‘Barbaric’: Palestinian lorry drivers recount settlers’ attack on Gaza aid convoy- Israeli soldiers escorting convoy accused of doing nothing to stop widely condemned incident

A worker clears piles of spilled food parcels scattered across the ground in a lorry park. Photograph: Oren Ziv/AFP/Getty Images

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Lorenzo Tondo, Sufian Taha and Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Thu 16 May 2024 02.30 EDT

Last modified on Thu 16 May 2024 05.17 EDT

Palestinian lorry drivers delivering aid to Gaza have described “barbaric” scenes after their vehicles were blocked and vandalised by Israeli settlers, preventing humanitarian supplies reaching the territory where much of the population face imminent starvation.

Drivers and contractors who were targeted on Monday at the Tarqumiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank also said Israeli soldiers escorting the convoy did nothing to stop the attack.

The incident sparked international condemnation after videos emerged on social media that appeared to show Israeli settlers throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground and at least one vehicle being set ablaze.

Yazid al-Zoubi, 26, said between 50 and 60 lorries had set out in the convoy.

“We were carrying oil, sugar and other things and driving from the Tarqumiya crossing,” he said. “We left in a convoy with an army vehicle in front of us and an army vehicle behind us, and we took a special army road that civilians could not cross. Suddenly, after 20 minutes on the road, near the crossing, we were surprised by at least 400 settlers. They attacked us. The rest of the drivers and I escaped from the vehicles after the settlers starting throwing stones at us.’’

Zoubi said the situation escalated when the settlers started breaking the windscreens of the lorries and piercing the tyres, then climbed on to the vehicles and threw packages of food into the road.

Aid agencies have described famine conditions in parts of Gazathat they have said have been caused by Israeli restrictions on aid entering the Palestinian territory... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/16/palestinian-lorry-drivers-israeli-settlers-attack-gaza-aid-convoy

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The Nakba Explained- May 15th is the day commemorating the Nakba—a term used to denote Palestinians’ forced expulsion from their homeland by Zionist forces in 1948.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour reflects on the impact of the Gaza war, the life and legacy of his friend Fathi Ghaben, and the role of art under occupation.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour on Fathi Ghaben, Gaza and art during war

Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour has had trouble focusing on his work.

“I haven't been able to produce much art," he tells The New Arab. "I have only made three or four paintings in the last couple of months. Usually, I do much more, but then I listen to the news and it becomes hard to concentrate."

It was only at the end of February that Sliman Mansour's friend and colleague, Fathi Ghaben, died after Israeli authorities did not allow him to leave Gaza to receive medical help.

Ghaben, like Mansour, was a renowned Palestinian artist, and aside from their love of art, the two friends also had other things in common.

Both were born a year before the declaration of the establishment of Israel and Israeli authorities have imprisoned both throughout their lives because of their paintings which address Palestinian identity.

“I have been detained twice in my life, but only for two to three weeks each time; they just kept me for interrogation. Fathi, on the other hand, spent three months in prison because he had painted his nephew, who Israelis had killed. He was still a boy.

"Fathi painted him wrapped up in the colours of the Palestinian flag. So, they confiscated the painting with a couple of other artworks and imprisoned him," Sliman tells The New Arab. 

"The Israeli court gave him a prison sentence of six months. I, along with other artists, demonstrated against the court’s decision, and they finally agreed to let him out after three months under the condition not to repeat his actions. I think that was in 1983.”

The shift in colours: Art during the war

The few paintings Mansour has produced since the war are less colourful than before.

A couple of months ago, the 77-year-old artist held a group exhibition in Ramallah and realised that most of his colleague's paintings also contained more grey tones.

"The paintings used to be more colourful before the war, maybe because we were more hopeful then," he says.

The artist, who must go through time-consuming and humiliating checkpoints every day to get to his studio in Ramallah, still wants to convey hope with his art, even if it seems difficult now.

Symbol of Hope by Sliman Mansour 

Symbol of Hope, one of Mansour’s most famous artworks from 1985, shows the residents of a Palestinian village looking up to the sky and seeing a dove of peace.

Framed print versions are seen often in Palestinian cafés and bookstores in East Jerusalem, where Mansour lives.

"The Israeli government's main aim is to take our hope from us and dehumanise us. But we hope to live in this land peacefully and freely, with the same rights," Mansour explains.

"The only way you can fight these campaigns of dehumanisation is through art and culture," he continues.

During the First Intifada, Mansour started using mud for his artwork, as he took part in demonstrations.

When I mention to him that he has also lived through the previous Israeli wars, he laughs. "Yes, just my great luck."

"Even if you make a small mistake, you might end up dead for absolutely nothing"

Nevertheless, he believes there has never been as much hatred in society as today and Mansour senses the constant tension.

“Of course, the situation was always tense, but now the tension has increased," the artist says.

"When I am in Jerusalem, I feel less comfortable. Even if I am just in the hospital, I feel it. Recently I wanted to take a shorter route to my studio in Ramallah from Jerusalem, but we missed a sign because it was dusty and dark. We were warned by other Palestinians that the Israeli military might shoot us if we went further because they had closed the street. So, even if you make a small mistake, you might end up dead for absolutely nothing," he explains... READ MORE  https://www.newarab.com/features/sliman-mansour-fathi-ghaben-gaza-and-art-during-war

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 Fathi Ghaben, July 11, 2015.

Photo: Motaz Alaaraj

Palestinians are living a new Nakba: survivor of 1948 says

 May 15, 2024 at 8:30 am

Palestinian woman Fatima Aqel, 75, on the outskirts of Jerusalem holds keys to one of the houses appearing in the background that her family was forced to abandon upon the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. .. [photo from] on May, 7 2008 [AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images]

byQays Abu Samra

Seventy-six years ago, Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awwad and his family were expelled from their home at the hands of Zionist gangs during the 1948 Nakba.

Palestinians use the word Nakba in reference to the events of 1948, when armed Zionist militias forced nearly one million Palestinians to leave their homes and villages under the pressure of bombing and mass massacres in the historical lands of Palestine, pushing them further into the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and neighbouring countries, ethnically cleansing historic Palestine to make way for the creation of the state of Israel.

Now 88, Mustafa lives in the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm city in the northern occupied West Bank.

He says Palestinians are experiencing a new Nakba that is worse than that of 1948.

Horrors of the Nakba

Mustafa describes his family’s life in Sabbarin village, near Haifa, in what is now northern Israel, as very beautiful days.

The family was expelled from the village on 12 May, 1948, Mustafa explains, in what he says was a “terrible day.”

“We took with us a small amount of luggage because we thought we would return back in a few days or weeks, but this turned out to be our entire life,” he explains.

“After one month, we decided to return back to the village but found it besieged by armed gangs which killed 18 of the youth from the village, so we escaped again from the killing,” he adds.

He notes that following their expulsion, his family resided in a camp established by a charitable group, known as the Lutheran World Federation, near Jenin where they stayed there until 1951.

READ: Number of Palestinians has increased 10-fold since 1948 Nakba

After that date, they moved to the Nur Shams refugee camp, where he still lives.

“We never expected to be refugees,” Mustafa laments.

“My family used to have a vast home, land, lots for olives and wheat, and four camels that we used to transport the wheat and agricultural crops,” he recalls.

He added that there were four water streams in Sabbarin.

“The village used to gather in all festivals and ceremonies, we used to solve our problems without courts, it was a simple life.”

A new Nakba

“The life in the camp is misery, Israel turned our life into a nightmare through the daily incursions into the camp.”

“What’s happening today is worse than what was committed in the 1948 Nakba,” he said.... READ MORE  https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240515-palestinians-are-living-a-new-nakba-survivor-of-1948-says/

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76 years after #Nakba, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced.

UNRWA

@UNRWA

76 years after #Nakba, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced. In #GazaStrip, 600k people have fled Rafah since military operations intensified. Around 1.7 million people had to flee their homes & shelters due to war in #Gaza, many of them multiple times. #CeasefireNow

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice. photo credits Red Cross ICRC & UNWRA historic archives

Nakba yesterday, Nakba today: The story of my grandmother's two keys- Ghefreh has lived through two Nakbas, 1948 and today. Her grandson Emad Moussa tells her story of twinned displacement and how they've now blurred into one.

Emad Moussa

15 May, 2024

 

The testimony of Emad Moussa's grandmother Ghefreh is living proof of Palestinian sumud [photo credit: Lucie Wimetz/TNA/Getty Images]

“History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”

Karl Marx coined the phrase to denote the cyclical nature of history. When tragedies reoccur in the same context they become a farcical spectacle, pointing not only to the cynical human nature but also the poor imitation of past events.

My 94-year-old Palestinian grandmother, Ghefreh, does not know Karl Marx, and I doubt she cares about philosophy. But she understands that tragedies do recur and that history can “often rhyme" — to quote Mark Twain.

"The tent turned into a house in a refugee camp. The refugee camp turned into a community, and that community into a whole society"

As a young Palestinian woman in 1948, my grandmother was expelled from her village and ended up as a refugee in Gaza. 75 years later, Ghefreh was displaced again to Rafah and then Nuseirat, only a few kilometres from her home in Gaza City.

The resemblance between two worlds separated by seven decades has blurred and confused her timeline. Her perception of reality has changed tragically, farcically even.

The loss of a home(land)

Ghefreh was born in a village called al-Sawafir in the early 1930s. The village was based on the ancient Roman name Shaffir, and it was located only a few kilometres from Ashdod, a Palestinian city built upon the ancient Canaanite urban settlement with the same name.

Al-Sawafir was ethnically cleansed early in 1948 during Operation Barak, a Haganah-led onslaught and part of Ben-Gurion’s Plan Dalet, the Zionist master plan to conquer all of Palestine

In her memories, the hardships of being a villager were irrelevant, what resonated was al-Sawafir’s olive trees, the affluent citrus orchards, and the “coherent community that made it into a paradise.”

“A time of peaceful existence, until the European Jews came”, she would say with a sigh. 

“We had no guns to defend ourselves. The British — before leaving Palestine — made sure of that while pouring weapons into the Jewish militias’ lap.”

I heard this from my grandfather, on the other side of the family, and every one of his generation in our refugee camp. It was not a sense of loss alone, but also betrayal.

My grandmother would add, “My father had a rusty Ottoman pistol that he fired at wedding celebrations. Mother would hide it in her clothes when the Brits came from the nearby camp in the village of Julis.”

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Emad Moussa

From the direction of Julis — a village allegedly named after Julius Caesar — the Haganah attacked al-Sawafir. Ghefreh and her family ran from one village to another, joining the masses of refugees in their search for safety. Behind them, the advancing Jewish militias ran amok, destroying, ransacking, and massacring Palestinian communities in the region. 

She arrived at al-Majdal — the ancient Canaanite town, Asqalan, Hebrewised to Ashkelon — a few days later, holding but the key to her house and some food.

The Haganah besieged and bombed al-Majdal for six months, forcing the ill-equipped and outnumbered Egyptian troops who fortified there to retreat to the Gaza District. The masses of refugees from nearby villages, alongside al-Majdal’s 11,000 residents, ended up in Gaza as refugees.

“The Zionists tried to starve us in al-Majdal like they do today in Gaza,” she says.... READ MORE  https://www.newarab.com/opinion/nakba-yesterday-nakba-today-my-grandmothers-two-keys

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Release The Hostages Poem by Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha

 https://www.instagram.com/mosab_abutoha/

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May 15th poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets:We Live We Live by Brandy Nālani McDougall- For Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, with lines from his poems

poem-a-day  May 15, 2024

We Live We Live Brandy Nālani McDougall For Palestinian poet Reefat Alareer, with lines from his poems We live. We live. We do.                   ——Refaat Alareer You were killed today            December 7th                         my birthday     It was today    son of Shujaiya                           in an Israel airstrike                you were killed                       visiting            your brother’s home   in Gaza City   Today, the anniversary                       of when my grandfather             only 12 years old                    climbed onto the roof                           of his dormitory                      to watch the bombs             fall on the American naval base         built over Puʻuloa             Your brother               your sister                   and four of her              children were killed, too                     You were                                           just a few years                       younger than me               This morning              after Israel’s birds       of death            screeched down                      toward you                  my children woke up                          on their own    in Honolulu     though it was still dark                           their breath      like soil           their voices     like soil                        their kisses     like soil           blinking when touched by rain            And my youngest        rubbing her eyes                     asked if              it was my birthday—              And am I now 47?—                                           before singing             in our ancestors’ language                  we are learning                       to speak together         after    the wreckage   of English                   and Americans             And my oldest            who is learning                       to speak                           in speech therapy        giggled            in her grogginess                    then sang                     her own song  too                  And what did I do       to deserve                    such tenderness                                   this early morning?     Or to live                     this long                                               having heard bombs and guns            fired only             from a distance?                      Having stood   safely                            scared  as a child                     and angry        as an adult                  at the sound     of our lands and waters—         Kahoʻolawe                 Pōhakuloa                   Mākua                Wahiawa                     battered             bruised burned poisoned                         in live fire practice?                            By bombs that may have        fallen on you   or close                                      to you on those you loved full-hearted          recklessly                                                 those you learned to cling to even harder            bombs                                      that may have hurt or killed children like mine            who                           could still sing?                       And you                      what did you do                                      to deserve                    your shorter poet’s life                except                                                    tell the truth    and sow the seeds        of songs                                     in your students        except grow your        love for them                                    for your people           for your land               and country                                                     for the promise                        within the wreckage                                                   that is this English                  echoing                                      all the way here                       to Honolulu     where I resisted                           opening my TikTok feed        to savor my children’s sleepy                                      sweetness                    a little longer               before facing                                                    that birthdays are death days              too?                                                   That each day              bombs and schools                              hospitals and houses               fall                   each day children              are pulled from rubble          children          are pulled away                         crying           from rubble             that buried              their mothers                                that they feel                  alone                         that their hurt seeps                          down               into the dirt                    as they look heaven in the eye                                       somewhere in Gaza?              That they         have written                            their names     and their parents’ names         on their limbs                                       so their bodies             or maybe just these parts                                            if that is all                         that’s left                     can be known                                                   to anyone                    who finds them?               That                 if they          if you                must die                       so easily uprooted       from the earth             so harshly unsung       let it be a tale                and why not    write poems   to birth              the strongest words                    of love             like rocks?                           like seeds?                   like songs?      like names?              And why not               hold those rocks          in your hands?                        Your arms?            Pull them              to your chest       like children              lighting         the darkest            of birthday mornings?                           Why not feel               their full weight                      and cling                          even harder         to live            to live                dear poet                            of Shujaiya                  of Gaza           of Palestine                                         just before                  they                  just before         you                                                                                                                             take flight?  Copyright © 2024 by Brandy Nālani McDougall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.  https://poets.org/poem-a-day?mc_cid=72282341f5&mc_eid=544ee8b5c2  [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] About Poem-a-Day Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.