August 4, 2007, press picks from different sources - posted by TOI-staff on Occupation Magazine  

  Culture as `the art to breathe`
Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb - ICB - There was a time when people thought that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is like a 100-meter run. Participants behaved accordingly; they gathered their strength in a concentrated effort and within such a short time. When they reached the goal, they were out of breath, but they could afford it for this short time period. However, increasingly people are realizing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the longest ongoing in modern history, is more like a 36-kilometer marathon. In a marathon, people need to breathe differently, to train in another way and to run in a well-trained yet more relaxed speed. One has simply to have a long breath. Culture for Palestinians living in this ongoing and seemingly unending conflict is the art to keep a long breath.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21539

 Dry twigs
Smadar Lavie - Electronic Intifada - No one has ever forced the kibbutzniks or the residents of the spiffy neighborhoods erected on the ruins of Palestine`s Nakba villages to keep on living in the precarious indeterminacy typical of Kfar Shalem. Mizrahim were forced to make Kfar Shalem their home from 1948 on, so that the Palestinians would have no place to return to, and for 60 years. Now the Mizrahim too are forced to vacate this land, their homes, in favor of the Ashkenazi real estate barons. 
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21538

 The Nakba in Israeli textbooks and official discourse
Ben White - Electronic Intifada - [The] Israeli government was at pains to stress how the offending book would only be used in "Israeli Arab" schools. (...) The argument that this was merely an exercise in cultural accommodation is supported by Education Minister Yuli Tamir herself, who even went so far in her efforts to placate the Zionist right that she claimed including the term "Nakba" was a mere quibble of translation. But is it right to say that the decision to limit the textbook to the Palestinian community within Israel is because the Zionist discourse denies the "original sin?" Not quite. Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a standard-bearer of the modern Zionist right, lambasted the textbook, bemoaning "the masochism and defeatism of the Israeli left, which constantly seeks to apologize, while we did what we had to."
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21535

 The Gypsies of Jerusalem: the Forgotten People
Amoun Sleem - This Week In Palestine - Originally settling in an area outside the Old City called Wadi Al-Joz, the Dom (Gypsies) later moved to a small neighbourhood called Burj Al-Laqlaq within the walls of the Old City. An ethnic minority, the Dom community has suffered in silence throughout the decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their numbers dwindled significantly during the battles surrounding the foundation of the State of Israel. The greatest exodus occurred during the war of 1967, which caused nearly half of the Dom population to seek refuge in Syria, Lebanon, and even India. Despite a deep-seated identification with Middle Eastern culture, the remaining two hundred families endure severe discrimination at the hands of Israelis and their Palestinian neighbours. Once lauded in Persian poetry as unparalleled entertainers, a series of cultural, political, and economic shifts have led the Dom to be regarded as despicable beggars.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21533

 Palestinian detainees suffering harsh living conditions, ill-treatment
IMEMC Staff - Akram Abu Siba’, secretary of the Detainees Office in Jenin district, stated on Friday that (...) dozens of detainees are sick and need medical treatment but the Israeli prison administration is neglecting their rights and depriving them of the needed medical attention. (...) Abu Siba’ added that several detainees spent more than five years in solitary confinement [and] are deprived of their visitation rights; not allowed to communicate with other detainees; and repeatedly attacked and violated by the soldiers. [More than 10 000 Palestinians are at the moment imprisoned by the IDF. Ed.]
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21532

 The struggle between boycott and counter-boycott
Palestine Monitor - The so-called "Scholars for Peace in the Middle East" (SPME) have launched a worldwide petition against the British boycott of Israeli universities, and claim that 10,000 academics have signed their petition. The strength of their reaction shows how much of a nerve this issue has touched. 
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21531

 Residents of Ertas and al-Walajah hold non-violent demonstrations
John Smith - IMEMC - About 400 villagers, internationals and Israelis held on Friday morning a sit-in protest near the construction site of the illegal wall and on land which is going to be confiscated for the purpose of building a sewage system [SIC!] for the nearby Israeli settlement.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21530

 Jenin by night
Gideon Levi - Haaretz - The whole camp awakens like this, every night. But no one dares peek out the window or turn on a light. No one talks, no one moves. They sit bent over on the stairs, eyes red from lack of sleep. I almost faint from fright. The ringing of a phone suddenly cuts through the stillness: Zakariya Zbeidi is calling from the Muqata to ask how we are. A bit later Jamal whispers that the convoy has moved away and we can go back to sleep. I try to relax. Finally I drift off. Soon it will be 3:30 A.M. Forty minutes of restless sleep and they are back. (...) "I told you that tonight you would have to be a poet, not a journalist," my host Jamal reminds me when day breaks later and we are on the roof again.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21528

 Ben-Eliezer to present nuke plant plan
Sharon Wrobel & staff - Jerusalem Post - Israel has in the past been reluctant to set up such a power plant since it requires international inspectors.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21526

 Deja vu
By Meron Benvenisti - Haaretz - "There is a partnerner," the Israeli foreign minister will crow and allow her representatives to conduct talks with Palestinian representatives ; Israeli and Palestinian officers will exchange slaps on the back; the ruddiness will return to the cheeks of the peace camp veterans; the radical left will warn that it`s all an illusion and that under the guise of "the process," the occupation is even more firmly becoming entrenched. This feeling of Deja vu, however understandable it may be, ignores experience accumulated during the intifada years and ignores the burden of the blood, the hatred and the desire for revenge that have changed the relationships between the two communities in fundamental ways.
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21525

 High Court backs route of West Bank fence near Efrat
Jonathan Lis - Haaretz - The petitioners demanded the court reject the route, on the basis that the fence would be built in part on 272 dunam of grapevines, fig and almond trees. (...) Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch accepted the Defense Ministry`s position, whereby there is no acceptable alternative way to defend the settlement, located in Gush Etzion. "The question of the legality of the Efrat residents` presence in the area is not under discussion today," she wrote. 
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21512

 Width Matters - Displacement and Israel`s Wall
Susan Miller - Counterpunch - Winding its way down from the northern most point of the West Bank [the Fence/Wall] leaves in its wake a 65 to 87 yard wide swath of bulldozed land on which trenches, barbed wire, footprint tracer paths, a two-lane patrol road and watch towers have been placed. From edge to edge, the structure exceeds the width of six lane segments of Interstate 95 or half the length of a football field. 
 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=21517