On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the first Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing nine Turkish citizens, including a teenager with Turkish-US dual citizenship, on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.

The International Criminal Court says it has launched a preliminary investigation into Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010 to see if war crimes or crimes against humanity had been committed. - "My office will be conducting a preliminary examination in order to establish whether the criteria for opening an investigation are met," ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement issued on Tuesday. On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the first Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing nine Turkish citizens, including a teenager with Turkish-US dual citizenship, on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.

Al Qassam website - Ramallah- More than 7 million Palestinian refugees, uprooted from their homes and lands since the Palestinian Nakba (the usurpation of Palestine), are still hoping to return to their homeland, and reject the notion of land swaps.Many of the Palestinian families who fled Palestine still hold keys to their homes after being forced to leave their lands and homes at gunpoint. MP Mona Mansour stressed the right of return for all Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled from their historical lands. She confirmed her total rejection of the notion of land swaps, warning of its seriousness on the Palestinian cause. Dr Abdel Sattar Qassem Professor of Political studies confirmed that Nakba anniversary highlights the Palestinian refugees’ adherence to their right of return despite their difficult living conditions in refugee camps. The refugee Ahmed Abu Saada from Jalazoun refugee camp confirmed that the Palestinian right of return will never be compromised. Resistance is the only reliable option to return to our homeland, he stressed.

Israel has given the green light for the construction of a further 300 homes in a West Bank settlement.The number of eviction incidents has risen sharply since a new Israeli government, with even stronger opposition to a 2-state solution, took office in March. And the Israeli defense force are ready to use almost anything to back their governments orders, including special anti-riot measure called 'Skunk'.

Vandals believed to be Jewish extremists have uprooted dozens of olive trees and scrawled graffiti near a Palestinian village in the southern West Bank, police and witnesses said on Friday.

Palestinian witnesses told AFP that approximately 80 olive trees were uprooted in the village of Al-Tiwana east of Yatta. Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri confirmed that "police received a report about the damaging of some 62 Palestinian-owned olive trees" in the area. She also noted that "slogans such as 'price tag' and 'mutual guarantee' were scrawled nearby." "Price tag" is a euphemism for hate crimes, primarily committed against Palestinians by Israeli extremists. The attacks began in response to Israeli government moves to dismantle unauthorised settler outposts or in retaliation to Palestinians after attacks against settlers, but over the past 18 months have also targeted Christian institutions and even the Israeli military. The perpetrators of such crimes are rarely caught.

Human rights lawyer Heba Masaleha said one of the Palestinian children detained in an Israeli jail tried to commit suicide as a result of the severe depression he suffers from because of his exposure to maltreatment at the hands of jailers. - Masaleha refrained from mentioning the name of the child, but she said she visited him in jail. She stated that the child has been staying in bed for three days without moving or talking to anyone, except about his intention to commit suicide, adding that the child cannot sleep properly at night and already refused to eat food for two days. [...] The center said that the children were on their way to a Palestinian folkloric festival that was held in the West Bank in solidarity with prisoner Samer Issawi, who ended his months-long hunger strike recently after a deal with his jailers. The center underlined that the Israeli occupation regime deliberately kidnap Palestinian children to break their spirits in violation of the international law, which stipulates the need for protecting the children and their right to grow safely without any restrictions on their freedom. It noted that there are about 321 children, 30 of them patients, in Israeli jails.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said the root of the conflict with the Palestinians was not about territory but about their refusal to recognise Israel as the Jewish state.

"The root of the conflict is not territorial. It started a long time before 1967," Netanyahu told top foreign ministry officials. "The Palestinians' lack of will to recognise the state of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people is the root of the conflict."

Haaretz: Netanyahu says there's no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - The problem is not the settlements; the root of the conflict is the fact that the Palestinians refuse to recognize the existence of the Jewish state. What the countries of the world have to do is expose the true face of the Palestinians and force them to recognize Israel not only as just any country, but as a Jewish state. “This is an insoluble conflict because it is not about territory,” he says. “It is not that you can give up a kilometer more and solve it. The root of the conflict is in an entirely different place. Until Abu Mazen recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, there will be no way to reach an agreement.”

Jason Ditz: Netanyahu Dismisses Land-Swap: Conflict Never Over Territory

Declassified UK reports document build-up of conflict, Jewish public's endorsement of their leaders' pro-terrorist stance and declare armies of Arab states were Palestinians' 'only hope'. - The British government knew from the moment it planned to withdraw its forces from Palestine more than 60 years ago that partition of the territory and the founding of the state of Israel would lead to war and defeat for the Arabs, secret documents released make clear. The documents, which have a remarkable contemporary resonance, reveal how British officials looked on as Jewish settlers took over more and more Arab land. In the weeks leading up to the partition of Palestine in 1948, when Britain gave up its UN mandate, Jewish terrorist groups were mounting increasing attacks on UK forces and Arab fighters, the Colonial Office papers show. [...] The papers, released at the National Archives, show how in regular intelligence reports to London, British officials in Jerusalem described a steady build-up of tension as Britain, the US, the United Nations and Zionists moved towards the partition of Palestine. As early as October 1946, two years before partition, UK officials warned London that Jewish opinion would oppose partition "unless the Jewish share were so enlarged as to make the scheme wholly unacceptable to Arabs". British officials warned the colonial secretary, George Hall: "The Jewish public … endorsed the attitude of its leaders that terrorism is a natural consequence of the general policy of His Majesty's Government", including turning away ships carrying "illegal" Jewish immigrants.

“Settling” constitutes a warcrime according to international law and ICC statute. Even under US’ own military legislations’ - On Monday The Times of Israel newspaper published the results of a poll conducted by Ariel University, revealing “the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews support Israel extending its sovereignty over some or all of the West Bank, either unilaterally or as part of an agreement.”The poll also found that 35% of respondents support the annexation of the entire West Bank under the control of the Israeli government, whilst 24% said that only settlement blocs should be annexed. Twenty percent said that any annexation should be part of an agreement with the Palestinians, while 12% believed that Israel does not need to annex any land to its territory. Only 9% had no answer to the question.According to the total percentage of the respondents who supported expansion in the West Bank, about 80% of Israelis support the expansion of Israeli sovereignty over the territory of the West Bank.

Occupied Palestine | فلسطين: SETTLER TERROR IN PHOTOS

On November 18, during the eight-day deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas militants, an Israeli warplane bombed the home of the al-Dalou family in Al-Nasser neighborhood, central Gaza City. The attack turned the three-storey home into rubble, killing ten members of the household, including five women and four children. Two more civilians from the family living next door were also killed in the attack.

The Israeli Military’s legal arm has decided not to open a criminal probe into the deaths of 10 members of the Palestinian al-Dalou family killed in the IDF’s air-strike on their home during the Gaza war last year. The airstrike on the al-Dalou home “does not raise suspicion of the commission of a criminal offense and that the unfortunate result occurred despite the efforts made to minimize the collateral damage to uninvolved civilians,” the IDF Military Advocate General's (MAG) Corps stated, after examining the claims of alleged violations by the Israeli military during the November offensive on Gaza.

AWIP: IDF wipes out Palestinian family

During the global protests known as Israel Apartheid Week, the Israeli government launched a segregated bus service, forcing Palestinians in the West Bank to travel only on buses designated to them.

Israel has “started” to operate segregated buses. But not really ‘started’. 447638343Already in November 2011, activists challenged the segregated illegal settler buses Rosa Parks Style with the #FreedomRides. Challenging segregation and racism in the same way like Rosa Parks did when she was refused entry in a bus on December 1, 1955. After Nazi empire segregated the Jews with Jew Only transportation, camps, even benches in a parc and you name it and more, Israel takes a retake of the racism in 2013 with buses. ”Nur für Palestinenzer” (Only for Palestinians). Where did we see this before….. oh yes, Warsaw ghetto WorldWar II. In this video at 23 min 39 you can see a “Nur für Juden” Straßenbahn (Only for Jews) transportation in action.

Mohammad Khaleq is one of more than 8,000 Palestinian children held by Israel since the year 2000.

On April 11, in one of the trailer caravans that house the Israeli military courtrooms at Ofer prison, three boys sat in the brown Israeli Prison Service shabas uniform. Their feet shackled, their eyes darting between the judge, their lawyers, and their families. The youngest was 14-year-old Mohammad Khaleq, a short, skinny boy with a light brown birthmark under his right eye and a heart murmur since birth. Mohammad was arrested from his home in the village of Silwad, near Ramallah, in a 2:00am raid on Friday April 5. Eight heavily armed soldiers burst in to the modest home, waking the Khaleq family - the two parents and six children, the youngest just six years old - and gathered them in one room. "The soldiers thought they had come to arrest me," Mohammad's father, 46-year-old Abdelwahab, told Al Jazeera. "When they saw that Mohammad was just a kid they felt embarrassed, but they still took him away."

IMEMC: Child from New Orleans sentenced to serve in adult prison in Israel

[truthdig] ■ In the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, stones have played a central role. The stone was the symbol of the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993), as children as young as eight years old rained their projectiles down on the occupying Israeli army. Soldiers often responded with live ammunition, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians, about 200 of them children. Youths with stones confronting soldiers with Galils and M-16s: suddenly Palestinian children took center stage as David against the Israeli Goliath. ■ The image pricked the conscence of many Israelis, and citizens and governments around the world, and ultimately helped force Israeli leaders, including the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to the negotiating table. (The Oslo agreement they forged with Palestinian negotiators proved to be disastrous; nevertheless, there was a palpable sense during the first intifada that the stone would lead to Palestinian liberation.). ■ Today the stone remains a part of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation, which is more entrenched than ever. And while growing numbers of Palestinians advocate nonviolent resistance as the most promising path to a just peace, others strongly defend the right of Palestinians to throw stones as a legitimate act of political resistance against an illegal 47-year military occupation. One of them is an Israeli journalist.

Jerusalem – Israeli undercover units arresting a young
Palestinian during clashes in al-'Eissawiya village

■ During the reporting period, Israeli forces wounded 11 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children and a woman, in the West Bank. They were all wounded during peaceful protests organised by Palestinian civilians against the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities and in support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces continued to open fire at Palestinian fishing boats, restricting the permitted fishing area to 3 nautical miles instead of the 6 nautical mile limit that was agreed in the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in November 2012.
■ In the West Bank, in an example of the systematic use of excessive force against peaceful protests organised by Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists against the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank, Israeli forces wounded Belal Abdul Salam Hassan al-Tamimi, 47, when they sprayed pepper spray in his face. It should be noted that al-Tamimi is a photographer for the Popular Resistance Movement against the Annexation Wall and Settlements in al-Nabi Saleh village. Many more civilians suffered from tear gas inhalation and others sustained bruises.
■ Palestinian civilians organised many peaceful protests in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, especially those on hunger strike. Israeli forces used excessive force against the protesters; as a result, 10 civilians, including 3 children and 1 woman, were wounded. In addition, many civilians suffered from tear gas inhalation and others sustained bruises.

Occupied Palestine | فلسطين: Israeli occupation [soldier] shoots paralysed Palestinian during detention raid

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Once again Zionist join forces with their ideological twins, the Anti Zionist Zionists (AZZ). I have learned today that due to pressure, Deir Yassin Remembered's (DYR) commemoration in Glasgow was cancelled. In spite of the difficulties Mr Abdallah Eid, a survivor of the Deir Yassin, will still commemorate Deir Yassin as planned and I urge you to join him at the event.

The murder of over 100 Palestinians by the Urgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and Stern gangs with the assistance of an elite unit from the Haganah, led to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, an event known as al-Nakba, "the Catastrophe". The aim of the "Deir Yassin Remembered" campaign is to erect a memorial on the site of the massacre and at the same time raise the plight of the Palestinian people. For more information about the campaign visit Memorial to Deir Yassin and Deir Yassin Remembered

Deir Yassin Blog: Deir Yassin Day 2013
Gilad Atzmon: Remember Deir Yassin [04/26/12] + Being in Time [09/14/11]

Israeli medical neglect killed Maisara Abu Hamdiyya. On April 2, he succumbed. He did so shackled painfully to his Soroka Hospital bed. He called going there "another journey of suffering." He was 64. He suffered from advanced throat cancer. It spread to his spine. - On 28 March, Palestinians in the Israeli jail of Eshel released a statement informing the world that 64-year-old prisoner Maysara Abuhamdia had lost his ability to move his body, and is expected to die at any moment. The statement was made public on the website Facebook by a prisoner support group called Kasr al-Qeid, or Breaking the Chains. The prisoners stated that the next statement that they would release would not be another call for help, but a letter of condolences to Abuhamdia’s family. The day before, the prisoners sent out another statement titled “Maysara is not alone” and called on Palestinians to do anything they can to secure his release.

Stephen Lendman: Israeli Murder by Torture and Neglect
Linah Alsaafin: Prisoner Maysara Abuhamdia dies; son accuses PA of betrayal
Occupied Palestine | فلسطين: Autopsy shows Israel neglected prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh

Israeli violations of international law and international humanitarian law in the oPt continued during the reporting period 21 – 27 March 2013

■ During the reporting period, the Israeli forces wounded 4 protestors, including a Norwegian human rights defender and member of the board of directors of Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to fire at the Palestinian fishing boats in order to minimize the allowed fishing area to 3 nautical miles instead of 6 nautical miles.
■ During the reporting period, the Israeli forces continued to systematically use excessive force against peaceful protests organized by Palestinians and Israeli and international activists against the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank and other protests in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in the Israeli jails. As a result, dozens of protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation and other sustained bruises.
■ In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to chase the Palestinian fishermen in the sea. PCHR's fieldworkers documented 4 shooting incidents on Palestinian fishing boats that were sailing 3 nautical miles off al-Waha resort, northwest of Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza Strip. As a result of the attacks, the fishermen were obliged to flee back to the shore fearing of being wounded or arrested. However, neither casualties nor material damage were reported.

Though the deal still seems to be quite some way off, Israel has reportedly agreed in principle to pay tens of millions of dollars in compensation for the May 2010 attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, which led to the killings of nine aid workers. - Israel and Turkey are discussing the formation of a committee of both nations’ officials to come up with final terms for the deal, with the money to go in a “humanitarian fund” managed by Turkey’s government. Though Israel has been open to compensation for quite some time, the issue could become difficult since officials demand full immunity for Israeli commandos and the state for the killings, as well as not having to admit any wrongdoing.

An Evening With Gilad Atzmon, a short video by James Corbett. We spoke about Jewish power, Zionism, Palestine, the Lobby. Controlled opposition, history & concealment, Being & Time and more. James was very sharp and presented me with some serious questions. I hope to meet his again soon. The band was incredible: Eric Wiegmann on drums and Koichi Hara on bass. [Video]

'Asharq al-Awsat' reports Abbas agrees to forgo legal action against Israel for 2 months; $500 million in US aid released to PA. - US President Barack Obama asked Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Israel and the West Bank not to take action against Israel at the International Criminal Court for any reason, including settlement construction, London-based Arab daily Asharq al- Awsat reported on Saturday, citing Palestinian sources. The PA has hinted on numerous occasions since it gained recognition as a non-member observer state at the UN in November that it was considering complaining to the ICC against Israel for approving construction of new housing in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

AWIP: U.S. Unblocks $500 mln "for Palestinians"