IT'S OFFICIAL

Under Siege

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time

Close to the gardens of broken shadows,

We do what prisoners do,

And what the jobless do:

We cultivate hope.

***

A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent

For we closely watch the hour of victory:

No night in our night lit up by the shelling

Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us

In the darkness of cellars.

***

Here there is no "I".

Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

***

On the verge of death, he says:

I have no trace left to lose:

Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.

Soon I shall penetrate my life,

I shall be born free and parentless,

And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

***

You who stand in the doorway, come in,

Drink Arabic coffee with us

And you will sense that you are men like us

You who stand in the doorways of houses

Come out of our morningtimes,

We shall feel reassured to be

Men like you!

***

When the planes disappear, the white, white doves

Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven

With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession

Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves

Fly off. Ah, if only the sky

Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

***

Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting

The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel

Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—

And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in

A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

***

[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face

And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the

Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle

And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way

to find one’s identity again.

***

The siege is a waiting period

Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.

***

Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment

Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

***

We have brothers behind this expanse.

Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep.

Then, in secret, they tell each other:

"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence:

"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us."

***

Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day.

And ten wounded.

And twenty homes.

And fifty olive trees...

Added to this the structural flaw that

Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas.

***

A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved

For my clothing is drenched with his blood.

***

If you are not rain, my love

Be tree

Sated with fertility, be tree

If you are not tree, my love

Be stone

Saturated with humidity, be stone

If you are not stone, my love

Be moon

In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon

[So spoke a woman

to her son at his funeral]

***

Oh watchmen! Are you not weary

Of lying in wait for the light in our salt

And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound

Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

***

A little of this absolute and blue infinity

Would be enough

To lighten the burden of these times

And to cleanse the mire of this place.

***

It is up to the soul to come down from its mount

And on its silken feet walk

By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime

Friends who share the ancient bread

And the antique glass of wine

May we walk this road together

And then our days will take different directions:

I, beyond nature, which in turn

Will choose to squat on a high-up rock.

***

On my rubble the shadow grows green,

And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat

He dreams as I do, as the angel does

That life is here...not over there.

***

In the state of siege, time becomes space

Transfixed in its eternity

In the state of siege, space becomes time

That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow.

***

The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day

And questions me: Where were you? Take every word

You have given me back to the dictionaries

And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz.

***

The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse

I did not look

For the virgins of immortality for I love life

On earth, amid fig trees and pines,

But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it

With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure.

***

The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations

Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph

How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me.

I first, I the first one!

***

The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed.

I put a gazelle on my bed,

And a crescent of moon on my finger

To appease my sorrow.

***

The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!

***

Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,

The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:

The disease of hope.

***

And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior

And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me.

***

Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to

The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the

Blackness of this tunnel!

***

Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me

In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:

Greetings to my apparition.

***

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,

A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees

A marble epitaph of time

And always I anticipate them at the funeral:

Who then has died...who?

***

Writing is a puppy biting nothingness

Writing wounds without a trace of blood.

***

Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees

In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall

To another like a gazelle

The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us

Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories

Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,

And that we are the guests of eternity.

Mahmoud Darwish

Dua for our brothers and sisters in Gaza

On Tuesday, the Israelis launched an attack on a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) in the northern town of Jabaliya.

The attack left 43 Palestinians dead and around 100 wounded.

Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp.

John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, said they regularly provide the Israeli army with exact geographical co-ordinates of its facilities.

He also called for the Israelis to allow an international investigation into the incident

At least 683 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and nearly 3,085 wounded since the war began on December 27. Seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died in the same period.

Amid all this President Elect Obama is 'deeply concerned'. That doesnt help the people of Gaza

Source aljazeera english

Tel Aviv views as 'positive' an Egyptian initiative which calls for an end to the ongoing hostilities and bombardments in the Gaza Strip.

"Israel thanks the Egyptian president and the French president for their efforts to advance the solution to end the terrorist activity from Gaza and stop weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza," an Isreali spokesman Mark Regev said.

This is while Tel Aviv's airstrikes on the blockaded costal sliver have entered their 12th day, and its ground military incursion has reached its fifth day.

The all-out attack on Gaza was initially launched under the pretext of halting Palestinian's retaliatory rocket attacks. Later, however, Israel unveiled that the main objective of the onslaught was to topple the democratically-elect government of Hamas.

"Israel sees positively the dialogue between Egyptians and Israelis in order to advance these issues," Regev added, but failed to say whether Israel would send a delegation to Egypt to discuss the initiative.

On Tuesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak presented a plan for an immediate ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The plan would require Israel and the Palestinian factions to accept an immediate ceasefire for a limited period, which would open safe passages for humanitarian aid to Gaza and give Egypt time to continue its efforts for a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire.

the development comes while authorities as well as people around the world have taken to the streets to condemn and call for an end to the Israeli attacks on Gaza, with some describing the killing of Palestinians as 'genocide' and 'holocaust'.

Since Israel unleashed its aerial and sea campaign against Gazans on December 27, at least 666 Palestinians have lost their lives and more than 2,950 others - most of whom are civilians - have been injured.

MP/MMN

Source Press TV

So Israel is offering the Gazans a 3hr ceasefire. 10minutes into that ceasefire gunshots were heard in parts of Gaza. Experts say that 3hrs isnt enough to distribute the aid that is being brought in because of the amount of checkpoints it has to go through. There is a shortage of medical supplies and doctors. The injured are being treated on hospital floors since they are overflowing. The generators are dying since there are shortages of fuel. Walahi if I was qualified in any medical way I would go to Gaza and help them. All we can do now is protest, donate, draft letters, raise awareness and most important of all make dua. Israel might be the 4th largest super power but Allah 'aza wa jal is mightier. They should remember that God's court has no appeal and they will be accounatble for the atrocities they are inflicting on these poor civilians. Majority of those dead are children and women.

In their quest to wipe Hamas Israel has created millions of Hamas across the world.

Be patient people of Gaza, verily Allah is with the patient!