Sebastia is encircled by Israeli settlements, all illegal under international law, including Shavei Shomron a few kilometres away (a little more than a mile).

Sebastia is a pilgrimage site for Christians because it is believed to be where John the Baptist, known in the Quran as the Prophet Yahya, is buried.

It is also believed to be the site of Samaria, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Israel.

Israelis wishing to see some of that history are escorted to Sebastia’s archaeological park, which has ruins spanning the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods.

For them, the site is evidence of Jewish ties to the West Bank. For Palestinians, the focus on one specific period of history is an attempt to undermine Palestinians' control of their own land.

Home to about 4,000 people, Sebastia was once a symbol of religious coexistence and is home to relics that chart 3,000 years of history dating back as far as the Iron Age.

Such is the significance of the remains that Palestinian authorities in Sebastia are hoping UNESCO will add them to its World Heritage list. They also hope the archaeological park will join 56 other locations on UNESCO’s register of significant sites considered to be “in danger”.

But any protection that recognition would have afforded the ancient site and the modern-day village has come too late for some because Sebastia is now no longer spared the violence other parts of Nablus district have endured.

In July, 19-year-old Fawzi Makhalfeh was killed by Israeli soldiers as he drove through the village with a friend.

Doctors removed more than 50 bullets from his body, his family said. He was the first Sebastia resident to be killed by Israelis in more than 20 years, and his name is emblazoned on memorials in the village centre. The Palestinian Authority described his killing as an “execution”.

full article

• Environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a wildlife corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Australia: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.
• Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented due to industrial agriculture, and a forested corridor is expected to help protect biodiversity by allowing animals to forage for food and connect different populations for mating and migration.
• The project aims to plant 360,000 trees over an area of 213 hectares (526 acres); so far, it has planted 25,000 trees of 180 species on the land and in the nursery, which can also feed a range of native wildlife.
• The project is ambitious and organizers say they’re hopeful about it, but challenges remain, including soil regeneration and ensuring the planted trees aren’t killed off by feral pigs or flooding.

In Australia’s Cape Kimberley, environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. To do this, they will need to plant 360,000 trees.

Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented. The area where this new forest will be planted is a 213-hectare (526-acre) plot of land that was cleared for cattle in the 1960s and then used as a commercial banana farm until the 1990s. It was choked with invasive Guinea grass and covered in abandoned farm machinery.

“For a good while now our Country [Indigenous land] has been bare,” Petersen told Mongabay.

The fragmentation of forests leads to a loss of diversity and decline in species. But strips of land that make up wildlife corridors can help connect wildlife populations. They ensure foraging for food, connecting different populations for mating and other migratory need, say conservationists. In December 2022, the U.N. biodiversity framework recognized ecological corridors as an important conservation measure alongside protected areas.

For the Daintree Rainforest, conservationists say a wildlife corridor will help protect endemic Bennett’s tree kangaroos (Dendrolagus bennettianus), spectacled flying foxes (Pteropus conspicillatus) and southern cassowaries (Casuarius casuarius), the closest living species to dinosaurs.

full article

On this day in 1967, the Israeli Army occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, claiming emergency powers with a military decree that greatly restricts the rights of the occupied. The ongoing occupation is the longest in the modern era.

The Israeli Army action took place in the context of the Six Day War, fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. The status of the West Bank as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the military proclamation issued by the Israeli Army on June 7th, 1967 permitted the application of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945.

These regulations empowered, and continue to empower, authorities to declare as an "unlawful association" groups that advocate for "bringing into hatred or contempt, or the exciting of disaffection against" the authorities, and criminalize membership in or possession of material belonging to or affiliated, even indirectly, with these groups.

HRW goes on to state that these and other broad restrictions on the occupied population violate international law: "The Israeli army has for over 50 years used broadly worded military orders to arrest Palestinian journalists, activists and others for their speech and activities - much of it non-violent - protesting, criticizing or opposing Israeli policies. These orders are written so broadly that they violate the obligation of states under international human rights law to clearly spell out conduct that could result in criminal sanction."

Following the military occupation of the West Bank, Israel began expropriating the land and facilitating Israeli settlements in the area, broadly considered a violation of international law. While Israelis in the West Bank are subject to Israeli law and given representation in the Israeli Knesset, Palestinian civilians, mostly confined to scattered enclaves, are subject to martial law and are not permitted to vote in Israel's national elections.

This two-tiered system has inspired comparisons to apartheid, likening the dense disconnected pockets that Palestinians are relegated to with the segregated Bantustans that previously existed in South Africa when the country was still under white supremacist rule.

• Born Without Civil Rights: Israel’s Use of Draconian Military Orders to Repress Palestinians in the West Bank - Humansrightswatch

• Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory illegal: UN rights commission

• HD map

• The Origins of Zionism - Colonialism, Ethnonationalism, and Myth

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• The loko i’a system of native fishponds in Hawai‘i has for generations provided sustenance to Indigenous communities, supported fish populations in surrounding waters, and generally improved water quality.
• These benefits, long understood by native Hawaiians, have now been confirmed by scientists in a new study that looked at the restoration of one such fishpond.
• Unlike commercial fish farms, loko i‘a thrive without feed input and need little management once established — aspects that highlight the holistic thinking and values-based management behind them.
• The study authors say the finding is another step toward communicating Indigenous knowledge to support governmental decision-making, part of wider efforts across the archipelago to weave Indigenous and Western ways of knowing to heal both ecosystems and communities.

For generations, native Hawaiians have understood that their aquaculture systems, fishponds known as loko i‘a, serve as nurseries that seed fish populations in surrounding waters. For the first time, a team of scientists from the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have modeled this feat of Indigenous science in a study.

“We are using science to translate ‘ike kupuna, or Indigenous knowledge, into policy,” said study co-author Kawika Winter, an ecologist at HIMB and He‘eia National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). “The value of this paper is that it’s one of the first, if not the first, to really show that there are ways to do aquaculture in ways that benefit the system around it.”

In partnership with He‘eia NERR and Paepae o He‘eia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stewarding the He‘eia loko i‘a, an ancient Hawaiian fishpond enclosing 36 hectares (88 acres) of brackish water, the team simulated different restoration scenarios in ‘Kāne‘ohe Bay on O‘ahu Island based on a simplified food web. The study found that restoring more of the bay into fully functional loko iʻa would grow fish populations not just within the ponds, but across the bay.

Full article

by Gabe Allen on 4 June 2024

• In Utqiagvik, Alaska, the Iñupiat rely on whaling and subsistence hunting for the bulk of their diet, a practice dating back thousands of years.
• Powered by mineral wealth, the Iñupiat-run North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management employs a collaborative team of scientists and hunters.
• Though the arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, the Iñupiat are confident in their ability to adapt their practices to changing conditions.
• The Department of Wildlife Management provides a potential model for collaborations between Indigenous peoples and western researchers — with Indigenous leaders in charge of funding and resource allocation.

For a few days each June, the saltwater wind that blows over the fairgrounds in Utqiagvik, Alaska mixes with the smell of coffee, salmonberry pie and fresh whale meat.

The festivities start early and end under the midnight sun during Nalukataq, the annual whaling festival. By noon, the tables at the center of the fairgrounds are filled with slabs of whale blubber, cauldrons of stew and baked goods — enough to feed the town for a month. After a prayer, crew members circle the fairgrounds and fill coolers with food. Meanwhile, captains trade turns making speeches, pumping up the crowd and singing songs into a megaphone.

The Prudhoe Bay oil strike of 1968 turned Alaska into a petroleum state, with the North Slope Borough at its epicenter. In order to offer contracts to oil companies, the federal government first had to settle outstanding land claims with Native groups across the state. In 1973, the Iñupiat emerged from the negotiations with immense mineral wealth, and the newly-founded Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation became a powerful player in the oil industry.

Around the same time, Alaska began the slow process of reforming its education system. A whole generation of Iñupiat had been stripped of their language and traditions. Now, a new generation had a chance to reclaim the practices that had almost disappeared. Chief among them was whaling.

Full article

• Indigenous peoples have been steadily warning about the impacts of renewable energy development on their lands and communities, but some see a way to harness this trend for the positive.
• Experts say Indigenous communities can play a leading role in the clean energy transition through partnerships that allow them to produce and benefit from renewable energy projects.
• In Canada, policy initiatives like the feed-in tariff program in Ontario province have encouraged Indigenous participation in renewable energy by providing incentives for Indigenous ownership in projects, making them a growing shareholder in Canada’s clean energy transition.
• While there are examples to be taken from Canada’s approach, barriers remain, including limited capacity within communities, access to capital, and governance structures supporting such partnerships.

The traditional territory of the Walpole Island First Nation in Canada covers a vast area of present southwestern Ontario and southeastern Michigan. Marshy deltas, tallgrass prairies and oak savannas are found here. Since time immemorial, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi and Odawa peoples have used this area for hunting, fishing and gathering. Now, a new kind of resource covers part of their land: wind turbines.

The dozens of turbines, owned in partnership between other First Nations and energy companies, mean that Walpole Island First Nation now plays an active role in pushing forward the clean energy transition.

“As Indigenous Peoples, we recognize and support the global shift towards renewable energy,” Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International, said at a press conference on the energy transition at this year’s U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). “But it can’t happen at the expense of Indigenous people. Right now, we are going towards a new type of ‘clean’ colonialism.”

full article

Indigenous activists from the Indonesian province of West Papua have held traditional ceremonies outside the country’s Supreme Court in Jakarta calling for their traditional land and forests to be protected from palm oil plantations.

Representatives of the Awyu and Moi communities held prayers and performed dances in front of the Supreme Court building on Monday as the court was reviewing an appeal in relation to their efforts to revoke permits for four palm oil companies whose proposed plantations threaten their customary forests. Indonesia began legally recognising customary forests in 2016.

“We have taken the long, difficult and expensive path from Tanah Papua [Papua homeland] to end up here in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, asking the Supreme Court to restore our rights, and the land that was snatched from us when these palm oil companies were issued permits over it,” said Hendrikus “Franky” Woro, an Awyu Indigenous man.

Woro filed an environmental and land rights lawsuit in the Papuan capital of Jayapura challenging the plan by a Malaysian-owned palm oil company to clear tens of thousands of hectares of previously untouched West Papuan forest, including traditional Indigenous land

Full article

On May 28, Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced they are formally recognising Palestine as a state. The move was welcomed by Palestinians and condemned by the Israeli government, which responded by withdrawing its ambassadors from all three nations and snubbing their envoys.

While recognition of Palestine as a state is mostly a symbolic gesture, it may add to the wave of unprecedented diplomatic pressure currently being exerted upon Israel over its brutal assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

But there are also reasons to be sceptical about the extent to which this move will actually help Palestinians.

As Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat has cogently argued, the joint Irish, Spanish, and Norwegian gesture is “too little, too late”.

The announcement has come nearly eight months into the genocide in Gaza at a time when Palestinians need much more than symbolism.

There is much more that could be done to address Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank.

Why, for instance, have Norway, Spain, and the Republic of Ireland not pushed hard for ostracising Israel at the United Nations?

Why have Spain and Ireland not pushed for an EU arms embargo against Israel?

And why have they not proposed that the EU impose a wider set of economic sanctions on Israeli companies, institutions and leaders?

full article

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli air force bombed a refugee tent camp west of Rafah City around 8:45 pm local time on Sunday. The time is important, since +972 Mag reported that the Israeli total war on Gaza is being conducted by AI programs. One of them is called, sadistically, “Daddy’s Home.” The Israelis are tracking Hamas militants through the day but wait to strike at them when they come home at night, ensuring that their wives, children, relatives and friends are also killed. The AI program is set up to allow 15 to 20 noncombatant, civilian deaths for every member of the paramilitary Qassam Brigades killed in the attack. The eight missiles that struck the camp killed 2 Hamas operatives and left others 45 dead, mostly burned up in their flammable tents, the majority women and children.

Burning the tents of the indigenous population has a long history in colonialism.

Historian Jon Romats Broadhead wrote of the “Pavonia Massacre,” “Warrior and squaw, sachem and child, mother and babe were alike massacred. Daybreak scarcely ended the furious slaughter. Mangled victims, seeking safety in the thickets, were driven into the river, and parents rushing to save their children, whom the soldiery had thrown into the stream, were driven back into the waters and drowned before the eyes of their unrelenting murderers.”

The snow turned red with blood and “the sky, it was reported, was lit with the fires from their tents.”

For the colonizers to burn the tents of the colonized is to declare them without domicile or connection to the land on which they were used to camping. It is to erase them from the earth

Full article

Now 146 out of 193 UN members recognise Palestine, but what does that mean for Palestinians?

What does recognition mean for Palestine?

Spain, Ireland and Norway did not recognise an existing state, just the possibility of one.

The move will see increased diplomatic relations between the Palestinian Authority and the three countries.

All have announced that they will recognize Palestine according to the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Dublin has said it will upgrade both the Palestinian mission in Dublin and its own offices in Palestine to embassies while Oslo and Madrid have already done so.

The hope is that the symbolism will boost Palestine’s international standing and put more pressure on Israel to open negotiations aimed at ending the war.

The move has already spurred Slovenia, which is expected to recognise Palestine by June 13.

Given Ireland’s and Spain’s European Union memberships, it is also hoped the move will put the status of Palestine firmly on the agenda during the June 6-9 EU elections.

Full article

Several countries and global organisations have condemned the Israeli air attack on tents housing displaced people in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah that killed at least 40 Palestinians, including many children.

The Palestinian presidency on Monday accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, joining a chorus of worldwide condemnation following the attack.

“The perpetration of this heinous massacre by the Israeli occupation forces is a challenge to all international legitimacy resolutions,” the Palestinian presidency said in a statement, accusing Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting” the tents of displaced people.

Palestinian witnesses and Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad said the camp sheltering civilians in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan area was deliberately targeted.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory, described Israel’s attack on the tent camp in Rafah as “unacceptable”. In a post on X, she wrote, “The #GazaGenocide‌ will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.”

Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the bombing of Rafah was “one more day with innocent Palestinian civilians being killed”. He said the gravity of the attack “is even larger” because it comes after the ICJ order directing Israel to halt its operation in Rafah and the rest of Gaza.

The African Union Commission under Moussa Mahamat Faki, said the ICJ order must be “urgently enforced if global order is to prevail”. He wrote in X: “With horrific overnight airstrikes killing mostly Palestinian women & children trapped in a displacement camp in Rafah, the State of Israel continues to violate international law with impunity and in contempt of an ICJ ruling two days ago ordering an end to its military action in Rafah.”

full article

by Maxwell Radwin on 21 May 2024

• A series of ongoing road projects traveling over 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital of Georgetown to the city of Lethem, in the south, are supposed to improve access to more rural parts of Guyana while facilitating international trade, most notably with Brazil.
• But the project also crosses sensitive wetlands and Indigenous communities, raising concerns about how the government will manage future development there.
• Some of the roads cross through the Rupununi wetlands and Iwokrama Rainforest, where a unique watershed connects the Amazon River and Essequibo River basins.

Ongoing upgrades to roads through the southern part of Guyana have many conservationists on high alert, as the projects could impact forest and savanna ecosystems as well as Indigenous communities.

A series of roads traveling over 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital of Georgetown to the city of Lethem, in the south, are supposed to improve access to more rural parts of Guyana while facilitating international trade, most notably with Brazil. But the project also crosses sensitive wetlands and Indigenous communities, raising concerns about how the government will manage future development there.

“Throughout the Amazon, when roads are developed, they pose threats to natural ecosystems that they’re passing through and developed through, especially when the right approaches aren’t taken,” Aiesha Williams, WWF conservation director in Guyana, told Mongabay.

The project expands upon the already paved roads in some areas while creating entirely new ones in other parts. In total, it will extend from 121 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital Georgetown to Liden then continue to the towns of Mabura Hill and Lethem. The project also includes around 45 bridges, according to official comments made to local media. An alternative road between Toka and Lethem is also under consideration.

full article

Estimated 200 aid trucks still fall far short of what the UN says is a minimum of 500-600 trucks required daily to feed millions of Palestinians on the brink of starvation.

Aid trucks are entering Gaza through Karem Abu Salem crossing in the south as the living conditions of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to deteriorate under Israel’s relentless war on the Palestinian enclave.

Egypt’s state-affiliated Al-Qahera TV on Sunday shared a video on X, showing aid trucks entering Gaza through the crossing, known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom. Aid officials said 200 trucks loaded with aid are set to enter the strip.

The first four trucks to enter Gaza carried fuel for hospitals and desalination plants, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said. He said four other trucks were expected to carry cooking gas.

Mahmoud said the aid will be distributed to the organisations supposed to be receiving aid, who will take them to warehouses in the evacuation zone of Khan Younis city and central Gaza.

But, he warned, the aid was not enough.

Full article

Israel has continued its relentless attacks on Rafah despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering it to put an end to the military operation there, and multiple deaths were reported from central and northern Gaza, which have been subjected to renewed attacks.

The Shaboura camp and areas close to the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah on Saturday were targeted, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said. Several people who have been injured in the bombardment have been transferred to the hospital, he said.

The hospital renewed its appeal for fuel deliveries “to ensure its continued operation”, saying it was the only one in Rafah governorate still receiving patients.

The ICJ ruling, the third of its kind this year, ordered Israel to halt its offensive, citing “immense risk” to some 1.4 million Palestinians taking shelter in Rafah, the southernmost part of Gaza. More than 800,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee Rafah since Israel launched the current offensive on May 7.

The UN’s top court seeks to rein in the mounting death toll of Palestinians since October, while also alleviating a continuing humanitarian crisis resulting from the internal displacement and severe hunger trailing most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed and vast swaths of Gaza have been flatted by Israeli carpetbombing.

Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticising the ICJ ruling, calling the charges of genocide brought by South Africa as “false, outrageous and morally repugnant”.

The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories called on Saturday for sanctions against Israel for defying the court.

“Be sure: Israel will not stop this madness until WE make it stop. Member states must impose sanctions, arms embargo and suspend diplo[matic]/political relations with Israel till it ceases its assault,” Francesca Albanese posted on X.

full article

San Miguel Centro Marankiari, Peru – From high atop a treeless ridge, Tsitsiri Samaniego can see his ancestral homeland stretching towards the horizon.

Samaniego, 40, is the leader of San Miguel Centro Marankiari, an Indigenous Ashaninka village cradled in the mountains of central Peru. Here, the Amazon rainforest blends into the Andean mountains, turning the rugged slopes to a lush blue-green.

But as he shields his eyes from the blistering sun, Samaniego detects signs of distress in the landscape.

Farmland has supplanted forests. The Perene River that snakes through the valley below has become contaminated, as towns and farms dump agricultural waste and sewage into its waters. Even the village’s cassava crops are blighted, with yellow lesions swelling on their leaves.

The scale of the environmental degradation has brought Samaniego to this high ridge in search of advice — from his ancestors, from the dead.

Pressing further up the incline, Samaniego arrives at a cemetery shrouded in a thicket of green. There, he pauses before an unmarked grave: that of his grandfather, Miguel Samaniego. The village of San Miguel Centro Marankiari still bears the late leader’s name.

Samaniego lays an offering of coca leaves on Miguel’s grave. Then, he lights a pipe to blow plumes of tobacco smoke over the headstone in a ritual blessing.

“This is where the spirits of our ancestors rest. They led the fight for our territory,” says Samaniego, following a moment of prayer. “When I come here, it gives me strength and courage.”

But facing the twin threats of development and climate change, Samaniego has steeled himself to a bitter reality: His ancestral land is no longer providing for his people. The land of his forefathers may not be the land of his descendants.

full article

Norway, Ireland and Spain announce they will recognise an independent Palestinian state.

Until now, most Western countries have maintained they will formally recognise Palestinian statehood only at the end of a peace process with Israel.

After more than seven months of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, Norway, Spain and the Republic of Ireland say they won’t wait any longer.

But the European Union is divided on the issue and larger powers like France say it’s not the right time to recognise a Palestinian state.

And a United States veto still holds back Palestine’s bid to gain full membership at the United Nations.

Will other European nations follow Norway, Ireland and Spain?

And what do the announcements mean for Palestine’s efforts to become a full member of the United Nations?

Video link

Richard Oakes, born on this day in 1942, was a Mohawk indigenous activist and leader within the Red Power movement, playing a prominent role in the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 - 1971.

Oakes promoted Native American studies in university curricula and is credited for helping to change U.S. federal government "Termination" policies (policies regarding assimilation of indigenous people into the culture of the colonizer) of Native American peoples and culture.

In 1969, Oakes led a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island with LaNada Means, approximately 50 California State University students, and 37 others. On January 5th, 1970, Oakes' 12-year-old daughter, Yvonne, fell to her death from concrete steps. After her funeral, Oakes left the island.

In 1972, Oakes was shot and killed in Sonoma, California, by Michael Morgan, a YMCA camp manager. Allegedly, Oakes violently confronted Morgan, and Morgan responded by drawing a handgun and fatally shooting Oakes.

Oakes was unarmed when he was shot. Morgan claimed he acted in self-defense, and was acquitted on charges of voluntary manslaughter.

"We do not fear your threat to charge us with crimes on our land. We and all other oppressed peoples would welcome spectacle of proof before the world of your title by genocide. Nevertheless, we seek peace."

Richard Oakes

• Richard Oakes: Alcatraz Proclamation

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

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Nearly 800,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Rafah since Israel launched its offensive against the southern Gaza city last week, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said.

Lazzarini decried the repeated displacement of Palestinians in the statement on Saturday.

“Since the war in Gaza began, Palestinians have been forced to flee multiple times in search of safety that they have never found, including in UNRWA shelters,” Lazzarini said.

“When people move, they are exposed, without safe passage or protection. Every time, they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have:  mattresses, tents, cooking utensils and basic supplies that they cannot carry or pay to transport.

“Every time, they have to start from scratch, all over again. ”

Saturday saw intense fighting across Gaza – not just in Rafah – with Israeli attacks killing dozens of Palestinians.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said early in the day that 83 Palestinians had been killed over the previous 24 hours.

Later on Saturday, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Alghoul reported that 40 bodies had reached the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza after Israel bombed the Jabalia refugee camp. At least 15 people were killed in one attack.

full article

France has declared a state of emergency in its Pacific Islands territory of New Caledonia and deployed police and military reinforcements in an attempt to end days of unrest over Paris’s move to change the rules on provincial elections.

Three Indigenous Kanak people and a police officer have been killed in violence that erupted on Monday night and has continued despite an overnight curfew. Hundreds have been injured.

Anger has been simmering for weeks over plans to amend the French constitution to allow people who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to vote in the territory’s provincial elections, diluting a 1998 accord that limited voting rights.

Many Indigenous Kanak people, who make up about 40 percent of the territory’s nearly 300,000 people, fear the move will undermine their position in the territory.

This week’s violence came as the National Assembly voted in Paris to adopt the measure. A joint sitting of the National Assembly and the Senate needs to be convened for the new rules to take effect because they represent a constitutional change.

New Caledonia, which lies some 1,500km (930 miles) east of Australia, was colonised by France in the 19th century.

full article

Last month, the Israeli military finally withdrew from Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital after a two-week raid, leaving behind nothing but apocalyptic scenes of death and destruction.

Grounds were littered with dead bodies. Most buildings were burned and reduced to empty shells.

What Gaza lost in al-Shifa was much more than its largest medical complex. Because Al-Shifa stood as much more than a hospital for the people of Gaza.

For members of the healthcare community, al-Shifa was home – it was where we trained, conducted research and learned. It was where we found the inspiration to become the best healers we could possibly be.

For our patients, it was a centre of hope. They knew that they would receive the best care at al-Shifa, which was far better equipped than most other hospitals in the strip.

Furthermore, al-Shifa was a popular gathering place and a national landmark. Before the genocide, it was surrounded by restaurants, libraries and two universities, all within walking distance. It was truly the beating heart of Gaza City.

Israel reduced it to burned rubble, and the site of a massacre.

full article

The Nakba, commemorated annually on this day as "Nakba Day", was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 following Israel's creation. Nakba Day protests take place around the world and have been attacked by Israel.

The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1947-1949 Palestine war, including 78% of Mandatory Palestine being declared as Israel, the exodus of 700,000 Palestinians, the depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, and the creation of permanent, stateless Palestinian refugees.

Although May 15th had been used as an unofficial commemoration of the Nakba since 1949, Nakba Day was formalized in 1998 after Yasser Arafat proposed that Palestinians should mark the 50th anniversary of the Nakba during the First Intifada.

The Nakba was a key event in the development of Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of Palestinian identity, along with "Handala", a ten-year old cartoon character developed by Naji al-Ali; the keffiyeh, a checkered black and white scarf worn around the head; and the "symbolic key" (many Palestinian refugees have kept the keys to the homes they were forced to flee).

On Nakba Day 2011, Palestinians and other Arabs from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria marched towards their respective borders, or ceasefire lines and checkpoints in Israeli-occupied territories, to mark the event. At least twelve Palestinians and supporters were killed and hundreds wounded as a result of shootings by the Israeli Army.

"In resisting the Nakba, the Palestinians have struck at the heart of the Zionist project that insists that the Nakba be seen as a past event. In resisting Israel, Palestinians have forced the world to witness the Nakba as present action; one that, contrary to Zionist wisdom, is indeed reversible." - Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad

• Palestinian Refugees Answer Questions about the Nakba

• Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary

• Farha (2021) internationally co-produced historical drama film about a Palestinian girl's coming-of-age experience during the Nakba, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. Its on Netflix

• The History of "Socialist" Zionism | Leftist Zionists did the Nakba & founded Israel

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Israeli forces have resumed ground and air attacks on northern Gaza’s densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, while in the southern part of the besieged enclave, tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, where some 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

Israel previously said it had pulled its troops out of the mostly devastated north, where famine has taken hold of the area, after claiming it had defeated Hamas months ago.

But on Monday, its forces and tanks re-entered northern Gaza and resumed shelling in Jabalia, where Hamas said its fighters were engaged in battles.

Israel described its latest return to the north as part of a so-called “mop-up” stage of the war, but Palestinians say the need to return is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said its fighters were engaged in gun battles with Israeli forces in the east of Jabalia, and east of Rafah in southern Gaza.

In a series of statements on its Telegram channel, the Qassam Brigades said one of its snipers shot an Israeli soldier in Jabalia. The group said its fighters “targeted” an Israeli army bulldozer with an Al-Yassin 105 shell, east of Jabalia.

Earlier on Monday, the group said its fighters attacked a crowd of Israeli soldiers with mortar shells inside the Jabalia camp, the biggest refugee camp in northern Gaza.

full article

Locals say the real estate industry is using organized crime, intimidation and even arson to clear the way for profits.

Like a 68-story glass-clad monument to imperialism, the Mítikah tower is now the tallest building in Mexico City. Operating since 2022, it was designed and built by U.S. and Mexican real estate and architecture companies, including Fibra Uno, Parks Hospitality Holdings and Pelli Clarke & Partners. It is the biggest shopping complex in the city and also features residential and office spaces. By not recognizing locals as original peoples with Teotihuacan descendancy, authorities were able to avoid the legally required consultation before approving its construction. Now, water — a scarce resource in Mexico City — is being redirected to the luxury building, while locals are left without.

Avoiding community consultation is just one of the strategies real estate companies are using to build and profit, while displacing people and destroying environments throughout Mexico. These corporations are using a combination of corruption, ties with organized crime, intimidation tactics, forced evictions and some allege arson, to clear the way for them to build their empires.

Companies also “look for legal loopholes,” said Mexican researcher and doctor of urban land management Melissa Schumacher Gonzalez, in an interview with Truthout. She said a core tactic was divide and conquer, in which developers, “buy land, and if someone doesn’t want to sell, they isolate them, cut off their access to the street, to force them to sell.”

“Real estate spending has a lot of freedom because it is one of the only ways to finance city growth, while authorities often aren’t concerned about coherent, sustainable development,” she said, alluding to the low public budgets that are common in poorer Global South countries.

Real estate has “become an easy way to get rich,” she said. The value of property per square meters has multiplied around tenfold in a decade, making speculation very profitable, and affording those companies the power and means to buy off authorities.

Full article :mexico-cool:

by Amanda Magnani on 6 May 2024

• In an interview with Mongabay, Brasílio Priprá, one of the pioneers of the Free Land Camp, the largest event of the Brazilian Indigenous movement, looks back on its 20 years of existence.
• Priprá, who has been active in the Indigenous movement for 40 years, has seen few changes, but enough to keep fighting for his rights.
• Land demarcation has been the main demand over the two decades of the Free Land Camp. Since 2019, marco temporal, a legal thesis that aims to restrict Indigenous land rights, has made this demand more pressing.
• Priprá shares his thoughts on the impacts of marco temporal on Indigenous rights, Brazil’s environmental goals and the future of the country for all citizens.

The “People of the Sun,” as the Xokleng Indigenous people of Brazil call themselves, are no strangers to conflict and violence. In the early 20th century, as the southern region of the country was colonized by newly arrived Germans and Italians, bugreiro militias hired by the imperial government decimated an estimated two-thirds of their population.

“There are accounts of bugreiros killing pregnant women and throwing babies and children up in the air to be impaled,” Brasílio Priprá, a 65-year-old Xokleng authority, told Mongabay at the Free Land Camp (Acampamento Terra Livre, ATL), the largest mobilization of Indigenous peoples in Brazil, which takes place every April in Brasília since 2004. He is one of the mobilization’s pioneers.

Priprá, who worked at Funai, the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples, before retiring, has been a part of the Indigenous movement’s fight for land over the past 40 years. It has now been almost 110 years since the defunct Indigenous Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção aos Índios) forced contact and the integration of the Xokleng people under the pretense of putting an end to the genocide.

But little changed for the People of the Sun.

full article

• Bar owner João Carlos da Silva was on April 15 sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of Indigenous land defender and teacher Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau four years earlier.
• Ari’s murder became symbolic of the struggle land defenders in Brazil face when protecting their ancestral territories, including constant threats and sometimes deadly violence.
• The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory faces fresh threats after a national lawmaker claimed its current boundaries are wrong and vowed to reduce the area in favor of local cattle ranchers and farmers.
• It’s one of several territorial setbacks that Indigenous lands across Brazil are currently facing; others include a territory in Paraná state whose demarcation process has been suspended, and one in Bahía state that could potentially be auctioned off.

On April 17, 2020, an Indigenous leader who fought to protect his ancestral land was violently killed in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Almost exactly four years later, a local bar owner has been convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison for Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau’s murder. The ruling marks a rare case of justice for violence against Indigenous land defenders, even as conflicts over traditional territories in Brazil persist.

The trial was broadcast live with the presence of several Indigenous people, including family members. Ari’s sister, Mandeí Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, testified in the trial, calling her brother “a good boy who always defended our territory.”

The crime was originally thought to have been related to Ari’s work in land and environmental surveillance, but the Federal Police ruled out a link between the murder and land defense. Instead, they concluded that Silva knew Ari and killed him due to a dislike of the victim and being bothered by his presence.

full article