*Jenin: PLC member Shami injured by bullets of unknown assailants (Al Ayyam)
*Syria: opposition rejects unity government and demands international move to halt massacres (Al Ayyam)
*The President receives Norwegian envoy to the peace process (Al Ayyam)
*Prisoner Society: Ramleh prison wardens break into the rooms of Al Rikhawi and Barq (Al Ayyam)
*Meshaal visits wife of Dweik in hospital in Amman; blessed marriage of the Tamimi couple (Al Quds)
*The President congratulates Mursi on the presidency (Al Quds)
*Israeli sources to the Sunday Times: The Russians played a major role in shooting down Turkish fighter plane (Al Quds)
*The Israeli army hands four house demolition orders to homes and a pool in Beit Ummar (Al Quds)
*Netanyahu: Today proves that Shamir’s opinion of the Arabs was true (Al Hayat Al Jadida)
*Al Agha calls for supporting UNRWA ((Al Hayat Al Jadida))
*Barak: two-state solution has begun to diminish; we will not leave the decision to strike Iran up to America (Al Hayat Al Jadida)
*Fatah: national unity is an existential issue and Hamas is the obstructer (Al Hayat Al Jadida)
*Financial Times: Shamir will be remembered as a terrorist who aborted efforts to reach peace (Al Hayat Al Jadida)

Al-Quds: 1) Ramallah : Izzedin Qassam leader Ibrahim Shami before order issued by the Ofer Court sentencing him to 54 life sentences ; 2) Spain’s team celebrate a goal against Italy during the final match in the European 2012 championship which ended in Spain’s victory of 4-0
Al-Ayyam: 1) A building burns during shelling of Syrian forces of Homs day before yesterday; 2) Clashes between security forces and protesters in Ramallah    
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida:  1) The president during his meeting with a US-Israeli academic exchange delegation in Ramallah; 2) PLC member Shami on his hospital bed; 3) Prisoner Ibrahim Hamed at the Ofer court; 4) Spanish team during Euro Cup celebrations

West Bank: Israeli occupation forces handed orders to demolish four homes and one water pool in Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron, under the pretext they are located “inside the lands of the state of Israel”.

Gaza strip: Israeli warplanes shelled early Monday an empty area in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza strip.

**Director of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute: the PA is truly experiencing the worst financial crisis that could lead to its collapse**
Samir Abdullah: Director of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.
Q: What is the main reason behind the PA budget deficit?
The origin of this crisis lies in Oslo interim agreement that should have ended by 1999. It offered the PA very limited resources and simultaneously a full responsibly over the entire Palestinian people in the oPt. In terms of resources, the PA can receive according to this agreement less than 80 percent of the taxes that were collected from Palestinian citizens, let alone the tax clearance mechanism that allows a certain cut of the tax revenues to the Israeli treasury. Furthermore, the PA controls only 40 percent of the resources of the West Bank area whereas the remaining 60 percent continue to be under Israeli control and because of this limited control over resources economic development and subsequently increasing revenues were less possible.
Moreover, Israel totally controls water sources and completely excludes Jerusalem that constitutes 15 percent of the Palestinian economy.
In other words, there is a gap between the resources available to the PA and the responsibilities that were transferred to its treatment.
This economic crisis has recently exacerbated due to slow and less payment from the donors that used to fill this gap. Additionally, the Israeli measures on ground have poisoned the investment climate thereby compelling the private sector to cease investments.
Q: According to press sources, the finance minister will present a plan to the government tomorrow to deal with the current economic crisis mainly through additional loans from banks. Do you think this is the right solution?
The debts of the PA have been accumulating since the end of 2010 and the level of loans from banks reached an unprecedented degree. The Monetary Authority said it reached the maximum degree that cannot be exceeded.
The finance ministry is dealing with a very difficult situation and is trying to reprioritize its concerns. With the limited available resources it has, it is seeking within the few coming weeks and before the Ramadan month to pay part of its financial obligations an delay other payments. This is the possible thing to do by the finance ministry in the meantime. Nevertheless, there could be a plan to contact Arab states to explain and highlight to them the financial situation that would truly lead to the collapse of the PA.    

**Israeli company “Beit Orot” offers housing units for sale inside the Mount of Olives**
Jamal Amr: An Expert in Settlement Affairs.
Q: Would you give us more details about this Judaization plan in Jerusalem?
This plan is too dangerous. The project is located in a very beautiful area that could be even categorized as the most attractive spot outside the walls of Jerusalem city. From a 300-meter height hill, it overlooks the fascinating Old City.  It is exactly located near the “al-Maqased” hospital in “a-Sowanneh neighborhood.
Settlement related associations, namely “Beit Orot” company, purchased this plot of land or more correctly a leaked plot of land from the Armenian monastery- an Armenian monk actually committed this unforgettable crime before he fled abroad.   Four buildings were constructed on this land and apartments are now being offered for sale. However, I believe that Jerusalemites will endure the impacts of this more seriously after settlers come to live on this land.

**The anti-Wall and anti-settlements Campaign in Beit Ummar calls for the intervention of PA against the Israeli occupation measures**
Yousef Abu Mariyyah: Spokesperson of the anti-Wall and anti-Settlements Campaign in Beit Ummar.
Q: Would you tell us about the recent orders that Israeli occupation forces handed to residents of Beit Ummar?
Two weeks ago, Israeli occupation forces handed orders to demolish four homes and one water pool. Since 2000, demolition orders were issued against over 35 homes that are at 700-meter proximity from “Karmi Tzur” settlement. Therefore, the Israeli occupation is seeking to displace the residents with the purpose of expanding this settlement.
Regretfully, no one Palestinian official has taken responsibility to deal with this situation in support of the poor and helpless residents. Those residents have spent all of their scarce savings to build a home that could protect them from the extremely cold winter and the very hot summer.  
Q: Are you saying there is no official Palestinian follow up to what is happening in Beit Ummar?
Absolutely right, this is happening despite of the daily practices by the Israeli occupation against the residents of in Beit Ummar. Settlement expansions “Karmi Tzur” are ongoing without any deterring force at the time Palestinians homes that were built fifty years ago are being destroyed very easily. What about all signed agreements (with Israel)? Why the Palestinian people should commit alone to these agreements? Why Israelis who came from Europe have the right to grab indigenous people`s lands and build homes on them?  People here are too frustrated and helpless. We call on the PA to come and assist us.  

**The CEC will start tomorrow updating the voter registry in Gaza**
Jamil al-Khaledi: Regional Executive Director in the Central Election Committee.
Q:  Will you start the updating voter registry in the Gaza strip tomorrow?
Yes, we will start the updating of the voter registry tomorrow July 3 until July 14. For this purpose, the chairman of the CEC will hold a press conference will be held tomorrow to announce the launch of this process.
There will be 256 registration centers in five electoral constituencies in addition to a registration tent in the center of Gaza city.

When Morsi humiliated Netanyahu
“Al-Quds Al-Arabi” Editorial (http://www.alquds.co.uk/index.asp?fname=data\2012\07\07-01\01qpt999.htm&arc=data\2012\07\07-01\01qpt999.htm)

Israeli officials are dreaded and feared by possible occurrence of a radical transformation in the position of Egypt towards the Camp David treaty, and the security ties with their country after Dr. Muhammad Morsi, the candidate of the “Muslim Brotherhood”, won the presidential elections.

These Israeli fears appear to be justifiable as a new reality has started to be reflected on ground less than two days since Morsi was sworn in for three times, the most outstanding of which was at the Tahrir Square.

Yesterday, Israeli press uncovered that Dr. Morsi refused to receive a phone call from the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who wanted to congratulate him on winning the presidency of Egypt. Moreover, the same press sources indicated that Dr. Morsi rejected mediation of the US administration on this concern.    

Netanyahu, who is very known by his arrogance, hauteur and insolent treatment of Egyptian officials- the last of whom was the ousted president Husni Mubarak- was forced to overcome his wounded pride and accept to only send a written message to the new Egyptian president in which he expressed hope for maintaining the Camp David treaty as it benefits both countries, and for continuous cooperation between Egypt and Israeli in all areas.

The stances that were conveyed by the Egyptian president demonstrate the beginning of a comprehensive strategic change in the “new Egypt”, particularly towards the Arab-Israeli conflict after forty years of cold peace that fed to the interest of Israel, its security and stability.  

Dr. Morsi refused to talk with Netanyahu because he was elected by the people. His hands and his pocket are clean and he derives his power from ninety million Egyptians, a strong military establishment and a civil heritage that extends along over eight centuries at the time Netanyahu is the prime minister of a state at the age of less than 64-year old and which has usurped others` rights and lands and maintains its existence through foreign support, primarily American and Western.

The new Egyptian president may not immediately pursue with modifying the Camp David treaty, which has been humiliating to Egypt, or decide to cancel it considering the many priorities he should concentrate on during his first days and even first years; first and foremost are the economic and security affairs. Still, he will definitely not accept Israeli humiliations, either in the form of a new aggression against the Gaza strip or penetrating the Egyptian sovereignty in Sinai.

The Israeli government has allocated NIS 15 billion (almost $4 billion) to reinforce its military presence at the border with Egypt, and there are assessments that Israel would increase its next military budget by almost 30 percent when realizing that commitment to the peace treaty according to the previous terms will not persist. Egypt is the only state in the region that could accomplish strategic balance with Israel, and it is the engine that could lead the Arabs to remove the Israeli injustice which has been practiced against Arabs and Muslims by humiliating five million Arabs and Muslims in occupied Palestine.

Dr. Morsi has asserted in all of his swearing in speeches that the era of subordination has come to end and that the freedom, the pride and the dignity of Egypt has been restored by virtue of the revolution. The message that was addressed to the Israelis and the Americans, first one was in his rejection to talk with Netanyahu and the second one in his vow to release Sheikh Abdel Rahman who is held in US custody, must have reached the two relevant parties.

Dr. Morsi, who was the chairman of the boycott of Zionism and anti-normalization committee will never given in his values and principles by talking with a racist and arrogant prime minister like Netanyahu and accept his congratulation.  

“Fatah” and “Hamas” and falsifying facts and data
By: Mamoun al-Husseini* http://alhayat.com/OpinionsDetails/415183

We should admit that the level of optimism the Palestinians have about reaching the aspired goals in the next round of national reconciliation talks between “Fatah” and “Hamas” is at the lowest, despite of accumulating steps and statements related to implementing the executive appendix of the “Doha Declaration” that the two movements inked last May. The legitimacy of this popular pessimism does not stem only from failed experiences that have contributed to consecrating the political, economic, geographical and societal split between the two parts of the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967, but they are also based on factors and realistic and objective data which is connected to the form and the substance of the affairs that were agreed upon, and the extent to which they encircle or at least tackle the core of the national problem.

In relation to the internal Palestinian aspect, we should remind, regardless of the negative obstructive signals to a possible kick off with the Hamas-Fatah understandings which can be reflected in mutual exchange of accusations on political arrests and imposition of restrictions on the civil society organizations, the next national agreement government will not deal with core affairs related to reviving the Palestinian national enterprise, reconstructing the PLO, formulating a political program which embodies the common national grounds, unifying the institutions, particularly the security, and agreeing on a strategy  to counter the threatening challenges and risks to the Palestinian cause. Its task will be basically limited to holding elections, which means that the same mines that previously blew up the national unity government that was firmed after Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006 will be ready to blow up the new government, even after overcoming the test of the formation and removing the obstacle of so-called “sovereign ministerial portfolios” and selecting deputies of the next prime minister.

More specifically, this government will find itself the next day following its formation in the face of a package of obligations, complexities and obstacles that will be hard to overcome through general nice rhetoric that cannot address the real problems, the most important of which is the political program which will continue to be a disputed matter and subject to different interpretations, mainly in light of contradictory statements  part of which says politics should remain under the responsibility of the PLO after restructuring it, others call for endorsing the National  Agreement Document (the prisoners` document) as the political program of the government, in addition to hints by PA officials on considering president Mahmoud Abbas`s program that is committed to the “option of peace” and the terms of the Quartet Committee as the net government`s program, a matter that is totally rejected by “Hamas” movement. Also, the security complexity, that the two sides did not dare to arouse because of fears of obstructing the formation of the government,  represents the biggest challenge for both sides that insist on marinating the status quo, and hence the new government will have to rely on security apparatuses with different allegiance, reference and goals.

As for the second aspect of the problem, the size and the impact of the Israeli complexity have clearly came to the surface in the executive appendix of the “Doha Declaration” by adding an item that deals with the possibility of not holding the elections and the need in such a case after six months to form a national unity government chaired by an independent personality, a scenario that many Palestinian circles foresee, although president Abbas stipulates the deceleration on the new government with issuing a presidential decree that sets a date for elections. This stems from an assessment that Israel could cease the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues, suspend the work of the government and ban ministers` movement through harassment and arrests. Nevertheless, this represents only one of the cosmetic aspects of the dilemma that entails accelerating geographical, demographic and political facts that could turn the internal Palestinian and Arab moves pertinent to the “ambiguous reconciliation” to “cooking stones” with no purpose but to waste time. This will appear to be true because amidst the noisy marketing of inconsumable optimism, one may disregard the transformation of the Palestinian cities and communities and the entire occupied West Bank into real enclaves encircled with big and medium size settlements and outposts which can be expanded and extended. Concurrently, the Judaization of occupied Jerusalem can be completed where the Palestinian population in both of its parts has shrunk to almost 38 percent of the total population.

One a parallel level, there is a call by the Israeli PM Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak to establishment a demilitarized state that should recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”, and to unilaterally withdraw from parts of the West Bank, let alone the recent statements by deputy Israeli PM Moshe Yaalon, a close associate of Netanyahu, about the “two-state” solution as a “self deception”.

After encircling the Palestinian communities and the subordination of most of the West Bank areas under the settlers` control and their undeclared “state”, a new scene might appear on ground consisting of a strong state to the settlers with vast geographical areas alongside weak and dismembered Palestinian enclaves that live on foreign assistances and grants, thereby opening the door wide to a new equation that could reproduce old plans related to reviving the so-called “Jordanian option” with a key addition that says that the natural place for establishing a Palestinian state is in the Gaza strip that could be extended at the eastern front at the expense of the Egyptian territories in Sinai peninsula.

• A Palestinian writer

Those Damn Palestinians
By: Sam Bahour* (http://www.amin.org/articles.php?t=ENews&id=3912)
        
Those damn Palestinians. They refuse to sit still. They just don’t get it. They are unable to fathom their reality. The more outrageous their situation becomes, the more human they become. When all the powers-to-be thought that they had sufficiently battered (or bought) Palestinians into full political submission, Palestinians embarked on yet another act of terrorism—the terror of dance, music, song, and cultural celebration.
This is not just any act of humanity; it is one of global dimensions. The world had better take note.
To begin with, Israel dispossessed Palestinians of 78% of their homeland and created the world’s largest refugee population. Any Palestinian who remained in Israel was involuntarily made an Israeli citizen and the state created a system of structural discrimination, much worse than that against black South Africans before the end of Apartheid.
As if that was not enough, Israel militarily occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine and subjugated the rest of the Palestinians - those in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip - to a state of prolonged disenfranchisement. As if that was not enough, Israel then embarked on an aggressive illegal settlement enterprise, one that now numbers over 500,000 Jewish-only settlers scattered throughout the militarily occupied territory.
And to add insult to injury, 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza were besieged and made to live as if in the Dark Ages. Palestinian homes in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank are regularly demolished; Palestinians are imprisoned administratively without charge; Palestinian economic resources are micro-managed by Israel; an illegal Separation Wall, higher and longer than the infamous Berlin Wall, was built on occupied lands; and the list goes on and on.
What do Israel and the international community get in return for their systematic plundering of Palestinian livelihood? A stubborn, collective Palestinian memory which refuses to cower under the weight of historical injustice. If this was merely a memory it would not be a big deal, but those damn Palestinians insist on keeping that memory alive via the performing arts, music, song, dance, theater, circus, festivals, and the like.
Even Palestinians engaged in performing arts would not be so intolerable if that were the extent of their activity, but it is not; those damn Palestinians insist on sharing their cultural resistance with artists around the globe and repeatedly inviting other communities to join in solidarity.
Case in point
Every year now, since 1993, the Popular Arts Centre, a Palestinian organization that promotes professional performing arts, organizes an event known as the Palestine International Festival for Dance and Music. This year, performances are scheduled over five days, from July 4th through July 9th. The festival is loaded with meaning.
For starters, the celebration is distributed among four Palestinian cities: Ramallah, Qalqilya, Nablus, and Nazareth. The inclusion of Nazareth, a Palestinian city inside Israel, is a conscious decision on the part of the organizers: a form of resistance to the cultural siege and systematic isolation imposed by the Israeli Apartheid system on those of us living under direct military occupation (in the West Bank and Gaza), and those of our brethren inside Israel, whom most Palestinians under occupation are unable to physically reach. The message is clear. We are one people and refuse to allow a forced military separation to keep us apart.
Then, there is the festival's theme this year—“learning,” in the non-conventional sense. The theme is meant to showcase the importance of popular education as developed by the late and renowned Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire. All the festival activities this time around have been consciously designed as forms of Freirean popular education, in the service of Palestinian liberation.
American theologian Richard Shaull, drawing on the works of Paulo Freire, has written:
“There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Those damn Palestinians. They keep seeking out and learning from examples from around the world instead of accepting their predicament of dispossession.
A glance at the festival’s agenda for 2012 leaves one in awe at the breadth of global solidarity. In addition to the cream-of-the-crop of Palestinian dance troupes, Irish, Chinese, and Egyptian performers are all participating. The festival will open with the Irish musical stage show, “Rhythm of the Dance,” a two-hour dance and music extravaganza of Irish talent depicting the epic journey of the Irish Celts throughout history. The festival’s closing performance, “One Hundred Hands,” will be performed by the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe.
This year’s Palestine International Festival for Dance and Music will mobilize over 200 volunteers and tap an unprecedented level of support from Palestinian private sector sponsors and donors. UNICEF and the Consulate of Sweden are also supporting the festival.
More of the same
And, as I close this article, I just received a call from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp. I’m being asked to participate in the events of the upcoming Freedom Bus Tour, a nine day procession across the West Bank which will visit 14 communities to engage them in expressing their oral history, through an interactive theater technique termed Playback Theater.
The truth is, you see, that we damn Palestinians do get it. We understand very well that justice will ultimately prevail. We have studied world history closely and know that no people in struggle have lived under military occupation forever and no people who maintain a living collective memory will remain refugees forever. We get it—discrimination, in all its shapes and forms, is destined to crumble at the feet of all those who actively support it, fund it, or turn a blind eye to it.
Now, off to celebrate our humanity. Please join us.

* Sam Bahour is a management consultant and entrepreneur living in Ramallah; he is co-editor of “Homeland: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians,” and blogs at epalestine.blogspot.com. - [email protected]