He it is who causes gardens to grow, [both] trellised and untrellised, and palm trees and crops of different [kinds of] food and olives and pomegranates, similar and dissimilar. Eat of [each of] its fruit when it yields and give its due [zakah] on the day of its harvest. And be not excessive. Indeed, He does not like those who commit excess. Al-Anaam 6:141

Google Earth

2008-05-03T21:58:00.008+03:00

Google Earth is the coolest thing that scares me. I love playing around with it, doing a little virtual traveling, since that is the only kind of traveling I can do. Sometimes out of homesickness, I just look at my mom's house, or the places I used to live. Sometimes I wonder who all those rich people are with the big swimming pools north of the pyramids. What scares me is that if these high resolution images are available publicly, what must the government spy satellites be able to see? They must be able to see the color of my socks on the clothes line in the back yard! Anyway, my son pointed out that they have some new images of our area. Now you can see the wall, and the new road the Israelis built out of our village since they closed off all of the old roads. The new pictures are so clear that you can count the trees in my front yard.

Here's the Qalandia check point, although it is now more like an international boarder crossing. It's so huge! The first time I came here, back in the 80's, we used to just breeze through the area on our way from Jerusalem to Ramallah, never slowing down. When I moved here in the 90's , there were only occasionally soldiers there checking people. This is what it looked like in 2003, the day my son moved to Bir Zeit because going back and forth every day was too much hassle. He's just on the other side of the turnstile going toward Ramallah. The people on the left are waiting in line to go toward Jerusalem. About 3 seconds after I took this picture an older man came up to me and told me to stop taking pictures before the soldiers noticed me. I just want to point out that both sides of the checkpoint are land occupied in 1967. This video shows what it is like going through the new terminal.

I have posted a few of my pictures to Panoramio, in hopes that they will get added to the Panoramio layer in Google Earth. For now, you can look at them by going to my page on Panoramio and either looking at them on the regular Google satellite maps or click on a link to find them on Google Earth.

I have also posted a few pictures taken by members of the Christian Peacemakers Teams (a program of Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite Churches and other Christians that support nonviolence) around the village of at-Tuwani South of Hebron (al-Khalil). I had read about at-Tuwani on Joy_in_Palestine's blog. She is one of the CPT memebers living in at-Tuwani to document the harassment the Palestinians face from settlers. Here is my favorite picture from the CPT gallery, because I need something pretty after the depressing stuff.
You can also read about another CPT project on the Orphans Under Threat blog. In February, the Israeli army ordered the closure, eviction and confiscation of 2 orphanages and 3 schools owned by an Islamic charity, along with other facilities, because they say they are "Hamas run." Some members of the CPT have been staying in the orphanages to document what happens. A few days ago, soldiers came and confiscated the sewing machines and fabric from the orphanage's workshop! It is a shocking situation, but seeing sincere, committed Christians and Muslims working together gives me hope.

Need another pretty picture to balance out the ugly realities? Try this wonderful picture of rocky hillsides and olive trees near Silwad. What a wonderful view!

Does this picture make you hungry?

2008-04-28T22:10:00.002+03:00

Does this picture make you hungry?
Stuffed grape leaves seem to be everyone's favorite around here. I love them too, but making them for a family of 7 takes me all day. I do enjoy spending an hour or so picking the leaves in the morning. They are so fresh and green in the spring. This picture is from about a week ago, when they were still way over my head.
Spring ended fast this year. It was in the upper 90's Fahrenheit (36C) a few days ago. Most of the pretty wildflowers have finished.
When I lived in Pennsylvania, I remember Queen Anne's Lace blooming in the late summer, but here it blooms early, because it may not rain again until fall. If it does, it will only be a little. I already miss the rain.

Palestinian Harlem

2008-04-28T20:04:00.001+03:00

A Palestinian woman with her child beside there demolished house, originally uploaded by aqsaviors.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee Action Alert

2008-04-23T09:00:00.003+03:00

Here is another post I hope everyone will read, by joy_in_palestine.

Today, April 22, 2008, the House of Representatives will consider H.Con.Res 322 , a resolution celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the founding of Israel and reaffirming the friendship and cooperation between the United States and Israel. A vote is expected before 7:00 PM this evening. The resolution is sponsored by Majority Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and has over 200 cosponsors. It is expected to attain the 2/3 vote need to pass under suspension of the rules.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is urging everyone to contact the House of Representatives and ask your Member of Congress to oppose this resolution because it fails to present the reality of the consequences of the birth of the State of Israel (And because the resolution is meaninglessly provocative and just plain stupid. But that's my opinion, not the ADC's).

I just wrote the following letter to my congressional representatives, using the ADC's nifty sender-thingy which made it alarmingly easy. I would encourage you all to do the same!

read the full post here

IMPORTANT: Conspiring against Wikipedia

2008-04-23T08:50:00.002+03:00

Za3tar has a post today about an attempt to change Wikipedia articles to reflect Zionist opinions. There appears to be documented proof of this, although it is really not too hard to believe. Please do take the time to read the article and spread the news.

IMPORTANT: Conspiring against Wikipedia

Three blind women at a checkpoint

2008-04-18T19:46:00.003+03:00

I read this story on Window into Palestine. It's so sad the way normal human compassion is dying a painful death on both sides.

Three blind women at a checkpoint, notes by
Rana Qumsiyeh, April 13, 2008
[While reading this remember that a) all here are
the lucky 0.1% of the population of Bethlehem who
have a "permit" to get to Jerusalem and b) that this
is the mild forms, many died at checkpoints while
refused to get to medical facilities and many are starving
because their lands and jobs are on the other side of the
Apartheid wall. Mazin Q]

Yesterday was not the first time I see those three blind
women at the checkpoint. They are familiar to many who
cross the Bethlehem checkpoint on daily basis to get to
Jerusalem. Two middle-aged Palestinian women and
one elderly woman who seems to be a foreigner; could
be German, as I have heard them talk to each other
in German at times. I have always wondered how they
manage to make their way through this maze, being
blind, when most people with perfect eye sight struggle
to find their way through, when crossing this checkpoint
for the first time, and have to ask for directions.

So, yesterday, despite that it was a Saturday, there was a
long line forming when those three blind women walked
in, and it was taking too long for the door to open and let
people in one by one. As usual, they were let through
ahead of everyone because of their situation. A few
minutes later, they got inside and it seems two of them got
through the metal-detector door and the third one “beeped”.
The female soldier on duty screamed at her in Hebrew to
take her shoes off. This female soldier is known to all of us,
the crowds who go through everyday, we call her the
screamer. We know she is on duty before we even get
into the terminal, because her yelling reaches outside the
Wall! Of course, standing in line outside, we barely can see
anything of what is happening inside, we just hear and try
to understand what is going on. Thus, we assumed that the
blind woman took off her shoes and passed again and she
still “beeped”, the soldier screamed again, now louder, in
Hebrew, ordering her to take her jacket off. One more time,
we hear beeping, then we hear crying. Apparently, the blind
woman started to cry at that point. The soldier screamed
louder, and this time, I didn’t understand what she was
saying.

Half an hour had passed since I got in line and I was still there,
and the line was not moving. People started complaining,
calling, so a male soldier’s voice came through the loud speaker
saying “You have to wait, we have ‘problems’ inside”. We heard
more beeping and then a loud laugh from the “screamer”.

Eventually, they opened the door and I got to the ID and
permit inspection point, there were the two other blind
women, apparently still waiting for their companion, who
had been forced into one of the “further investigation”
rooms. I went outside and got on the bus, and soon after
the three women followed. The third one was very stressed
out and in tears. It turns out; her skirt zipper was the
problem. I am not sure if she was forced to take her skirt
off in that closed 'cell', no one dared ask. As the bus drove
off, I watched her cry all the way from the checkpoint to
Jerusalem…

Now I need to pray and look at pictures of flowers again. I have had as much news as I can take.

citrus blossoms

2008-04-18T12:58:00.005+03:00

If you have never smelled orange blossoms, you are really missing something. They have the most wonderful sent, and it perfumed the night air all around our yard last week.You could smell the tree from a distance, and you could also hear it, because it was covered with bees.The lemon trees have also started to bloom.
They get flowers even though they still have lots of ripe fruits on them.
You have to be careful picking them though, since the tree has some pretty sharp thorns.

Crystal Mosque, Malaysia

2008-04-17T09:27:00.002+03:00

Crystal Mosque, Malaysia, originally uploaded by Azmi Bogart.

This post has nothing to do with Palestine, obviously. I just saw some pictures of the Crystal Mosque in Malaysia, and now I have a new place on my list of places I want to visit some day. This masjid looks amazing! Look at this slide show of pictures of it on Flickr. MashaAllah wa subhanAllah!

from the belly of the whale

2008-04-15T22:50:00.004+03:00

I popped my camera in my purse when I went shopping for groceries yesterday, but as I walked I thought about how little around me would make a nice picture. It was too hot and the dry wind blew bits of garbage around. There are plenty of ugly things to look at, and if that is what you choose to see, then that is all you will see. But if you look for good things, you can almost always find them. Not everything I noticed on my walk would have made a nice picture, but there were still things that made me smile. I walked past a school, and heard at least a dozen children children reciting Qur'an at the top of their lungs. At the store, my total was 51 shekels. I handed the shopkeeper a hundred, and fished around in my wallet for a one, but he gave me 50 change and wouldn't take the one I handed him. I know it's not a big thing, but how many places do the shopkeepers refuse to take as much money as you hand them? The thing I like about it is that it is common, not strange. I have had taxi drivers refuse to take money from me when I only needed to go a short distance.

I did take one quick picture, of a herd of goats wandering across the road, with no shepherd in sight.
They were safe. The road they were walking on used to be very busy. It was the main road into our village, and when my older kids were little I wouldn't let them cross it because there was too much traffic. The road now ends abruptly just a few hundred meters from this point, where Israel's apartheid Wall cuts us off from the next town. I posted pictures of it in The End of the Road. I noticed that I already have two posts titled "The End of the Road," which is pathetic, but most of our roads come to a dead end. The Wall is all around us.

The bridge in the picture is for an Israelis-only highway. There are high walls all along it as it passes through our neighborhood. Here is what some of those roads look like on the inside of the walls. I don't know if the one through our neighborhood has anything pretty painted on it, because I have never been on the road that goes right past my home.

The sign on the middle of the bridge has a du'a from the Qur'an on it. (Sorry it is not clear.) I wouldn't have thought it was a good place to put Qur'an, because it is below the cars, but there it is. It is the prayer of the prophet Yunus (Jonah, alahi salaam) when he was in the belly of the whale. "There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers."

Surah al Anbiya', 21:87

Sometimes looking at all the walls and restricted roads and checkpoints, it feels like our lives are being swallowed whole by some great beast. In the next aya Allah says what means "So We responded to him and saved him from the distress. And thus do We save the believers." Ya rabbana, please accept our repentance and rescue us too.

wild gladiolas and daisies

2008-04-14T14:01:00.006+03:00

I found this wild field gladiola in my front yard this morning. Every year one or two survive being plowed. I put my hand in the picture to give and idea how big they are. I wish there was some way I could coax more of them to grow, but every one I tried to transplant died, and didn't come back the next year.
The wild daisies in the picture below are easier to propagate. For the last few years I carefully pulled up all the plants when they finished blooming to save the seeds. My landlord found the box in the store room last summer, and threw it away, but alhamdulillah some of them still came back, but not as many as if I had been able to spread all those seeds around last fall.
Ah! My kids just came home from school, so no more time for descriptions.

Deir Yassin Remembered

2008-04-11T09:34:00.003+03:00

I am, as usual, a couple days late. April 9th was the 60th anniversary of the massacre at Deir Yassin, a village that was ethnically cleansed in order to help establish the State of Israel. You can read about the massacre at Deir Yassin Remembered. In short, over 100 of the 750 residents of the village were killed that day, half of whom were women and children. The site has accounts of the events from both Palestinian and Israeli sources. I was shocked to read one account that said that the members of the group that perpetrated the attack at Deir Yassin had considered Beit Hanina as a possible target instead. Very close to home, that sent an extra shiver of horror down my spine. And Israeli Historian Benny Morris's justification of the whole policy of transfer was horrifying.

The video below is worth the half an hour it takes to watch:

six word memoir meme

2008-04-09T17:46:00.004+03:00

I got tagged by Umm Ibrahim of Stranger in this Dunya for the 6 word memoir meme. I think I can manage this one, if it is only 6 words, inshaAllah. Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post
4. Tag six more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Struggling prayerfully for patience and hope.

I tag:

Saha
Umm Farouq
Susie of Arabia
Kadija Teri
Multicultural Muslimah (Molly)

Is it possible that no one has tagged Umm Zaid yet?

Geeez, the tagging was harder than the meme.

I want my ball back!

2008-04-02T22:39:00.001+03:00

pal33, originally uploaded by Sarah E Kosminsky Film & Photography.

LOL!