"Today, when Israel talks about creating a "buffer zone," it's actually a buffer zone of the buffer zone, and so imperialism by the inch continues." Susan Abulhawa

MAP 2: GAZA ARMISTICE LINES:  SALMAN ABU SITTA Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission nor by any article in international law. In 1948, Israel occupied 20,500 km2  (80% of Palestine), of which only 6% was obtained through the collusion of the British Mandate. The rest was obtained just by military force.

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى

@susanabulhawa

I want to post a point of historic fact regarding the current "border" of Gaza. 

 

The 1949 armistice line was actually 3 kilometers wider along the full perimeter of the Gaza Strip. 

 

However, Israel declared this area as a "buffer zone," and ultimately absorbed it as de facto Jewish-only territory. 

 

Those lands around the strip, called the Gaza envelop, are technically supposed to be part of the strip itself. 

 

But Israel built settlements and farms there. 

 

Today, when Israel talks about creating a "buffer zone," it's actually a buffer zone of the buffer zone, and so imperialism by the inch continues.     

susanabulhawa.com

In 1948 "The tiny Gaza Strip, only 1.3% of Palestine, became a temporary home for 2.3 million Palestinian refugees. The Israeli attacks against them, by land, air, and sea, and with a complete siege, never stopped for 75 years." SALMAN ABU SITTA JANUARY 4, 2024

https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/2024/i-could-have-been-one-of-those-who-broke-through-the-siege-on-october-7

BY SALMAN ABU SITTA 

Yes, I could have been one of those who broke through the fence had I been much younger and was still living in the concentration camp called the Gaza Strip.

My story is the same as all of them. On May 14, 1948, my family on our land, “Ma’in Abu Sitta,” was attacked by a Haganah force of 24 armored vehicles. The force destroyed and burnt everything. The soldiers demolished the school that my father built in 1920; they stole the motor and equipment in the flour mill and well pump; they killed anyone in sight.

On that day, when Ben-Gurion announced his state, I became a refugee. We were pushed into the prison compound called the Gaza Strip, 4 kilometers away from my home.

I was not alone. Palestinians living in 247 towns and villages in southern Palestine were driven to this enclave by dozens of massacres, such as in Bureir, Abu Shusha, Ed Dawayima, and many others. The tiny Gaza Strip, only 1.3% of Palestine, became a temporary home for 2.3 million Palestinian refugees. The Israeli attacks against them, by land, air, and sea, and with a complete siege, never stopped for 75 years.

I went to school in Egypt, but my cousins never wavered to cross the barbed wire called the Armistice Line and tried to return home, in the same manner of October 7. They crossed the barbed wire and attacked the occupiers of our land. They retrieved an elderly relative who remained, they watered the remaining cattle, and they generally tried to restore life to Ma’in Abu Sitta, our land. 

I can never forget my cousin, Hassan Madi, with his smiling face and pleasant demeanor. He used to come back to tell us what happened to our groves and what the settlers did to our place. He was a very brave fida’i. He used to sneak into the settlers’ camp and listen to them talk. He was killed by a mine buried on his route. 

Fifteen other young people from my family were killed in the couple of years after 1948. In the period from 1948 to 1956, an estimated 5,000 Palestinians were killed trying to return home. 

The settlers set up prefab units on my land, which developed into Kibbutzim. Their names are current in the media nowadays. Nirim was built on my father’s land. I was born a few meters away from the Kibbutz site. Ein Hashlosha Kibbutz, a few kilometers to the north, is built on land that belonged to my father and his cousins, a huge wheat and barley field. Nir Oz was built on the land of my father’s uncle, Haj Mahmoud. His son Hamed, a civil engineer, devoted his life to the liberation of Palestine and was a key actor in forming the PLO in 1964, remaining in its executive committee for over 40 years. The fourth kibbutz on our land was named Magen. This is the site of Sheikh Nuran, a venerated site where women sought blessings for their newborns. This was the ancient site of St. Hilarion, a key figure in Christian Palestine. The site was his worshipping retreat in fourth-century Byzantine Palestine.

Today, when you hear the names of these kibbutzim, you must recall on whose land they were built. You must remember that the owners of this land have never given up their right to return home.

MAP 1: ORIGIN OF REFUGEES IN THE GAZA STRIP

This applies to over two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. When you hear talk about the hostages, remember they are the true hostages for over 27,000 days. They came from 247 towns and villages in southern and central Palestine. See Map 1 for the origin of Gaza refugees. They are crowded in camps at a density of 8,000 persons/km2.

Not only were they expelled and made refugees in 1948, but they were constantly attacked in camps in exile in 1953, 1956, 1967, 1971, and 1987, and with fierce regularity since 2006 up until today. In a twist unknown in colonial history, their ethnic cleansing has been upgraded in 2023 to a genocide of unparalleled proportions. The extent of its ferocity, the number of women and children killed, the vast areas of destruction, and the number of dropped bombs on such a tiny place in less than three months exceeds anything known in two world wars.

The Gaza Strip is bound by the Armistice Agreement signed between Egypt and Israel on February 24, 1949. See Map 2 of Gaza’s armistice line below. Article 2 of the Agreement states that the Line does not confer or deny rights to the warring parties. It is merely the line at which warring parties stopped on that date.

MAP 2: GAZA ARMISTICE LINES

Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission nor by any article in international law. In 1948, Israel occupied 20,500 km2  (80% of Palestine), of which only 6% was obtained through the collusion of the British Mandate. The rest was obtained just by military force.

One year after the official Armistice Agreement in February 1950, Israel complained that many refugees had crossed the line and suggested to Egypt that to avoid clashes, it should establish a temporary line called modus vivendi, provided that the original agreement remains in force. This reduced the area of the Gaza Strip from 555 km2 to the present 365 km2. As Map 2 shows, this temporary line became unofficially the regular line shown in maps and maintained by Israel.

There is a macabre element in this fact. Many of the attacked kibbutzim, Nirim, Nir Oz, and Ein Hashlosha, that were built on my and others’ land, actually fall within the Gaza Strip proper, as Map 2 clearly shows.

Israel has relentlessly tried to chew more and more of the Gaza Strip as a “buffer zone.” No international body ever contested Israel’s continued reduction of the tiny Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, the war against those young people who crossed the line to return home continues. They have to contend with falling bombs in Gaza and a relentless smear campaign abroad.

The false information and ugly defamation attributed to them, ... READ MORE https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/2024/i-could-have-been-one-of-those-who-broke-through-the-siege-on-october-7

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Creating Apartheid Israel ... "A Land Without a People…"

Palestinian Refugees in International Law

By Francesca P. Albanese and Lex Takkenberg

Foreword by Karen AbuZayd

Second edition, paperback, 560 pages £65.00
Also available in hardback, £150.00

Published by Oxford University Press, 2020

Available from the publisher at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/palestinian-refugees-in-international-law-9780198784050?cc=it&lang=en&, www.amazon.com, and in Jerusalem from the Educational Bookshop.

Review by Rania Hammad

---

In the author’s own words, “Like the book’s first edition, the aim of the new book is to provide a precise understanding of the legal aspects of the Palestinian refugee problem, its genesis and implications, as well as to show the problems that these refugees have faced, and the nature of their vulnerability – over the decades – and to explain how international law can be deployed to redress their situation. It is understood that at present, as in the past, the Palestinian refugee problem has not been one of lack of legal framework, but rather one of instrumentalization and political inaction vis-à-vis protracted non-implementation of the law.”... READ MORE  https://thisweekinpalestine.com/palestinian-refugees-in-international-law/

   [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

https://thisweekinpalestine.com/a-land-without-a-people/

Al-Nakba

The military Zionist invasion and occupation of Palestine started in April 1948. It was carried out by a Zionist European army of 120,000 trained soldiers, formed into 9 brigades, which carried out 38 military operations to conquer Palestine. In the six weeks that preceded Ben Gurion’s declaration of a Jewish state mid-May 1948, this army attacked and depopulated 220 villages and 11 cities, eventually depopulating and destroying 530 villages and towns.¹¹ During these six weeks, it carried out 22 large massacres – out of the 70 that took place during al-Nakba in 1947 and 1948.¹² At the time, massacres were used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing. Today, they are elevated to genocide.

Through these measures, the Zionist control of Palestinian land increased from 6 percent (owned by Jews at the beginning of the British Mandate) to 78 percent in 1948. Now, Israel occupies all of Palestine as well as areas in neighboring Arab countries.

Map 1 shows where the Palestinians who became refugees lived before the Nakba, how they were expelled, and where they now live. Based on these facts, who is the aggressor and invader, and who has the right of self-defense?

Today, there are 9 million Palestinian refugees.¹⁴ Their homes are occupied by Israelis. Not a single Israeli occupant of their homes has a legal title deed of the property on which they sit. Ninety-four percent of the land in Israel is Palestinian property. Not one acre of this occupied land was obtained by means that would be considered legal under any article in international law.

For 77 years, the Palestinians have never stopped demanding their Right to Return home.

A Land Without a People…

By Salman Abu Sitta

 

& more from This Week in Palestine

https://thisweekinpalestine.com/324-May-2025/

Issue: 324, May 2025

Palestinian Refugees I

And We Love Life as Much as We Can, artwork by the Palestinian artist Wadeei Khaled.

 https://thisweekinpalestine.com/325-June-2025/

Issue: 325, June 2025

Palestinian Refugees II

A convoy of trucks carries refugees and their belongings from Gaza to Hebron. © 1949 UN Archive. Photographer unknown.

Born on August 15, 1983 in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza, Hend Joudat Jouda completed her undergraduate studies at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, majoring in information technology. Hend writes poetry, stories, and songs. She worked as editor in chief of 28 Cultural Magazine for three years. She has published three books in Arabic; Someone Always Leaves (2013), No Sugar in the City (2017), and The Finger That Managed to Survive (2024). Hend has also published a book in Japanese titled In Time of War (2025), and a book in French and Arabic titled A Poet in Time of War (2025).

 

Poems by Hend Joudat Jouda

By Hend Joudat Jouda

What Does It Mean to Be a Poet in Times of War?

It means apologizing …

extensively apologizing

to the burnt trees

to the nest-less birds

to the crushed homes

to the long cracks along the streets

to the pale faced children before and after death

to the faces of every sad or murdered mother

What does it mean to be safe... READ MORE  https://thisweekinpalestine.com/poems-by-hend-joudat-jouda/

Dear America, Please Help Stop Institutionalized Bigotry & Injustice

"It's very important that we know all the facts. The facts set us free. The facts help us make the right decisions. Also, the truth is the basis of justice, [so] we must always seek the truth. The enemies of truth do not seek justice. And I always ask: who is afraid of the truth? Only the criminal is afraid of the truth. Only the criminal wants to hide that." Dr. Salman Abu Sitta

Dear America,

Families flee after new Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza- 90% of Gaza is now under Israeli evacuation orders... & the U.S. continues to send tons of military equipment and $$$ to Israel.

The Christian plea "Hear Our Prayer" echoes in my head, and it breaks my heart that American leadership continues to be so horribly lead astray by our cruel "friend" Israel as Israel continues to blatantly violate international law, all borders, and the basic human rights of the native non-Jewish men, women, and children of the Middle East.

Palestinian educator & historian, Salman Abu Sitta (born in 1937) recalls how decades ago he witnessed Zionists ethnically cleanse his village of Al Ma’in during the 1948 Nakba. He vowed to dedicate his life to creating an archive of each and every Palestinian village.  https://www.plands.org/en/maps-atlases

World famous Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish 1941-2008, wrote many haunting poems explaining the very real plight and suffering of the Palestinian people.  https://poets.org/poet/mahmoud-darwish

Concerned doctors, aid workers, educators, reporters and citizens currently live-stream Israeli violence and cruelty in Gaza, as well as Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, day after day after day.  

In a post Holocaust world, a world with international law and clear calls against bigotry and injustice we should not be arming, funding, or excusing the barbaric Zionist quest to harass, oppress, impoverish, and displace Palestinian men, women, and children.       

Israel needles and needles- wanting HAMAS, Hezbollah, Islamist militancy, and other such misguided groups to flourish, so that Israel can spin the story to raise more funds, getting more sympathy and support for escalating war and injustice.

JUST SAY NO.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES  https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

Because of Us... poem by Emily Berry + Democracy Now "As the WHO warns Gaza’s hospitals are becoming cemeteries, it’s time to heed the poets and the doctors, stop the killing, end the occupation, and dress the open wounds of war."

Susan Muaddi Darraj: Palestinian Americans learned from the best... "I, Too" poem by Langton Hughes [written in 1926]

Don't Feed The Trolls

The speech that Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American and Democrat, had hoped to give America at the DNC 2024

CNN: Children are drinking from puddles and wading through sewage pools, as Israel pummels water systems in Gaza

A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent? By Ta-Nehisi Coates in Vanity Fair

"The way they talk about the Palestinians “finally realizing their dream” of dignity and self-determination like they haven’t spent years and billions of dollars obstructing that dream, like all we need is a TED talk on goal-setting and time management" Susan Muaddi Darraj

Dear America- Israel can not be trusted, and should not be subsidized

Germany's Berlin police raided and shut down a pro-Palestine event organised by a Jewish group in April 2024

Arwa Mahdawi: This war [on Palestine] isn’t just being waged with bombs, it’s being waged with “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” When you lay out what is happening in clear language, it is indefensible. So political language dresses all those dead and starving children up in euphemism.

CSM: ‘Waiting to see if I will survive’: A Gaza reporter caught in the war she’s covering ..."We no longer even bother to ask where humanity has gone."

An engineered genocide... Israel's genocide in Gaza isn't just about brutal mass murder, it's also about deliberately creating "conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the population"

Send an honorable message far and wide- we believe in freedom of and from religion... and we believe in real justice, peace, and security for ALL !

A Guardian report reveals that there are 60,000 Americans living in illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, as well as some 23,400 Americans serving in the Israeli army.

Accusing peaceful pro-Palestine protesters of being "antisemitic" pleases Israel but it does not make any Jews any safer anywhere.

 

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: The tiny Gaza Strip, only 1.3% of Palestine, became a temporary home for 2.3 million Palestinian refugees.

Nancy Harb Almendras  

 Please read this excellent article by Dr. Salman Abu Sitta. Everything is made clear regarding the 75 year prelude to the current situation.

 

Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission or by international law. That is why it is grabbing any land it can. There is not a single acre in Israel obtained legally, it is acquired only by force and massacres.

 

I could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7 

 

Nothing can hide the determination and courage of those young people who returned to their land on October 7. I could have been one of them had I been much younger and still living in the concentration camp called Gaza.

 

Yes, I could have been one of those who broke through the fence had I been much younger and was still living in the concentration camp called the Gaza Strip.

 

My story is the same as all of them. On May 14, 1948, my family on our land, “Ma’in Abu Sitta,” was attacked by a Haganah force of 24 armored vehicles. The force destroyed and burnt everything. The soldiers demolished the school that my father built in 1920; they stole the motor and equipment in the flour mill and well pump; they killed anyone in sight.

 

On that day, when Ben-Gurion announced his state, I became a refugee. We were pushed into the prison compound called the Gaza Strip, 4 kilometers away from my home.

 

I was not alone. Palestinians living in 247 towns and villages in southern Palestine were driven to this enclave by dozens of massacres, such as in Bureir, Abu Shusha, Ed Dawayima, and many others. 

 

The tiny Gaza Strip, only 1.3% of Palestine, became a temporary home for 2.3 million Palestinian refugees. The Israeli attacks against them, by land, air, and sea, and with a complete siege, never stopped for 75 years.

 

I went to school in Egypt, but my cousins never wavered to cross the barbed wire called the Armistice Line and tried to return home, in the same manner of October 7. They crossed the barbed wire and attacked the occupiers of our land. They retrieved an elderly relative who remained, they watered the remaining cattle, and they generally tried to restore life to Ma’in Abu Sitta, our land. 

 

I can never forget my cousin, Hassan Madi, with his smiling face and pleasant demeanor. He used to come back to tell us what happened to our groves and what the settlers did to our place. He was a very brave fida’i. He used to sneak into the settlers’ camp and listen to them talk. He was killed by a mine buried on his route. 

 

Fifteen other young people from my family were killed in the couple of years after 1948. In the period from 1948 to 1956, an estimated 5,000 Palestinians were killed trying to return home. 

 

The settlers set up prefab units on my land, which developed into Kibbutzim. Their names are current in the media nowadays. Nirim was built on my father’s land. I was born a few meters away from the Kibbutz site. Ein Hashlosha Kibbutz, a few kilometers to the north, is built on land that belonged to my father and his cousins, a huge wheat and barley field. Nir Oz was built on the land of my father’s uncle, Haj Mahmoud. His son Hamed, a civil engineer, devoted his life to the liberation of Palestine and was a key actor in forming the PLO in 1964, remaining in its executive committee for over 40 years. The fourth kibbutz on our land was named Magen. This is the site of Sheikh Nuran, a venerated site where women sought blessings for their newborns. This was the ancient site of St. Hilarion, a key figure in Christian Palestine. The site was his worshipping retreat in fourth-century Byzantine Palestine.

 

Today, when you hear the names of these kibbutzim, you must recall on whose land they were built. You must remember that the owners of this land have never given up their right to return home.

 

This applies to over two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. When you hear talk about the hostages, remember they are the true hostages for over 27,000 days. They came from 247 towns and villages in southern and central Palestine. See Map 1 for the origin of Gaza refugees. They are crowded in camps at a density of 8,000 persons/km2.

 

Not only were they expelled and made refugees in 1948, but they were constantly attacked in camps in exile in 1953, 1956, 1967, 1971, and 1987, and with fierce regularity since 2006 up until today. In a twist unknown in colonial history, their ethnic cleansing has been upgraded in 2023 to a genocide of unparalleled proportions. The extent of its ferocity, the number of women and children killed, the vast areas of destruction, and the number of dropped bombs on such a tiny place in less than three months exceeds anything known in two world wars.

 

The Gaza Strip is bound by the Armistice Agreement signed between Egypt and Israel on February 24, 1949. See Map 2 of Gaza’s armistice line below. Article 2 of the Agreement states that the Line does not confer or deny rights to the warring parties. It is merely the line at which warring parties stopped on that date.

 

Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission nor by any article in international law. In 1948, Israel occupied 20,500 km2 (80% of Palestine), of which only 6% was obtained through the collusion of the British Mandate. The rest was obtained just by military force.

 

One year after the official Armistice Agreement in February 1950, Israel complained that many refugees had crossed the line and suggested to Egypt that to avoid clashes, it should establish a temporary line called modus vivendi, provided that the original agreement remains in force. This reduced the area of the Gaza Strip from 555 km2 to the present 365 km2. As Map 2 shows, this temporary line became unofficially the regular line shown in maps and maintained by Israel.

 

There is a macabre element in this fact. Many of the attacked kibbutzim, Nirim, Nir Oz, and Ein Hashlosha, that were built on my and others’ land, actually fall within the Gaza Strip proper, as Map 2 clearly shows.

 

Israel has relentlessly tried to chew more and more of the Gaza Strip as a “buffer zone.” No international body ever contested Israel’s continued reduction of the tiny Gaza Strip.

 

Meanwhile, the war against those young people who crossed the line to return home continues. They have to contend with falling bombs in Gaza and a relentless smear campaign abroad.

 

The false information and ugly defamation attributed to them, like beheading babies and a campaign of raping women, have turned out to be entirely false, but its effect lingers on. Anyone who knows them in Gaza knows they have a strict moral code.

 

Nothing can hide the determination and courage of those young people. They have stood fast for 90 days, longer than in any Israeli war with its neighbors. 

 

When the dust settles down, if it does, history will show who heroically defended his homeland and who, on the other hand, committed so many heinous crimes. This memory will chart the history of both peoples.

 

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta

ISRAEL SWALLOWING GAZA STRIP: Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission or by international law. That is why it is grabbing any land it can. - Salman Abu Sitta

ISRAEL SWALLOWING GAZA STRIP Israel has no borders, neither by its own admission or by international law. That is why it is grabbing any land it can. - Salman Abu Sitta

 

&

more information about Salman Abu Sitta who"was only 10 years old when the Nakba –  the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 – happened, forcing him from his home near Beersheba. Like many Palestinians of his generation, his traumatic loss and enduring desire to return would be the defining features of his life from that moment on.."

The man reconstructing Palestine’s lost villages

The 1948 Nakba was the systematic and violent ethnic cleansing of 530 Palestinian villages by the Jewish Irgun, Haganah and Stern Gang militias executed in collusion with the British Mandate.

The 750,000 villagers, like little Salman and his family, who survived the massacres, were forcibly torn from their ancestral roots that were bountifully nourished over centuries by a symbiotic partnership of sweat, toil, earth and sun belying the inane Zionist fiction that the belligerent Jewish colonisers arrived in an empty land and made the desert bloom.

“No other settler movement has depended on a vast array of myths, lies and misinformation, fuelled regularly by willing media and paid politicians. Palestinians did not need such tactics. Zionism did. Its policy and practice flies in the face of every principle of international law and basic facts of history and geography.”... READ MORE