1.
Al-Birwa
–
Al-Birwa, was a Palestinian Arab village, located 10.5 kilometers east of Acre. In 1945, it had population of 1,460, of whom the majority were Muslims and its total land area consisted of 13,542 dunams. The village was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, al-Birwa was mentioned in the mid-11th century CE by the Persian geographer Nasir Khusraw and was known to the Crusaders as Broet. The village came under Mamluk rule in the late 13th century, and in the early 16th century, it was conquered by the Ottomans, travelers reports from the late 19th century documented that al-Birwa had a mosque, a church, and an elementary school for boys. During British Mandate rule in Palestine, al-Birwa was home to power brokers. Al-Birwa became a center of operations during the 1936–1939 revolt against British rule. By the 1940s, many of the villages agrarian inhabitants lost their lands due to debt, however, the majority of the residents—men and women—continued to engage in farming, selling their olives, grains and other crops in the markets of Acre. Al-Birwa was captured by the Israelis in early June 1948, after which its local militia recaptured the village, al-Birwa was then permanently occupied by the Israelis in late June. Afterward, its inhabitants, including future Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the Jewish communities of Yasur and Ahihud were established on al-Birwas lands in 1949 and 1950, respectively. Al-Birwa was mentioned in 1047 CE, during Fatimid rule, when it was visited by the Persian geographer and he describes it as lying between Acre and Damun, and reports having visited what he described as the tombs of Simeon and Esau there. The Crusaders wrested control of Palestine from the Fatimids in 1099 and they referred to al-Birwa as Broet. In 1253, John Aleman, the Crusader lord of Caesarea, sold al-Birwa, along several other villages. Al-Birwa was mentioned as part of the Acre-based Crusaders domain in the 1283 hudna with the Mamluks under Sultan al-Mansur Qalawun, in the late 13th century, the Mamluks defeated and conquered the last Crusader outposts along Palestines northern coastline. Al-Birwa came under Ottoman rule in 1517, along all of Palestine. In 1596, al-Birwa was a village in the Akka Nahiya. The village paid taxes on wheat, barley, fruit, beehives, according to Ottoman tax registers, al-Birwa had 121 residents in 1596. A map from Napoleons invasion of 1799 by French cartographer Pierre Jacotin depicted al-Birwa as Beroweh, in the late 19th century, al-Birwa grew to be a large village, with a well in its southern area. To the north lay beautiful olive-groves and fruitful wheatfields, as they were described by one Western traveller to the region in the mid-19th century, american biblical scholar Edward Robinson visited al-Birwa in 1852 and noted that it was one of 18 villages in Palestine with an operating Christian church
Al-Birwa
–
al-Birwa from a distance, 1928
2.
British Mandate of Palestine
–
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948, further confusing the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. At the wars end the British and French set up a joint Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in what had been Ottoman Syria, the British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, the land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948. The land east of the Jordan, a region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz. The divergent tendencies regarding the nature and purpose of the mandate are visible already in the discussions concerning the name for this new entity. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called Southern Syria in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State. During the British Mandate period the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs, following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist recent cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, following the arrival of the British, Muslim-Christian Associations were established in all the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem and its main platforms were a call for representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist Commission was formed in March 1918 and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine, on 19 April 1920, elections were held for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Zionist Commission received official recognition in 1922 as representative of the Palestinian Jewish community, Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organizations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favor Zionism, when Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist. As Grand Mufti, as well as the influential positions that he held during this period. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had created by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, in addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine
British Mandate of Palestine
–
Flag
British Mandate of Palestine
–
The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel. From left to right:
T. E. Lawrence,
Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal
Sir Geoffrey Salmond,
Sir Herbert Samuel,
Sir Wyndham Deedes and others.
British Mandate of Palestine
–
An Arab "protest gathering" in session, in the Rawdat el Maaref hall, 1929. From left to right: unknown -
Amin al-Husayni -
Musa al-Husayni -
Raghib al-Nashashibi - unknown
3.
Houston
–
Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the United States. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 2.239 million within an area of 667 square miles, it also is the largest city in the southern United States and the seat of Harris County. Located in Southeast Texas near the Gulf of Mexico, it is the city of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land. Houston was founded on August 28,1836, near the banks of Buffalo Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5,1837. The city was named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had commanded, the burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the citys population. Houstons economy has an industrial base in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics. Leading in health care sectors and building equipment, Houston has more Fortune 500 headquarters within its city limits than any city except for New York City. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled, the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse city in Texas and has described as the most diverse in the United States. It is home to cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has a visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District. In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, purchased 6,642 acres of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the general at the Battle of San Jacinto. The great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the slave trade. New Orleans was the center of trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved African Americans lived near the city before the Civil War, many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. Houston was granted incorporation on June 5,1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor, in the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas
Houston
–
Clockwise from top: Sam Houston monument,
Downtown Houston,
Houston Ship Channel,
The Galleria,
University of Houston, and the
Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center.
Houston
–
Sam Houston
Houston
–
Houston, c. 1873
Houston
–
Union Station, Houston, Texas (postcard, c. 1911)
4.
Palestinians
–
Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the worlds Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine, the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, the history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Palestinian was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs in a limited way until World War I, Modern Palestinian identity now encompasses the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period. Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before the international community. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the Syrians of Palestine or Palestinian-Syrians, an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians. Herodotus makes no distinction between the Jews and other inhabitants of Palestine, the Greek word reflects an ancient Eastern Mediterranean-Near Eastern word which was used either as a toponym or ethnonym. In Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati has been conjectured to refer to the Sea Peoples, among Semitic languages, Akkadian Palaštu is used of Philistia and its 4 city states. Biblical Hebrews cognate word Plištim, is usually translated Philistines, the Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest medieval Arab geographers. It appears to have used as an Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE. The Arabic newspaper Falasteen, published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, the first Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, was founded at the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in 1899. The JCT was intended to be the instrument of the Zionist Organization. On 27 February 1902, a subsidiary of this Trust called the Anglo-Palestine Company was established in London with the assistance of Zalman David Levontin and this Company was to become the future Bank Leumi. Following the 1948 establishment of Israel, the use and application of the terms Palestine and Palestinian by, for example, the English-language newspaper The Palestine Post, founded by Jews in 1932, changed its name in 1950 to The Jerusalem Post. Jews in Israel and the West Bank today generally identify as Israelis, Arab citizens of Israel identify themselves as Israeli and/or Palestinian and/or Arab. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether in Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian. Thus, the Jews of Palestine were/are also included, although limited only to the Jews who had resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion. The Charter also states that Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is a territorial unit. The although the timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement
Palestinians
Palestinians
–
A depiction of Syria and Palestine from CE 650 to 1500
Palestinians
–
UN stamp to commemorate the Palestinian struggle.
Palestinians
–
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, leader of the
Army of the Holy War in 1948.
5.
Arabic language
–
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
Arabic language
–
The Galland Manuscript of
One Thousand and One Nights, 14th century
Arabic language
–
al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic (
Naskh script)
Arabic language
–
Bilingual traffic sign in
Qatar.
Arabic language
–
Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.
6.
Garden of Eden
–
The Garden of Eden or often Paradise is the biblical garden of God, described most notably in the Book of Genesis chapters 2 and 3, and also in the Book of Ezekiel. The garden of God, not called Eden, is mentioned in Genesis 13, the Book of Zechariah and the Book of Psalms also refer to trees and water in relation to the temple without explicitly mentioning Eden. Traditionally, the derivation of the name Eden was from the Akkadian edinnu. Eden is now believed to be closely related to an Aramaic root word meaning fruitful. The Hebrew term is translated pleasure in Sarahs secret saying in Genesis 18,12, in the Hebrew Bible, Adam and Eve are depicted as walking around the Garden of Eden naked due to their innocence. Eden and its rivers may signify the real Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon and it may also represent the divine garden on Zion, and the mountain of God, which was also Jerusalem. The imagery of the Garden, with its serpent and cherubs, has compared to the images of the Solomonic Temple with its copper serpent. The second part of the Genesis creation narrative, Genesis, opens with Adonai Elohim creating the first man, the man was free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Last of all, the God made a woman from a rib of the man to be a companion the man, cherubim were placed east of the garden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep him away from the tree of life. Genesis lists four rivers in association with the garden of Eden, Pishon, Gihon, the Tigris, and it also refers to the land of Cush - translated/interpreted as Ethiopia, but thought by some to equate to Cossaea, a Greek name for the land of the Kassites. These lands lie north of Elam, immediately to the east of ancient Babylon, in Antiquities of the Jews, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus identifies the Pishon as what the Greeks called Ganges and the Geon as the Nile. According to Terje Stordalen, the Eden in Ezekiel appears to be located in Lebanon. According to the Bible, the location of Eden is described in the Book of Genesis, chapter 2, verse 10-14, A river flowed from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided to make four streams. The first is named the Pishon, and this winds all through the land of Havilah where there is gold, the gold of this country is pure, bdellium and cornelian stone are found there. The second river is named the Gihon, and this winds all through the land of Cush, the third river is named the Tigris, and this flows to the east of Ashur. The fourth river is the Euphrates, the city of Dilmun in the Sumerian mythological story of Enki and Ninhursag is a paradisaical abode of the immortals, where sickness and death were unknown. In this painting, only the action takes place there identifies the setting as distinct from the Garden of the Hesperides. The Persian term paradise, meaning a garden or hunting-park
Garden of Eden
–
The Garden of Eden as depicted in the first or left panel of
Bosch 's
The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych. The panel includes many imagined and exotic
African animals.
Garden of Eden
–
Expulsion from Paradise, painting by
James Jacques Joseph Tissot
Garden of Eden
–
The Expulsion illustrated in the English
Caedmon manuscript, c. 1000 CE
Garden of Eden
–
Carte de la Situation du Paradis Terrestre, Et des Pais Habitez par les Patriarches Dressee pour bien entendre l'Histoire Sainte, Par Messire Pierre Daniel Huet
7.
Galilee
–
Al-Jalīl) is a region in northern Israel. The term Galilee traditionally refers to the part and divided into Upper Galilee. By this definition it overlaps with much of the administrative Northern District of the country, the regions Israelite name is from the Hebrew root galil, an ultimately unique word for district, and usually circle. The Hebrew form used in Isaiah 8,23 is in the state, glil hagoyim, meaning Galilee of the Nations. The region in turn gave rise to the English name for the Sea of Galilee referred to as such in many languages including ancient Arabic and these are the three names used in originally internal Jewish-authored literature rather than the Sea of Galilee. However, Jews did use the Galilee to refer to the whole region, most of Galilee consists of rocky terrain, at heights of between 500 and 700 m. Several high mountains are in the region, including Mount Tabor and Mount Meron, as a result of this climate, flora and wildlife thrive in the region, while many birds annually migrate from colder climates to Africa and back through the Hula–Jordan corridor. According to the Bible, Galilee was named by the Israelites and was the region of Naphthali and Dan. However, Dan was dispersed among the people rather than isolated to the lands of Dan, as the Tribe of Dan was the hereditary local law enforcement. Normally, Galilee is just referred to as Naphthali, hiram, to reciprocate previous gifts given to David, accepted the upland plain among the mountains of Naphtali and renamed it the land of Cabul for a time. After Judea became a Roman province in 6, C. E. Galilee briefly became a part of it, the Galilee region was presumably the home of Jesus during at least 30 years of his life. Much of the first three Gospels of the New Testament give an account of Jesus public ministry in this province, particularly in the towns of Nazareth, Galilee is also cited as the place where Jesus performed many public miracles, including curing a blind man. After the death of Jesus, some accounts suggest his disciples returned to Galilee, many are cited for their large number of students and followers throughout the Jewish people among the common people. According to the Talmud, one of the most important founders of the modern Jewish faith, simeon bar Yochai, one of the most famed of all the Tannaim, hid from the Romans in the Galilee, and dug tunnels there to hide. Many miracles are ascribed to him during his Galilean period after escaping Judea proper, in medieval Hebrew legend, he may have written the Zohar while there. Eastern Galilee retained a Jewish majority until the seventh century, after the Arab caliphate took control of the region in 638, it became part of Jund al-Urdunn. Its major towns were Tiberias, Baysan, Acre, Saffuriya, the Shia Fatimids conquered the region in the 10th century, a breakaway sect, venerating the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, formed the Druze religion, centered in Mount Lebanon and partially Galilee. During the Crusades, Galilee was organized into the Principality of Galilee, the Jewish population of Galilee increased significantly following their expulsion from Spain and welcome from the Ottoman Empire
Galilee
–
An
orchard in
Upper Galilee
Galilee
–
Keshet Cave (Rainbow Cave or Cave of the Arch), a
natural arch on the ridge north of
Nahal Betzet, Galilee
Galilee
–
Map of Galilee, circa 50 CE
Galilee
–
Sea of Galilee as seen from the
Moshava Kinneret
8.
Lebanon
–
Lebanon, officially known as the Lebanese Republic, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, Lebanons location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. At just 10,452 km2, it is the smallest recognized country on the entire mainland Asian continent, the earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than seven thousand years, predating recorded history. Lebanon was the home of the Canaanites/Phoenicians and their kingdoms, a culture that flourished for over a thousand years. In 64 BC, the region came under the rule of the Roman Empire, in the Mount Lebanon range a monastic tradition known as the Maronite Church was established. As the Arab Muslims conquered the region, the Maronites held onto their religion, however, a new religious group, the Druze, established themselves in Mount Lebanon as well, generating a religious divide that has lasted for centuries. During the Crusades, the Maronites re-established contact with the Roman Catholic Church, the ties they established with the Latins have influenced the region into the modern era. The region eventually was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918, following the collapse of the empire after World War I, the five provinces that constitute modern Lebanon came under the French Mandate of Lebanon. The French expanded the borders of the Mount Lebanon Governorate, which was populated by Maronites and Druze. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, establishing confessionalism, a unique, foreign troops withdrew completely from Lebanon on 31 December 1946. Lebanon has been a member of the Organisation internationale de la francophonie since 1973, despite its small size, the country has developed a well-known culture and has been highly influential in the Arab world. Before the Lebanese Civil War, the experienced a period of relative calm and renowned prosperity, driven by tourism, agriculture, commerce. At the end of the war, there were efforts to revive the economy. In spite of troubles, Lebanon has the highest Human Development Index and GDP per capita in the Arab world. The name of Mount Lebanon originates from the Phoenician root lbn meaning white, occurrences of the name have been found in different Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of Ebla, and three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The name is recorded in Ancient Egyptian as Rmnn, where R stood for Canaanite L, the name occurs nearly 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, as לְבָנוֹן. The borders of contemporary Lebanon are a product of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 and its territory was the core of the Bronze Age Phoenician city-states. After the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Levant, it was part of the Rashidun, Umyayad, Abbasid Seljuk, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Greater Lebanon fell under French mandate in 1920, and gained independence under president Bechara El Khoury in 1943
Lebanon
–
The
Fall of Tripoli to the Egyptian
Mamluks and destruction of the Crusader state, the County of Tripoli, 1289
Lebanon
–
Flag
Lebanon
–
Fakhreddine II Palace, 17th century
Lebanon
–
1862 map drawn by the French expedition of
Beaufort d'Hautpoul, later used as a template for the 1920 borders of
Greater Lebanon.
9.
Jezzin
–
Jezzine is a town in Lebanon, located 22 km from Sidon and 40 km south of Beirut. It is the capital of Jezzine District, surrounded by mountain peaks, pine forests, and at an average altitude of 950 m, it is the main summer resort and tourist destination of South Lebanon. The town is famous in Lebanon for its production of handmade, traditional cutlery. The inhabitants of Jezzine are mainly Maronites or Melkites, the town is located on the slopes of Tumat Niha and is surrounded with pine forests, vineyards and orchards. From the top of the rocky promontory known as al Shir. Festivals The Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is celebrated on August 15 of each year with grand religious, the Jezzine Summer Festival where Lebanons top pop artists perform attracts hundreds of people each summer. Libraries The Jezzine Public Library was built in 1960 and underwent extensive refurbishment, theatres Empire Jezzine, the local movie theatre plays the latest Hollywood and Lebanese film hits. Agriculture The production of nuts is the main agriculture product of Bkassine. Handcrafts Jezzine is internationally renowned for its knives and other cutlery, made of inlaid mosaics. The unique cutlery has been presented as gifts to all over the world as a unique memento of Lebanon. The first family who produced this cutlery is the el Haddad family, the latest, master of this art, is Samir Haddad, who died 28 January 2015 at the age of 84. He was praised for his skills and art by many people, tourism Jezzine is South Lebanons primary summer resort. It is rich in beauty, featuring pine-forested valleys and mountain summits, ponds. The town is known as the “City of Falls” because of its famous waterfalls, at the entrance of Jezzine, there is Saydet Jezzine or Saydet el-Maabour shrine, inside it lies the statue of the Virgin. In 1898, an important passageway connecting Jezzine with the coastal cities, in 1955, the Virgin Statue was ascended during religions celebrations that occur on August 15, the day of the Virgins Ascension. On this occasion, the go around the town till they reach the Virgins Statue amidst prayers. The town overlooks a cliff of 40 meters high, at its sides, there are café houses and restaurants overlooking a wonderful landscape of Wadi Jezzine, which in turn overlooks green fields. In Jezzine, there are churches that were more than 200 years ago
Jezzin
–
Jezzine جزين
10.
Damour
–
Damour is a Lebanese Christian town that is 24 km south of Beirut, part of Greater Beirut. The name of the town is derived from the name of the Phoenician god Damoros who symbolized immortality, the city is located in one of the few flat areas of the Lebanese coast. It is built to the north of the river, the ancient Tamyrus and it is surrounded by plantations of bananas and vegetable crops. It has an area of 10.1 km2, the Beirut-Tyre Highway separates the plantations. Now dismantled, the track is a stopover, now, there exist 6 churches in Damour, of which Notre-Dame de Damour and St Élias are the biggest. We also find three other chapels, including Sainte Thècle, St Michel, which was the first church in Damour, St Maroun under reconstruction and these 6 churches are all Maronite Churches. Before the Lebanese Civil War, Damour had another Catholic Church, because Damour is one of the few cities of the Lebanese coast having a sand beach, and since it is ten minutes from Beirut, Damour attracts tourists and especially water sports enthusiasts. Thus several restaurants, coffees and snacks are located along the beach, there are also a few restaurants at the edges of the Damour river. Emir Fakhreddine the Great had a great interest in Damour, in the 19th century, Damour was the a flourishing center of the Chouf region. Its plain was then planted with mulberry and had twelve large manufacturing companies, ten thousand workers and technicians worked in the natural silk industry. The city has a fascination for the Lebanese worker and attracts the largest majority of the natives in the Sahel region. During the last centuries, Damour was located on the axis of fighting. In 1302, after the mamelouks took Arwad Island, on 8 June the same year, the Cypriots landed on the Damour River. A battle took place between the Emir Fakhr al - Din Abdel - Hamid bin Jamaluddin Altnokhi, his brother the Emir Shams al - Din Abdullah accompanied by an army of Muslims against the Cypriot, the battle was won by Crusaders. Fakhr Din Emir was killed, while his brother Shams al - Din fell hostage and he was released after five days for a ransom of three thousand dinars tyriens. In May 1860, Druze forces committed a massacre of the people, during the nights of the first world war, inhabitants met the armoured French cruiser Jeanne dArc sailors and received medicines, food and other needed supplies. In 1941, Damour was the French administrative capital, the city being a strategic crossing point on the road to Beirut,21 July 1941, was the place of one of the battles that affected Lebanon during World War II Syria-Lebanon Campaign. Australian troops, progressing towards the North along the coast, took Damour, held by the French Foreign Legion, a cease-fire was concluded at the end of the battle
Damour
–
Commemorative plate for the seizure of Damour by the Australians in 1941, installed in
Nahr al-Kalb to the north of
Beirut.
11.
Akko
–
Acre is a city in the northern coastal plain region of the Northern District, Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. The city occupies an important location, as it sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, traditionally linking the waterways and this location helped it become one of the oldest cities in the world, continuously inhabited since the Middle Bronze Age some 4000 years ago. Acre is the holiest city of the Baháí Faith, and as such receives many Bahai pilgrims, in 2015 the population was 47,675. Acre is a city, that includes Jews, Muslims, Christians. The mayor is Shimon Lankri, who was reelected in 2011, Acres etymology is a matter of controversy, though most likely deriving from the early Canaanite language. According to Biblical tradition, the name is derived from Canaanite Adco, meaning a border, the city was known as Ptolemais during the Hellenistic and Roman-Byzantine periods. During the Crusades it was known as St. John dAcre after the Knights Hospitaller, Acre is therefore counted among the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the region. Egyptian sources seem to be mentioning Acre, starting possibly with execration texts from ca.1800 BCE, the name Aak, which appears on the tribute lists of Thutmose III, may be a reference to Acre. The Amarna letters also mention a place named Akka, as well as the Execration texts, First settlement at the site of Ancient Acre appears to have been in the Early Bronze Age, or about 3000 BC. In the Hebrew Bible, Akko is one of the places from which the Israelites did not drive out the Canaanites and it is later described in the territory of the tribe of Asher and according to Josephus, was ruled by one of Solomons provincial governors. Throughout Israelite rule, it was politically and culturally affiliated with Phoenicia, around 725 BC, Akko joined Sidon and Tyre in a revolt against Shalmaneser V. Greek historians refer to the city as Ake, meaning cure, according to the Greek myth, Heracles found curative herbs here to heal his wounds. Strabo refers to the city as once a rendezvous for the Persians in their expeditions against Egypt, about 165 BC Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles in Galilee, and drove them into Ptolemais. About 153 BC Alexander Balas, son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, contesting the Seleucid crown with Demetrius, seized the city, which opened its gates to him. Demetrius offered many bribes to the Maccabees to obtain Jewish support against his rival, including the revenues of Ptolemais for the benefit of the Temple in Jerusalem, Jonathan Apphus threw in his lot with Alexander and in 150 BC he was received by him with great honour in Ptolemais. Some years later, however, Tryphon, an officer of the Seleucid Empire, the city was captured by Alexander Jannaeus, Cleopatra and Tigranes the Great. Here Herod the Great built a gymnasium, the Christian Acts of the Apostles reports that Luke the Evangelist, Paul the Apostle and their companions spent a day in Ptolemais with the Christian brethren there. A Roman colonia was established at the city, Colonia Claudii Cæsaris, the Romans enlarged the port and the city, that flourished for six centuries even as a Christian center
Akko
–
עַכּוֹ
Akko
–
Ottoman
aqueduct to Acre at
Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot
Akko
–
Remains of Crusader harbor
Akko
–
UNESCO World Heritage Site
12.
Deir al-Asad
–
Deir al-Asad is an Arab town in the Galilee region of Israel, near Karmiel. In 2003, the municipality of Deir al-Asad merged with Majd al-Krum, however, it was reinstated in 2008 after Shaghur was dissolved. In 2015 it had a population of 11,716, Deir al-Asad means the lions monastery in Arabic. The village was named after a leader In the Crusader era, upon arrival of the Ottoman Turks, the Christians were expelled by Sultan Suleiman I and their descendants later founded the nearby settlement of Biina. The lands of the original Christian settlement and the monastery were given by the Sultan to the sheikh Al-Asad A-Zaffah from Safed and the latter founded the current village. In the Palestine Exploration Funds Survey of Western Palestine in 1881, Deir al-Asad was described as a village of 600 Muslims and it was surrounded by olive-trees and arable land, with a spring nearby. By 1945, Deir el Asad had 1,100 inhabitants and they owned a total of 8,366 dunams of land, while 7 dunams were public. 1,322 dunams were plantations and irrigable land,1,340 used for cereals, the town is mostly populated by the Asadi, Dabbah and Musa families. Before 1962 the village of Deir al-Asad was self-sufficient in food and it produced enough meat, fruit, wheat and vegetables for itself and sold the surplus in Acre or Nazareth. In 1962 its land in the Majd al-Kurum valley was confiscated for the Karmiel town project, only the hill land to the north, consisting mainly of olive groves, remained. This confiscation of land ruined the economy of Deir al-Asad, today only 10% of the labour force can work on the land, over 80% have to commute daily to the factories of Haifa or work as labourers on Jewish farms. The large remains of a Crusader times church and abbey was noted by Guérin. Guérin noted after his 1875 visit that, Constructed of small stones very regularly cut and its windows were narrow, and fashioned like actual loopholes, and several details of its architecture show a knowledge of art. Unfortunately the Druses have half demolished it, and what they have spared has been converted into a stable, denys Pringle named it The abbey Church of St. George, and dated it do the 12th century. The mosque and tomb of al-Assad al-Safadi is a structure, situated about 50 meters south of the Crusader abbey. The smaller chamber, to the north, holds the tomb of al-Assad al-Safadi, while the southern, to the east there is a courtyard. Ahmed Dabbah Welcome To Dayr al-Asad Survey of Western Palestine, Map 3, IAA, Wikimedia commons
Deir al-Asad
–
View of Deir al-Asad, 2007
13.
Kfar Yasif
–
Kafr Yasif is an Arab town in the Northern District of Israel. It is located 11 kilometers northeast of the city of Acre, the population of Kafr Yasif is largely Christian with a significant Muslim minority, and a small Druze community. Many ancient remains have been excavated at Kafr Yasif, including floors, Corinthian columns. Kafr Yasif appears in the writings of the Roman Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, during the Crusader -era in Palestine, it was known as Cafresi, Cafriasif, or Cafriasim. In 1193, Queen Isabella I and her spouse Henry of Champagne granted the casale of Kafr Yasif to prior Heinrich of the Teutonic Knights, in the 13th century it was inhabited by Christians and paid tithes to the Bishop of Acre. In 1257 Kafr Yasif appears in a document relating to a disagreement between the Bishop of Acre and the Teutonic Knights about its income, at one point it was a casale of the Knights Hospitallers. It was described as part of the domain of the Crusaders during the hudna between the Crusaders based in Acre and the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Qalawun in 1283, no Crusader remains have yet been identified in the village. During Ottoman rule, Kafr Yasif primarily grew olives and cotton, Ottoman tax records from 1596 indicated that Kafr Yasif had a population of 58 Muslim households, seven Muslim bachelors and 19 Jewish households. A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleons invasion of 1799 showed the place, in 1838, Kafr Yasif was classified as having a Greek Orthodox Christian majority with Muslim and Druze minorites. In 1880, the village had a population of about 600, a 17th-century church was located in the village and it contained a number of pictures provided by Russia. The village contained a stone-cut well stone reservoirs and troughs, according to the Palestine Exploration Funds Survey of Western Palestine, Kafr Yasif was a stone-built village surrounded by olive groves and arable land, and provided with water from cisterns. The population consisted of 300 Christians, who worshiped at the Greek Orthodox chapel, in the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities Kufr Yasif had a population of 870 residents,172 Muslims,665 Christians and 33 Druze. On 1 December 1925 Kafr Yasif became one of the few Arab villages in the Galilee to receive local council status during the British mandate period, Yani Kustandi Yani served as mayor from 1933 to 1948. Kafr Yasifs population was recorded as 1,057 in the 1931 census of Palestine. In April 1938, during the Arab revolt in Palestine, a group of Palestinian Arab rebels planted a mine on the road near Kafr Yasif which blew up a British military vehicle, killing nine soldiers. The British Army proceeded to start burning Kafr Yasif in retaliation, eight mostly civilian men were killed in Kuwaykat afterward. When some of Kuwaykats residents came to observe the destruction in Kafr Yasif and it was later discovered the attackers were not from Kafr Yasif. In compensation, the town was rebuilt with a school and a city hall which are still in use, according to the Anglican Chaplain, The people at Kafr Yasif were very eager to point out that the troops who destroyed their houses were not English but Irish
Kfar Yasif
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Skyline of Kafr Yasif, 2010
Kfar Yasif
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A street scene in Kafr Yasif, 2006
Kfar Yasif
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A local Greek Orthodox priest in Kafr Yasif, 1950
14.
Judeide-Makr
–
Jadeidi-Makr or Makr-Jadeidi is an Arab local council formed by the merger of the two Arab towns of Makr and Jadeidi in 1990. It is located a few kilometers east of the city of Acre in the Northern District, in 2015 its population was 20,078. The inhabitants are 90% Muslim with 10% Christian, however, it is also possible that Makr Harsin in the original text referred to separate locations Makr and Harsini, the latter unidentified. Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, Makr appeared in the census of 1596, located in the nahiya of Acre, the population was 22 households and 3 bachelors, all Muslim. They paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, fruit trees, cotton, occasional revenues, goats and beehives, a map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleons invasion of 1799 showed both places, named as Makr and Sedid. In 1875 Victor Guérin visited Makr, and found it to have 350 inhabitants, half Muslim and he further noted that In and about El Mekr are broken columns, the fragment of an ancient bas-relief, a little sarcophagus in terra cotta, and several sepulchral caves. He found Jadeidi to have 350 inhabitants. with many cisterns for water to drink from. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities Jadeidi had a population of 204 residents,108 Muslims and 96 Christians, of the Christians,51 were Orthodox and 45 Greek Catholic. Al Makr had a population of 281,206 Muslims and 75 Christians, of the Christians,30 were Orthodox and 45 Greek Catholic. In 1945 the population of Jadeidi was 280, all Arabs,1,855 dunams were plantations and irrigable land,2,202 dunams were used for cereals, while 39 dunams were built-up land. The same year the population of Makr was 490, all Arabs, while 8,791 dunams of land belonged to the according to the same official land. 96 dunams were for citrus and bananas,730 for plantations and irrigable land,7,241 used for cereals, Makr was captured by the Israeli army during the first part of Operation Dekel, 8–14 July 1948, and remained under Martial Law until 1966. The towns main football team, Hapoel Bnei Jadeidi F. C. will start the 2011-12 season in the Israeli Liga Gimel, Israel Railways has proposed building an additional train station at Jadeidi-Makr on the Railway to Karmiel, although the dates for construction are not set. Arab localities in Israel Welcome To al-Jadeida Welcome To Makr Survey of Western Palestine, Map 3, IAA, Wikimedia commons
Judeide-Makr
–
Entrance to Jadeidi-Makr
15.
Haifa
–
Haifa, is the third-largest city in the State of Israel, with a population of 278,903 in 2015. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area and it is also home to the Baháí World Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a destination for Bahai pilgrims. Built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the settlement has a history spanning more than 3,000 years, the earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port city established in the Late Bronze Age. In the 3rd century CE, Haifa was known as a dye-making center, over the centuries, the city has changed hands, being conquered and ruled by the Phoenicians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, and the Israelis. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Haifa Municipality has governed the city, as of 2016, the city is a major seaport located on Israels Mediterranean coastline in the Bay of Haifa covering 63.7 square kilometres. It lies about 90 kilometres north of Tel Aviv and is the regional center of northern Israel. According to researcher J. Kis-Lev Haifa is considered a haven for coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Two respected academic institutions, the University of Haifa and the Technion, are located in Haifa, in addition to the largest k-12 school in Israel, the city plays an important role in Israels economy. It is home to Matam, one of the oldest and largest high-tech parks in the country, Haifa also owns the underground rapid transit system located in Israel. Haifa Bay is a center of industry, petroleum refining. Haifa formerly functioned as the terminus of an oil pipeline from Iraq via Jordan. With locals using it to refer to a tell at the foot of the Carmel Mountains that contains its remains. The name Efa first appears during Roman rule, some time after the end of the 1st century, Haifa is also mentioned more than 100 times in the Talmud, a work central to Judaism. Hefa or Hepha in Eusebius of Caesareas 4th-century work, Onomasticon, is said to be another name for Sycaminus, references to this city end with the Byzantine period. Following the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Haifa was used to refer to a site established on Tel Shikmona upon what were already the ruins of Sycaminon. Haifa is mentioned by the mid-11th-century Persian chronicler Nasir Khusraw, the Crusaders, who captured Haifa briefly in the 12th century, call it Caiphas, and believe its name related to Cephas, the Aramaic name of Simon Peter. Other spellings in English have included Caipha, Kaipha, Caiffa, Kaiffa and Khaifa.5 miles to the east. The new village, the nucleus of modern Haifa, was first called al-imara al-jadida by some, but others residing there called it Haifa al-Jadida at first, the ultimate origin of the name Haifa remains unclear
Haifa
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Western Haifa from the air
Haifa
–
חֵיפָה
Haifa
–
Jars excavated at
Tell Abu Hawam
Haifa
–
Mount Carmel before 1899
16.
Israeli Communist Party
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The Israeli Communist Party, commonly referred to by its Hebrew acronym Maki, is a communist political party in Israel and forms part of the political alliance known as Hadash. It was originally known as Rakah, an acronym for Reshima Komunistit Hadasha, Rakah was formed on 1 September 1965 due to internal disagreements in Maki. As a result, the faction left Maki to form a new party, Rakah. It was reported in the Soviet media that the Mikunis-Sneh group defected to the bourgeois-nationalist camp, the 1965 elections saw Rakah party win three seats, comprehensively beating Maki as it slumped to just one. Rakahs opposition to Zionism and the Six-Day War meant they were excluded from the unity governments of the sixth Knesset. In the 1969 elections Rakah again won three seats, during the 1973 elections Rakah saw a rise in support as the party picked up four seats. Before the 1977 elections the party joined up with some other marginal left-wing and Arab parties, Hadash means new in Hebrew, a possible reference to Rakahs name, it is also a Hebrew acronym for The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In the meantime, the original Maki had disappeared after merging into Ratz in 1981, in 1989, members of Rakah decided to change the partys name to Maki to reflect their status as the only official communist party in Israel. The party remains the leading force in Hadash to this day, and owns the Al-Ittihad newspaper
Israeli Communist Party
–
Maki
17.
USSR
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
USSR
–
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920
USSR
–
Flag
USSR
–
Stalin and
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the
NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was
edited out of the image.
USSR
18.
Lomonosov Moscow State University
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Lomonosov Moscow State University is a coeducational and public research university located in Moscow, Russia. It was founded on January 25,1755 by Mikhail Lomonosov, MSU was renamed after Lomonosov in 1940 and was then known as Lomonosov University. It also claims to house the tallest educational building in the world and it is rated among the universities with the best reputation in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy, ivan Shuvalov and Mikhail Lomonosov promoted the idea of a university in Moscow, and Russian Empress Elizabeth decreed its establishment on January 251755. The first lectures were given on April 26th, russians still celebrate January 25th as Students Day. Saint Petersburg State University and Moscow State University engage in rivalry over the title of Russias oldest university. The present Moscow State University originally occupied the Principal Medicine Store on Red Square from 1755 to 1787, in the 18th century, the University had three departments, philosophy, medicine, and law. A preparatory college was affiliated with the University until its abolition in 1812, in 1779, Mikhail Kheraskov founded a boarding school for noblemen which in 1830 became a gymnasium for the Russian nobility. The university press, run by Nikolay Novikov in the 1780s, published the most popular newspaper in Imperial Russia, in 1804, medical education split into clinical, surgical, and obstetrics faculties. During 1884–1897, the Department of Medicine -- supported by donations. The campus, and medical education in general, were separated from the University in 1918, as of 2015, Devichye Pole was operated by the independent I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University and by various other state and private institutions. The roots of student unrest in the University reach deep into the nineteenth century, in 1905, a social-democratic organization emerged at the University and called for the overthrow of the Czarist government and the establishment of a republic in Russia. The imperial government repeatedly threatened to close the University, after the October Revolution of 1917, the institution began to admit the children of the proletariat and peasantry. In 1919, the University abolished fees for tuition and established a facility to help working-class children prepare for entrance examinations. During the implementation of Joseph Stalins First Five-Year Plan, prisoners from the Gulag were forced to construct parts of the newly expanded University, after 1991, nine new faculties were established. The following year, the University gained a status, it is funded directly from the state budget. On March 19,2008, Russias most powerful supercomputer to date and its peak performance of 60 TFLOPS makes it the fastest supercomputer in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Since 1953, most of the faculties have been situated on Sparrow Hills, the main building was designed by architect Lev Vladimirovich Rudnev
Lomonosov Moscow State University
–
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University
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Coat of arms of the Lomonosov State University of Moscow
Lomonosov Moscow State University
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The Principal Medicine Store building on Red Square, which was home to Moscow University from 1755–1787
Lomonosov Moscow State University
–
Main buildings of the university in Mokhovaya Street, 1798
19.
PLO
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The Palestine Liberation Organization is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians. The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991, at its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964, concluding this meeting the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated goal was the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, the ideology of the PLO was formulated in the founding year 1964 in the Palestinian National Covenant. The document is a combative anti-Zionist statement dedicated to the restoration of the Palestinian homeland and it has no reference to religion. In 1968, the Charter was replaced by a revised version. Until 1993, the only promoted option was armed struggle, from the signing of the Oslo Accords, negotiation and diplomacy became the only official policy. In April 1996, a number of articles, which were inconsistent with the Oslo Accords, were wholly or partially nullified. They demanded that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homes and this article was adapted in 1996 to meet the Oslo Accords. Article 20 states, ″The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality, nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own, they are citizens of the states to which they belong″. This article was nullified in 1996, the PLO has always labelled the Palestinian people as Arabs. This was a consequence of the fact that the PLO was an offshoot of the Arab League. It also has an element, as to keep the backing of Arab states. Over the years, the Arab identity remained the stated nature of the Palestinian State and it is a reference to the ″Arab State″ envisioned in the UN Partition Plan. The PLO and its dominating faction Fatah are often contrasted to more religious orientated factions like Hamas, all, however, represent a predominant Muslim population. Practically the whole population of the Territories is Muslim, most of them Sunni, the National Charter has no reference to religion. The draft Constitution, which never materialized, contains the same provisions, at the time, the PLC did not include a single Hamas member
PLO
–
Orient House, the former PLO headquarters in Jerusalem
PLO
–
Palestine Liberation Organization
20.
Emile Habibi
–
Imil Shukri Habiby was a Palestinian /Israeli Arab writer of Arabic literature and a communist politician, son of a Christian family. Habibi was born in Haifa on 29 August 1922, into an Anglican Palestinian Arab family and his family had originally belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem but converted to Anglicanism due to disputes within the Orthodox church. In his early life, he worked on an oil refinery, under the Mandate he became one of the leaders of the Palestine Communist Party. When the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began, he stayed in Haifa while many others were forced to leave the country by the Israeli Army or fled in fear of attack. Having stayed in Haifa, however, Habibi was eventually granted Israeli citizenship, after the war, he helped to create the Communist Party of Israel and established the communist paper Al-Ittihad. In 1956 he moved from Haifa to Nazareth and remained there for the rest of his life and he died in 1996 in Nazareth, but in his will, he expressed his wish to be buried in his beloved home, Haifa. His will also asked that his tombstone include the phrase remained in Haifa, Habibi was one of the leaders of the Palestine Communist Party during the Mandate era. He supported the 1947 UN Partition Plan, when Israel became a state he helped form the Israeli Communist Party. He served in the Knesset between 1951 and 1959, and again from 1961 until 1972, first as a member of Maki, before breaking away from the party with Tawfik Toubi and Meir Vilner to found Rakah. In 1991, after a conflict about how the party should deal with the new policies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Habibi began writing short stories in the 1950s, and his first story, The Mandelbaum Gate was published in 1954. In 1972 he resigned from the Knesset in order to write his first novel, The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, the book depicts the life of an Palestinian, employing black humour and satire. It was based on the traditional anti-hero Said in Arab literature, in a playful way it deals with how it is for Arabs to live in the state of Israel, and how one who has nothing to do with politics is drawn into it. He followed this by other books, short stories and a play and his last novel, published in 1992, was Saraya, the Ogres Daughter. In it he has a state, There is no difference between Christian and Muslim, we are all Palestinian in our predicament In 1990, Habibi received the Al-Quds Prize from the PLO. In 1992, he received the Israel Prize for Arabic literature and his willingness to accept both reflected his belief in coexistence, though his acceptance of the Israel Prize set off a debate among the Arabic intellectual community. Habibi was accused of legitimizing what they considered Israels anti-Arab policy, Habibi replied to the accusations, A dialogue of prizes is better than a dialogue of stones and bullets, he said. It is indirect recognition of the Arabs in Israel as a nation and this is recognition of a national culture. It will help the Arab population in its struggle to strike roots in the land and win equal rights
Emile Habibi
–
Emile Habibi
21.
Ramallah
–
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 km north of Jerusalem at an average elevation of 880 meters above sea level, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto capital of the Palestinian National Authority. Ramallah was historically an Arab Christian town, today Muslims form the majority of the population of nearly 27,092 in 2007, with Christians making up a significant minority. Ramallah is composed of Ram, meaning height and Allah, the Arabic word for God, ancient rock-cut tombs have been found near Ramallah. Potsherds from the Crusader/Ayyubid and early Ottoman period have also found there. Ramallah has been identified with the Crusader place called Ramalie, remains of a building with an arched doorway from the Crusader era, called al-Burj, have been identified, but the original use of the building is undetermined. Ramallah was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, in 1596 it was listed in the tax registers as being in the nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 71 Christian households and 9 Muslim households and it paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, vines or fruit trees, and goats or beehives. Modern Ramallah was founded in the mid-1500s by the Haddadins, a clan of brothers descended from Ghassanid Christians, the Haddadins, and their leader Rashid El-Haddadin, arrived from east of the Jordan River from the areas of Karak and Shoubak. The Haddadin migration is attributed to fighting and unrest among clans in that area, Rashid and his brothers were blacksmiths. The Haddadin name comes from the old word Haddad, which translates to blacksmith, Haddadin was attracted to the mountainous site of Ramallah because it was similar to the other mountainous areas he came from. In addition, the forested area could supply him with plenty of fuel for his forges. In 1838 American biblical scholar Edward Robinson visited the area, noting that the inhabitants were Christian of the Greek rite, there were 200 taxable men, which gives an estimated total population of 800–900 people. The village belonged to the Haram al-Sharif, Jerusalem, to which it paid a tax of 350 Mids of grain. It stands amongst gardens and olive-yards, and has three springs to the south and one on the west, on the north there are three more, within a mile from the village, on the east there is a well. There are rock-cut tombs to the north-east with well-cut entrances, in the village is a Greek church, and on the east a Latin convent and a Protestant schoolhouse, all modern buildings. The village lands are Wakuf, or ecclesiastical property, belonging to the Haram of Jerusalem, about a quarter of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, the rest Orthodox Greeks. In the 21st century, a community of people with direct descent from the Haddadins who founded Ramallah live in the United States
Ramallah
–
A view of Ramallah
Ramallah
–
Residential neighborhood in Ramallah.
Ramallah
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Israeli West Bank barrier near Ramallah
Ramallah
–
Tomb of
Yasser Arafat
22.
Fatah
–
Fataḥ, formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement is a Palestinian nationalist political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization. Fatah is generally considered to have had an involvement in revolutionary struggle in the past and has maintained a number of militant groups. Fatah had been identified with the leadership of its founder Yasser Arafat. Since Arafats departure, factionalism within the ideologically diverse movement has become more apparent, in the 2006 parliamentary election, the party lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas. However, the Hamas legislative victory led to a conflict between Fatah and Hamas, with Fatah retaining control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, the full name of the movement is حركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني ḥarakat al-taḥrīr al-waṭanī al-Filasṭīnī, meaning the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. From this was crafted the reverse acronym Fatḥ meaning opening, conquering, the word fatḥ or fatah is used in religious discourse to signify the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history –as in Fatḥ al-Sham, the conquering of the Levant. Fatah also has significance in that it is the name of the 48th sura of the Quran which, according to major Muslim commentators. (During the peaceful two years after the Hudaybiyyah treaty, many converted to Islam, increasing the strength of the Muslim side and it was the breach of this treaty by the Quraysh that triggered the conquest of Mecca. This Islamic precedent was cited by Yasser Arafat as justification for his signing the Oslo Accords with Israel. The founders included Yasser Arafat, then head of the General Union of Palestinian Students at Cairo University, Salah Khalaf, Khalil al-Wazir, Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics after the Six-Day War in 1967. Fatah joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1967 and it was immediately allocated 33 of 105 seats in the PLO Executive Committee. Founder Yasser Arafat became Chairman of the PLO in 1969, after the position was ceded to him by Yahya Hammuda. According to the BBC, Mr Arafat took over as chairman of the committee of the PLO in 1969. The towns name is the Arabic word for dignity, which elevated its symbolism to the Arab people, the operation was in response to attacks against Israel, including rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias into the occupied West Bank. Knowledge of the operation was well ahead of time. On the night of 21 March, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy weaponry, armored vehicles, Fatah held its ground, surprising the Israeli military. As Israels forces intensified their campaign, the Jordanian Army became involved, by the end of the battle, nearly 150 Fatah militants had been killed, as well as twenty Jordanian soldiers and twenty-eight Israeli soldiers. Despite the higher Arab death toll, Fatah considered themselves victorious because of the Israeli armys rapid withdrawal, after their victory in the Battle of Karameh, Fatah and other Palestinian militias began taking control of civil life in Jordan
Fatah
–
Yasser Arafat was the main founder of Fatah and led the movement until his death in 2004.
Fatah
–
Fatah فتح
23.
Hamas
–
Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization. It has a service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Hamass military wing objected to the truce offer, analysts have said that it seems clear that Hamas knows that many of its conditions for the truce could never be met. The attacks on civilians have been condemned as war crimes and crimes against humanity by human rights such as Human Rights Watch. In the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a plurality in the Palestinian Parliament, Hamas rejected those changes, which led to the Quartet suspending its foreign assistance program and Israel imposing economic sanctions on the Hamas-led administration. In March 2007, a unity government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was briefly formed. Israel and Egypt then imposed a blockade of the Gaza Strip. In 2011, Hamas and Fatah announced an agreement that provides for creation of a joint caretaker Palestinian government. Progress stalled, until an April 2014 agreement to form a unity government. It is not regarded as a terrorist organization by Iran, Russia, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, China, an EU court found the EUs earlier designation flawed, but its decision has been appealed by the European Council. It is a point of debate in political and academic circles over whether or not to classify Hamas as a terrorist group, Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الاسلامية or Harakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya, meaning Islamic Resistance Movement. The Arabic word hamas means courage or zeal, the Hamas covenant interprets its name to mean strength and bravery. Hamas, as its name implies, aims to liberate Palestine from the Israeli occupation by resisting it, Hamas inherited from its predecessor a tripartite structure that consisted in the provision of social services, of religious training and military operations under a Shura Council. Traditionally it had four distinct functions, a social welfare division, a military division for procuring weapons and undertaking operations, a security service. The exact nature of the organization is unclear, secrecy being maintained for fear of Israeli assassinations, formally, Hamas maintains the wings are separate and independent. Matthew Levitt maintains this is a public myth, davis argues that they are both separate and combined for reasons of internal and external political necessity. Communication between the political and military wings of Hamas is difficult, owing to the thoroughness of Israeli intelligence surveillance, after the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi the occasional political direction of the militant wing diminished, with field commanders given discretional autonomy on operations. The governing body is the Majlis al-Shura, the principle behind the Council is based on the Quranic concept of consultation and popular assembly, which Hamas leaders argue provides for democracy within an Islamic framework
Hamas
–
Current leader,
Khaled Meshaal
Hamas
Hamas
–
August 2001
Sbarro pizza restaurant bombing in Jerusalem, in which 15 Israeli civilians were killed. Hamas said the attack was in response to Israel's assassination of its officials, including two senior leaders.
Hamas
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Hamas rally in
Bethlehem
24.
1948 Palestinian exodus
–
The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as the Nakba, occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were sacked during the war, the term nakba also refers to the period of war itself and events affecting Palestinians from December 1947 to January 1949. The causes are also a subject of disagreement between historians. And an unwillingness to live under Jewish control, later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented them from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees, the expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing, while others dispute this charge. The events of 1948 are commemorated by Palestinians both in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere on 15 May, a date now known as Nakba Day. The history of the Palestinian exodus is closely tied to the events of the war in Palestine, which lasted from 1947 to 1949, and to the political events preceding it. In the first few months of the war the climate in the Mandate of Palestine became volatile. According to historian Benny Morris, the period was marked by Palestinian Arab attacks and Jewish defensiveness, simha Flapan pointed out that attacks by the Irgun and Lehi resulted in Palestinian Arab retaliation and condemnation. Jewish reprisal operations were directed against villages and neighborhoods from which attacks against Jews were believed to have originated, the retaliations were more damaging than the provoking attack and included killing of armed and unarmed men, destruction of houses and sometimes expulsion of inhabitants. Their attacks on British forces reduced British troops ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic, General conditions deteriorated, the economic situation became unstable and unemployment grew. Rumours spread that the Husaynis were planning to bring in bands of fellahin to take over the towns, some Palestinian Arab leaders sent their families abroad. Yoav Gelber claims that the Arab Liberation Army embarked on an evacuation of non-combatants from several frontier villages in order to turn them into military strongholds. Arab depopulation occurred most in villages close to Jewish settlements and in neighborhoods in Haifa, Jaffa. The poorer inhabitants of these neighborhoods generally fled to parts of the city. Those who could afford to fled away, expecting to return when the troubles were over. By the end of March 1948 thirty villages were depopulated of their Palestinian Arab population, approximately 100,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled to Arab parts of Palestine, such as Gaza, Beersheba, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jaffa and Bethlehem. Some had left the country altogether, to Jordan, Lebanon, other sources speak of 30,000 Palestinian Arabs
1948 Palestinian exodus
–
Palestinian refugees leaving the Galilee in October–November 1948
1948 Palestinian exodus
–
1948 Palestinian exodus
1948 Palestinian exodus
–
Ruins of the Palestinian village of
Suba, near Jerusalem, overlooking Kibbutz Zova, which was built on the village lands.
1948 Palestinian exodus
–
Ruins of the former Arab village of
Bayt Jibrin, inside the green line west of
Hebron.
25.
1982 Lebanon war
–
The military operation was launched after gunmen from Abu Nidals organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israels ambassador to the United Kingdom. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blamed Abu Nidals enemy, the PLO, for the incident, the PLO, under the chairmanship of Yasser Arafat, had relocated its headquarters to Tripoli in June 1982. Following the assassination of Gemayel in September 1982, Israels position in Beirut became untenable and the signing of a peace treaty became increasingly unlikely. After Israeli forces withdrew from most of Lebanon, the War of the Camps broke out between Lebanese factions, the remains of the PLO and Syria, in which Syria fought its former Palestinian allies. At the same time, Shia militant groups began consolidating and waging a low-intensity guerrilla war over the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Civil War would continue until 1990, at which point Syria had established complete dominance over Lebanon. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Lebanon became home to more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees, after their settlements in Palestine and Israel had been depopulated as a result of the war. After its founding in 1964 and the radicalization among Palestinians, which followed the Six Day War, continual violence near the Lebanese border occurred between Israel and the PLO starting from 1968, this peaked, following the relocation of PLO bases to Lebanon after the civil war in Jordan. The violence between Israel and the PLO peaked during Operation Litani in 1978, provoked by the Coastal Road Massacre which was carried out by Palestinian militants, as early as 1976, Israel had been assisting Lebanese Christian militias in their sporadic battles against the PLO. But Israels main partner was to be the Maronite Phalange party, whose paramilitary was led by Bashir Gemayel, gemayels strategy during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War was to provoke the Syrians into retaliatory attacks on Christians, such that Israel could not ignore. In 1978, Menachem Begin declared that Israel would not allow a genocide of Lebanese Christians, hundreds of Lebanese militiamen began to train in Israel, at the IDF Staff and Command College. During the period June to December 1980 the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon recorded an increase in activities along the border zone, during the same period Israel protested numerous attacks by Palestinian forces, unrelated to the Lebanese border zone. In contrast the IDF had launched attacks on Lebanese territory often in support of the Lebanese Christian militia. In doing so Israel had violated UN Security Council resolution 425 on hundreds of occasions, in the subsequent period 16 June to 10 December 1981, a relative quiet was reported continuing from 29 May 1981 until 10 July. This was broken when Israeli aircraft resumed strikes against targets in southern Lebanon north of the UNIFIL area, led to exchanges of heavy firing between armed elements, on the one hand, and IDF and the de facto forces on the other. On 13 and 14 July, widespread Israeli air-strikes continued, armed elements fired into the enclave and northern Israel. Israeli-initiated attacks had led to rocket and artillery fire on northern Israel and this pattern continued in the coming days. Israel renewed its air strikes in an attempt to trigger a war that would allow it to out the PLO. On 17 July, the Israel Air Force launched an attack on PLO buildings in downtown Beirut
1982 Lebanon war
–
Lebanese troops in Beirut, 1982
1982 Lebanon war
–
Israeli troops in south Lebanon
1982 Lebanon war
–
An aerial view of the stadium used as an ammunition supply site for the PLO, after Israeli airstrikes in 1982.
1982 Lebanon war
–
IAF Cobra gunships on military exercise. These attack helicopters were successfully employed against Syrian
AFVs during the conflict.
26.
Homeland
–
A homeland is the concept of the place with which an ethnic group holds a long history and a deep cultural association – the country in which a particular national identity began. As a common noun, homeland, it connotes the country of ones origin. When used as a noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages. A homeland may also be referred to as a fatherland, a motherland, or a country, depending on the culture. Motherland refers to a country, i. e. the place of ones birth, the place of ones ancestors. People often refer to Mother Russia as a personification of the Russian nation, within the British Empire, many natives in the colonies came to think of Britain as the mother country of one, large nation. India is often personified as Bharat Mata, Fatherland is the nation of ones fathers or forefathers. It can be viewed as a nationalist concept, insofar as it relates to nations, the term fatherland is used throughout German-speaking Europe, as well as in Dutch. For example, Wien Neêrlands Bloed, national anthem of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1932, makes extensive and conspicuous use of the parallel Dutch word. Because of the use of Vaterland in Nazi-German war propaganda, the term Fatherland in English has become associated with domestic British and this is not the case in Germany itself, where the word remains used in the usual patriotic contexts. In Romance languages, a way to refer to ones home country is Patria/Pátria/Patrie which has the same connotation as Fatherland, that is. As patria has feminine gender, it is used in expressions related to ones mother. The Soviet Union created homelands for some minorities in the 1920s, including the Volga German ASSR, in the case of the Volga German ASSR, these homelands were later abolished and their inhabitants deported to either Siberia or the Kazakh SSR. In the case of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast this was not necessary, since it had created from the start at the far-Eastern end of Siberia. In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security was created soon after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks, Homeland isnt really an American word, its not something we used to say or say now. In the apartheid era in South Africa, the concept was given a different meaning, the white government had designated approximately 25% of its non-desert territory for black tribal settlement. Whites and other non-blacks were restricted from owning land or settling in those areas, after 1948 they were gradually granted an increasing level of home-rule. From 1976 several of these regions were granted independence, four of them were declared independent nations by South Africa, but were unrecognized as independent countries by any other nation besides each other and South Africa
Homeland
–
La liberté guidant le peuple by
Eugène Delacroix personifies the French motherland
Homeland
–
Bharat Mata statue accompanied by a lion at
Yanam, India
27.
Naomi Shihab Nye
–
Sas, is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, although she calls herself a wandering poet, she refers to San Antonio as her home. She says a visit to her grandmother in the West Bank village of Sinjil was a life-changing experience, Nye was the recipient of the 2014 NSK Neustadt Prize for Childrens Literature. At the age of 9, Nye began writing poems for a magazine article and she was influenced by her mother. Many of her works were based on things such as cats, squirrels, friends, teachers. When she was fourteen she moved to the West Bank with her family, There she visited her Palestinian grandmother and moved back to San Antonio a year later, while the Six Day War was brewing. She attended Trinity University, receiving a BA in English and world religions and these experiences of being part of both a majority and minority in cultures heavily influenced her political views and would eventually become part of the messages in her many collections of poetry. Her book Fuel is an example, some of her earlier works were published in Seventeen, Modern Poetry Studies, and Ironwood. She refers to herself as the “wandering poet” because she has traveled the world to hold writing workshops and she is an author of many poetry books and children fictions. Her poems are based on heritage and peace and are connected to her experience as an Arab-American and her work has been acknowledged by many journals and reviews throughout the world. In 2009, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and she is married to photographer Michael Nye and together they have a son named Madison. Nye’s first two books, Tattooed Feet and Eye-to-Eye, are written in free verse and possess themes of questing. Nye’s first full-length collection, Different Ways to Pray, explores the differences between and shared experiences of cultures from California to Texas and from South America to Mexico. Hugging the Jukebox, a collection that won the Voertman Poetry Prize. Yellow Glove presents poems with more tragic and sorrowful themes, according to the Poetry Foundation, Fuel may be Nye’s most acclaimed volume and ranges over a variety of subjects, scenes and settings. In 1997, Trinity University, her alma mater, honored her with the Distinguished Alumna Award, in June 2009, Nye was named as one of PeaceByPeace. coms first peace heroes. In 2013, Nye won the Robert Creeley Award, in October 2012, she was named laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. The NSK Prize is a $25,000 juried award sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and World Literature Today magazine. ”19 varieties of gazelle, a Maze Me, Poems for Girls
Naomi Shihab Nye
–
Naomi Shihab Nye
28.
Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati
–
Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati was an Iraqi poet. He was a pioneer in his field and defied conventional forms of poetry that had been common for centuries and he was born in Baghdad, near the shrine of the 12th century Sufi Abdel Qadir al-Jilani. In this respect, al-Bayati is unique among his peers, most of whom share pastoral roots, London, Moscow, Madrid and Baghdad are all represented in his poetry. He attended Baghdad University, and became a teacher after graduating from Dar Al-Muallimin in 1950, in addition to teaching in public schools, al-Bayati also edited the popular and widely circulated cultural magazine Al-Thaqafa A-Jadida. In 1954 he left Iraq after being dismissed from his positions because of his radical communist political views and anti-government activity, although he returned to Damascus at the end of his life, his early wanderings also took him to Cairo, Beirut and a number of Western capitals. Always involved in affairs, some of al-Bayatis poems are in fact addressed to international figures such as TS Eliot. Not much information is available about his personal life, before his exile, he married, but his wife and four children are mentioned only in passing in the few available biographies. This may be because they remained in Iraq after his departure, the new republican government gave him a post in the Ministry of Education, after which he went to Moscow as a cultural attache representing the Iraqi embassy. Al-Bayati resigned from this post in 1961, but did not return to Iraq right away and he continued to live in Russia, teaching at the Asian and African Peoples Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He stayed in Eastern Europe, traveling often, and returned briefly to Iraq in 1964, in the mid-1970s Al-Bayati moved between Cairo, Paris, London, Madrid, Jeddah and Delphi, never staying in one place long but always returning to the Middle East. For the remainder of his life, Al-Bayati moved between his homeland and the rest of the world, ive always searched for the suns springs, he said, When a human being stays in one place, hes likely to die. People too stagnate like water and air, therefore the death of nature, of words, of the spirit has prompted me to keep travelling, so as to encounter new suns, new springs, new horizons. A whole new world being born, although Al-Bayati was philosophical about his wandering, it was not solely a personal choice. His communist politics made trouble for him throughout his whole life, when the pan-Arab, socialist Baath Party took control of Iraq from the Arif party in 1968, Al-Bayati returned home only to flee a brutal campaign against liberals a few years later. He returned in 1972 to receive honors from the new government, when Husseins government invaded Kuwait in 1990, Al-Bayati left Spain and took refuge in Jordan and later Syria. In 1995, Hussein revoked his citizenship as punishment for Al-Bayatis participation in a Saudi Arabian cultural festival, Al-Bayatis difficulty with Iraq over the course of his life became the subject of much of his writing. There is a story that he explained it by drawing comparisons between his relationship with Iraq and the story of Prometheus. Of course, Al-Bayati said, my relations with Iraqi governments were never conciliatory, I belong to the Iraqi people
Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati
–
Al-Bayati, who passed much of his life in urban cafés.
29.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
–
Badr Shakir al Sayyab was an Iraqi and Arab poet. Bornهنالواقثن in Jekor, a town south of Basra in Iraq, he was the eldest child of a date grower and he graduated from the Higher teachers training college of Baghdad in 1948. Badr Shakir was dismissed from his teaching post for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and his works have been translated in more than 10 languages including Arabic, English, Farsi, Somali, Urdu. Badr Shakir al-Sayyab was one of the greatest poets in Arabic literature and these included the famous Rain Song, which was instrumental in drawing attention to the use of myth in poetry. He revolutionized all the elements of the poem and wrote highly involved political and social poetry, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was greatly impressed and influenced by the poetry of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. The publication of his volume, Song of Rain, in 1960 was one of the most significant events in contemporary Arabic poetry. He started his career as a Marxist, but reverted to mainstream nationalism without ever becoming fanatical, while still in his thirties, he was struck by a degenerative nervous disorder and died in poverty. He produced seven collections of poetry and several translations, which include the poetry of Louis Aragon, Nazim Hikmet, and Edith Sitwell, Badr went to England for the first time in Autumn of 1962, at a time when his health was deteriorating. He attended Durham University for translation studies, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab announced Bakathirs earlier experiments to the literary world and stated that Nazik al-Malaikahs claim to the discovery of free verse for herself was entirely false. Bakathir hit on the secret of the freedom from the format in the mid 1930s. He used fractured poetry for the first time in Arabic poetry, ali Ahamad Bakathir in the second edition of his book Akhnatun wa Nefertiti mentions al_sayyabs acknowledgement. Wilting Flowers Hurricanes Flowers and myths Dawn of Peace The Grave Digger The Blind Prostitute Weapons and Children Rain Song The Drowned Temple Alaguenan
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
–
Statue of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab in Basra
30.
Rimbaud
–
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet who is known for his influence on modern literature and arts, which prefigured surrealism. Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and for being a restless soul, having engaged in an at times violent romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which lasted nearly two years. After the end of his career, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant before his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday. As a poet, Rimbaud is well known for his contributions to Symbolism and, among other works, A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud was born in the provincial town of Charleville in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the child of Frédéric Rimbaud and Marie Catherine Vitalie Cuif. Rimbauds father, a Burgundian of Provençal extraction, was an infantry captain risen from the ranks, from 1844 to 1850, he participated in the conquest of Algeria, and in 1854 was awarded the Légion dhonneur by Imperial decree. Captain Rimbaud was described as good-tempered, easy-going and generous, with the long moustaches and goatee of a Chasseur officer. In October 1852, Captain Rimbaud, then aged 38, was transferred to Mézières where he met Vitalie Cuif,11 years his junior and she came from a solidly established Ardennais family, but one with its share of bohemians, two of her brothers were alcoholics. Her personality was the exact opposite of Captain Rimbauds, she was narrowminded, stingy, completely lacking in a sense of humour. When Charles Houin, a biographer, interviewed her, he found her withdrawn. Arthur Rimbauds private name for her was Mouth of Darkness, nevertheless, on 8 February 1853, Captain Rimbaud and Vitalie Cuif married, their first-born, Jean Nicolas Frédéric, arrived nine months later on 2 November. The next year, on 20 October 1854, Jean Nicolas Arthur was born, three more children followed, Victorine-Pauline-Vitalie on 4 June 1857, Jeanne-Rosalie-Vitalie on 15 June 1858 and, finally, Frédérique Marie Isabelle on 1 June 1860. Though the marriage lasted seven years, Captain Rimbaud lived continuously in the home for less than three months, from February to May 1853. The rest of the time his military postings—including active service in the Crimean War and he was not at home for his childrens births, nor their baptisms. Isabelles birth in 1860 must have been the last straw, as after this Captain Rimbaud stopped returning home on leave entirely. Though they never divorced, the separation was complete, thereafter Mme Rimbaud let herself be known as Widow Rimbaud, neither the captain nor his children showed the slightest interest in re-establishing contact. Fearing her children were being over-influenced by the children of the poor. Rimbaud moved her family to the Cours dOrléans in 1862 and this was a better neighbourhood, and the boys, now aged nine and eight, who had been taught at home by their mother, were now sent to the Pension Rossat
Rimbaud
–
Rimbaud on the day of his
First Communion.
Rimbaud
–
Rimbaud, aged 17, by
Étienne Carjat, probably taken in December 1871.
Rimbaud
–
Plaque erected on the centenary of Rimbaud's death at the place where he was shot by Verlaine in
Brussels
Rimbaud
–
Caricature of Rimbaud drawn by Verlaine in 1872.
31.
Allen Ginsberg
–
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet of Jewish origin, and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow. He was one of many influential American writers of his known as the Beat Generation. Ginsberg is best known for his poem Howl, in which he denounced what he saw as the forces of capitalism. In 1956, Howl was seized by San Francisco police and US Customs. S, Howl reflected Ginsbergs own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that Howl was not obscene, adding, Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York’s East Village. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, at Trungpas urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974. Ginsberg took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs and his collection The Fall of America shared the annual U. S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. In 1979 he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts, Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings, Poems 1986–1992. Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, as a young teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers rights. While in high school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman, inspired by his teachers passionate reading, in 1945, he joined the Merchant Marines to earn money to continue his education at Columbia. Ginsberg has stated that he considered the required freshman seminar to be his favorite course while at Columbia University and its subject was The Great Books and was taught by Lionel Trilling. According to The Poetry Foundation, Ginsberg spent several months in an institution after he pleaded insanity during a hearing. He was allegedly being prosecuted for harboring stolen goods in his dorm room and it was noted that the stolen property was not his, but belonged to an acquaintance. Ginsberg referred to his parents, in a 1985 interview, as old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers and his father Louis Ginsberg was a published poet and a high school teacher. Ginsbergs mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg, was affected by an illness that was never properly diagnosed. She was also a member of the Communist Party and took Ginsberg. Ginsberg later said that his mother made up stories that all went something like, The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers
Allen Ginsberg
–
Allen Ginsberg in 1979
Allen Ginsberg
–
Ginsberg with his partner, poet
Peter Orlovsky. Photo taken in 1978
Allen Ginsberg
–
Portrait with
Bob Dylan, taken in 1975
Allen Ginsberg
–
Allen Ginsberg's greeting
Bhaktivedanta Swami at the
San Francisco Airport. January 17, 1967
32.
Hebrew
–
Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
Hebrew
–
Hebrew street sign, above in
Hebrew alphabet, below in
Latin transliteration. Aluf Batslut veAluf Shum (he) ("The Onion Champion and the Garlic Champion") is a
play by
Hayim Nahman Bialik.
Hebrew
–
Portion of the
Temple Scroll, one of the longest of the
Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at
Qumran
Hebrew
–
The
Shebna Inscription, from the tomb of a royal steward found in
Siloam, dates to the 7th century BCE.
Hebrew
–
Hebrew script used in writing a Torah scroll. Note ornamental "crowns" on tops of certain letters.
33.
Haim Gouri
–
Haim Gouri is an Israeli poet, novelist, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. Haim Gouri was born in Tel Aviv, after studying at the Kadoorie Agricultural High School, he joined the Palmach and completed a commanders course. He participated in the bombing of a British radar station being used to track Aliyah Bet ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine, in 1947 he was sent to Hungary to assist Holocaust survivors to emigrate to Mandate Palestine. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he was a deputy commander in the Palmachs Negev Brigade. Gouri studied literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris, as a journalist he worked for Lamerhav and later, Davar. He achieved fame with his coverage of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, Gouri lives with his wife, Aliza, in Jerusalem. Gouris first published poem, Sea Voyage, appeared in Mishmar, edited by Abraham Shlonsky and his first complete volume of poetry, Flowers of Fire, was published in 1949 following the Israeli War of Independence. The film The 81st Blow, which he wrote, co-produced and it is part of a powerful Holocaust trilogy that includes The Last Sea and Flames in the Ashes. In 1975, Gouri was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature, in 1988, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for Hebrew poetry. In 1998, he won the Uri Zvi Grinberg award, in 2016, Gouri rejected an award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport of the annual 50,000 shekel prize for “Zionist works of art”. Flowers of Fire, Years of Fire Poems of the Seal Compass Rose Movement to Touch Gehazi Visions The Eagle Line Words in My Love-Sick Blood, Detroit, Wayne State University,1996, ISBN 0-8143-2594-7. The Poems, in two volumes The Chocolate Deal, english translations, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1968, ISBN 1-125-15196-X. Detroit, Wayne State University Press,1999, ISBN 0-8143-2800-8, the Crazy Book The Interrogation, The Story of Reuel Facing the Glass Booth, the Jerusalem Trial of Adolf Eichmann. English translation, Detroit, Wayne State University,2004, ISBN 0-8143-3087-8, haim Gouri in the Internet Movie Database. Hebrew article about the poet in later life, retrieved from ynet 28 November 2012
Haim Gouri
–
Haim Gouri (2005)
34.
Yossi Sarid
–
Yossi Sarid was an Israeli politician and news commentator. He served as a member of the Knesset for the Alignment, a former Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment, he led Meretz between 1996 and 2003 and served as Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003. Known for his moral stance and his willingness to pay the political price for that determination. Yosef Sarid was born in Rehovot, Sarid served in the Artillery Corps and he earned an MA in political science from New School for Social Research in New York City. He was a resident of Margaliyot in the Upper Galilee, Sarid was married to Dorit, with whom he had three children. He died on the evening of 4 December 2015 from an apparent heart attack, Sarid worked as a media aide to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1973 on the Alignment list and he was re-elected in 1977,1981 and 1984. After the Alignment agreed to join a national unity government with Likud in 1984 and he was re-elected on the Ratz list in 1988. In 1992, Ratz merged with Shinui and Mapam to form Meretz, the new party won 12 seats in the elections that year and joined Yitzhak Rabins coalition. Sarid was appointed Minister of the Environment, a position he kept when Shimon Peres formed a new government after Rabins assassination in 1995, in 1996, Sarid replaced Aloni as Meretz leader. Although the Labor Party won the most seats in elections that year, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu won the election for Prime Minister. In the 1999 elections, Meretz won 10 seats, although Sarid had vowed not to join a coalition that included the ultra-Orthodox Shas, Ehud Barak persuaded Sarid to join the government, making him Minister of Education. Sarid explained the breaking of his vow in the need to promote the peace process, however, in 2000 Sarid resigned from the government and Meretz quit the coalition after failing to agree on authority to be given for Shas deputy minister of education. In the 2003 elections Meretz was reduced to 6 seats, after which Sarid resigned as party leader, to be replaced by Yossi Beilin. He remained a member of the Knesset until the 2006 elections, when Meretz was reduced to 5 seats, after which he retired from politics, Sarid wrote a weekly column for Haaretz newspaper. Yossi Sarid on the Knesset website Yossi Sarids official lecturer page
Yossi Sarid
–
Yossi Sarid
35.
Ehud Barak
–
Ehud Barak is an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011 and he previously held the posts of Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister in Benjamin Netanyahus second government from 2009 to 2013. He is the joint most highly decorated soldier in Israels history, having taken part in many battles and he is a graduate in physics, mathematics, and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, following a highly decorated career, he was appointed Chief of General Staff in 1991, serving until 1995. On 26 November 2012 he announced that he would retire from politics after the election in January 2013. He was born on 12 February 1942 in kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon in what was then Mandatory Palestine and he is the eldest of four sons of Esther and Yisrael Mendel Brog. His paternal grandparents, Frieda and Reuven Brog, were murdered in Pušalotas in the northern Lithuania in 1912, Baraks maternal grandparents, Elka and Shmuel Godin, died at the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust. Ehud hebraized his family name from Brog to Barak in 1972 and it was during his military service that he met his future wife, Nava. They had three daughters together, Michal, Yael and Anat, Barak divorced Nava in August 2003. On 30 July 2007, Barak married Nili Priel in a ceremony in his private residence. In his spare time, Barak enjoys reading works by such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Barak joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1959 and he served in the IDF for 35 years, rising to the position of Chief of the General Staff and the rank of Rav Aluf, the highest in the Israeli military. These highly acclaimed operations, along with Operation Bayonet, led to the dismantling of Palestinian terrorist cell Black September and it has been alluded that Barak also masterminded the Tunis Raid on 16 April 1988, in which PLO leader Abu Jihad was killed. Later he served as head of Aman, the Military Intelligence Directorate, head of Central Command and he served as Chief of the General Staff between 1 April 1991 and 1 January 1995. During this period he implemented the first Oslo Accords and participated in the negotiations towards the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, Barak was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service and four Chief of Staff citations for courage and operational excellence. These five decorations make him the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, in 1992 he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States. In 2012, he was awarded by the United States with the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. On 7 July 1995, Barak was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs by Yitzhak Rabin, when Shimon Peres formed a new government following Rabins assassination in November 1995, Barak was made Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ehud Barak
–
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak
–
Ehud Barak with
Legion of Merit (1993)
Ehud Barak
–
Ehud Barak shaking hands with
Yasser Arafat, joined by President
Bill Clinton (1999)
Ehud Barak
–
Barak at the
Pentagon (1999)
36.
Yasser Arafat
–
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 to 2004, ideologically an Arab nationalist, he was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004. Arafat was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, where he spent most of his youth, while a student, he embraced Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist ideas. Opposed to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, he fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, returning to Cairo, he served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1956. In the latter part of the 1950s he co-founded Fatah, an organisation seeking the disestablishment of Israel. Fatah operated within several Arab countries, from where it launched attacks on Israeli targets, in the latter part of the 1960s Arafats profile grew, in 1967 he joined the PLO and in 1969 was elected chair of the Palestinian National Council. Fatahs growing presence in Jordan resulted in clashes with King Husseins Jordanian government. There, Fatah assisted the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War and continued its attacks on Israel, from 1983 to 1993, Arafat based himself in Tunisia, and began to shift his approach from open conflict with the Israelis to negotiation. In 1988, he acknowledged Israels right to exist and sought a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In 1994 he returned to Palestine, settling in Gaza City and he engaged in a series of negotiations with the Israeli government to end the conflict between it and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords, in 1994 Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at Oslo. At the time, Fatahs support among the Palestinians declined with the growth of Hamas, in late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat fell into a coma and died. While the cause of Arafats death has remained the subject of speculation, investigations by Russian, the majority of the Palestinian people view him as a heroic freedom fighter and martyr who symbolized the national aspirations of his people. Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt and his father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza City, whose mother, Yassers paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafats father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim land in Egypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful. He worked as a merchant in Cairos religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi and his mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem-based family. She died from an ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age
Yasser Arafat
–
Yasser Arafat speaking at the
World Economic Forum in 2001
Yasser Arafat
–
A portrait of young Arafat, 1940s
Yasser Arafat
–
Arafat (second from right) with other civil engineering students in
Cairo University, September 1951
Yasser Arafat
–
Arafat with
Fatah officials in public meeting with
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for the first time in
Cairo, approximately eight months after Arafat becomes
Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, 1969
37.
George Habash
–
George Habash, also known by his laqab al-Hakim was a Palestinian Christian politician who founded the left-wing secular nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Habash served as Secretary-General of the PFLP until 2000, when ill health forced him to resign, Habash was born in Lydda to an Eastern Orthodox Palestinian family in 1926. As a child, he sang in the church choir, Habash, a medical student at the American University of Beirut, was visiting his family during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In July 1948, the Israeli Defence Force captured Lydda from Jordanian and Arab Liberation Army forces, expelling all of the towns Arab residents, Habash and his remaining family became refugees and were not allowed to return home. In 1951, after graduating first in his class from medical school, Habash worked in camps in Jordan. He firmly believed that the state of Israel should be ended by all possible means, in an effort to recruit the Arab world to this cause, Habash founded the Arab Nationalist Movement in 1951 and aligned the organization with Gamal Abdel Nassers Arab nationalist ideology. He was implicated in the 1957 coup attempt in Jordan, which had originated among Palestinian members of the National Guard, Habash was convicted in absentia, after having gone underground when King Hussein proclaimed martial law and banned all political parties. In 1958 he fled to Syria, but was forced to return to Beirut in 1961 by the tumultuous break-up of the UAR, Habash was a leading member of the Palestine Liberation Organization until 1967 when he was sidelined by Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. In response, Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in 1964 he began reorganizing the ANM, regrouping the Palestinian members of the organization into a regional command. After the Six-Day War in 1967, disillusion with Nasser became widespread, Habash was briefly imprisoned in Syria in 1968, but escaped. In the same year, he came into conflict with long-time ally Wadie Haddad. At a 1969 congress the PFLP re-designated itself a Marxist–Leninist movement and its pan-Arab leanings have been diminished since the ANM days, but popular support for a united Arab front has remained, especially in regard to Israeli and western political pressures. It holds a position regarding Israel, demanding its complete eradication as a racist state through military struggle. In 1970, Habash was evicted from Jordan due to the key role of the Popular Front in the Black September clashes, Habash aligned the PFLP with the PLO and the Lebanese National Movement, but stayed neutral during the Lebanese Civil War in the late 1970s. After a stroke in 1980, when he was living in Damascus, his health declined, after the Oslo Agreements, Habash formed another opposition alliance of Rejectionists. Islamist organizations such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, in 2000, he resigned from his leadership post of the PFLP due to poor health and was succeeded by Abu Ali Mustafa. He continued to be an activist for the group until 2008, the PFLP ignored tensions with the mainstream leadership of Yasser Arafats Fatah faction, and instead focused on bringing about revolutionary change in Jordan. Habash expressed the opinion that what proceeded was not only military but also psychological warfare, in the 1970 Dawsons Field hijackings, Habash masterminded the hijackings of four Western airliners over the United States, Europe, the Far East and the Persian Gulf
George Habash
–
George Habash جورج حبش
George Habash
–
Yasser Arafat,
Mahmoud Darwish & George Habash in
Syria
George Habash
–
George Habash Square,
Ramallah
38.
Maki (current political party)
–
The Israeli Communist Party, commonly referred to by its Hebrew acronym Maki, is a communist political party in Israel and forms part of the political alliance known as Hadash. It was originally known as Rakah, an acronym for Reshima Komunistit Hadasha, Rakah was formed on 1 September 1965 due to internal disagreements in Maki. As a result, the faction left Maki to form a new party, Rakah. It was reported in the Soviet media that the Mikunis-Sneh group defected to the bourgeois-nationalist camp, the 1965 elections saw Rakah party win three seats, comprehensively beating Maki as it slumped to just one. Rakahs opposition to Zionism and the Six-Day War meant they were excluded from the unity governments of the sixth Knesset. In the 1969 elections Rakah again won three seats, during the 1973 elections Rakah saw a rise in support as the party picked up four seats. Before the 1977 elections the party joined up with some other marginal left-wing and Arab parties, Hadash means new in Hebrew, a possible reference to Rakahs name, it is also a Hebrew acronym for The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In the meantime, the original Maki had disappeared after merging into Ratz in 1981, in 1989, members of Rakah decided to change the partys name to Maki to reflect their status as the only official communist party in Israel. The party remains the leading force in Hadash to this day, and owns the Al-Ittihad newspaper
Maki (current political party)
–
Maki
39.
Communist Party of Israel
–
The Israeli Communist Party, commonly referred to by its Hebrew acronym Maki, is a communist political party in Israel and forms part of the political alliance known as Hadash. It was originally known as Rakah, an acronym for Reshima Komunistit Hadasha, Rakah was formed on 1 September 1965 due to internal disagreements in Maki. As a result, the faction left Maki to form a new party, Rakah. It was reported in the Soviet media that the Mikunis-Sneh group defected to the bourgeois-nationalist camp, the 1965 elections saw Rakah party win three seats, comprehensively beating Maki as it slumped to just one. Rakahs opposition to Zionism and the Six-Day War meant they were excluded from the unity governments of the sixth Knesset. In the 1969 elections Rakah again won three seats, during the 1973 elections Rakah saw a rise in support as the party picked up four seats. Before the 1977 elections the party joined up with some other marginal left-wing and Arab parties, Hadash means new in Hebrew, a possible reference to Rakahs name, it is also a Hebrew acronym for The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In the meantime, the original Maki had disappeared after merging into Ratz in 1981, in 1989, members of Rakah decided to change the partys name to Maki to reflect their status as the only official communist party in Israel. The party remains the leading force in Hadash to this day, and owns the Al-Ittihad newspaper
Communist Party of Israel
–
Maki
40.
Cairo
–
Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt. Cairo has long been a center of the political and cultural life. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab world, as well as the worlds second-oldest institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. Many international media, businesses, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city, with a population of 6.76 million spread over 453 square kilometers, Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt. An additional 9.5 million inhabitants live in proximity to the city. Cairo, like many other mega-cities, suffers from high levels of pollution, Cairos metro, one of only two in Africa, ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides. The economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East in 2005, Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr, the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the citys importance for the country. In Coptic the city is known as Kahire, meaning Place of the Sun, possibly referring to the ancient city of Heliopolis, the location of the ancient city is the suburb of Ain Shams. The ancient Egyptian name for the area is thought to be Khere-Ohe, The Place of Combat, sometimes the city is informally referred to as Kayro. The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, had long been a point of Ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta. However, the origins of the city are generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium. Around the turn of the 4th century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance and this fortress, known as Babylon, remained the nucleus of the Roman, and, later, the Byzantine, city and is the oldest structure in the city today. It is also situated at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, many of Cairos oldest Coptic churches, including the Hanging Church, are located along the fortress walls in a section of the city known as Coptic Cairo. Following the Muslim conquest in 640 AD the conqueror Amr ibn As settled to the north of the Babylon in an area became known as al-Fustat. Originally a tented camp Fustat became a permanent settlement and the first capital of Islamic Egypt, in 750, following the overthrow of the Ummayad caliphate by the Abbasids, the new rulers created their own settlement to the northeast of Fustat which became their capital. This was known as al-Askar as it was laid out like a military camp, a rebellion in 869 by Ahmad ibn Tulun led to the abandonment of Al Askar and the building of another settlement, which became the seat of government. This was al-Qattai, to the north of Fustat and closer to the river, Al Qattai was centred around a palace and ceremonial mosque, now known as the Mosque of ibn Tulun. In 905 the Abbasids re-asserted control of the country and their returned to Fustat
Cairo
–
Cairo القاهرة al-Qāhirah
Cairo
–
Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848-1933). On the Way between Old and New Cairo, Citadel Mosque of Mohammed Ali, and Tombs of the Mamelukes, 1872. Oil on canvas.
Brooklyn Museum
Cairo
–
A rendition of
Fustat from A. S. Rappoport's History of Egypt
Cairo
–
Cairo map 1847
41.
Beirut
–
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. No recent population census has been done but in 2007 estimates ranged from more than 1 million to slightly less than 2 million as part of Greater Beirut. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanons Mediterranean coast, Beirut is the countrys largest and it is one of the oldest cities in the world, inhabited more than 5,000 years ago. The first historical mention of Beirut is found in the ancient Egyptian Tell el Amarna letters dating from the 15th century BC, the Beirut River runs south to north on the eastern edge of the city. Beirut is Lebanons seat of government and plays a role in the Lebanese economy, with most banks and corporations based in its Central District, Badaro, Rue Verdun, Hamra. Following the destructive Lebanese Civil War, Beiruts cultural landscape underwent major reconstruction, identified and graded for accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law, Beirut is ranked as a Beta World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. In May 2015, Beirut was officially recognized as one of the New7Wonders Cities together with Vigan, Doha, Durban, Havana, Kuala Lumpur, and La Paz. Beirut I, or Minet el Hosn, was listed as Beyrouth ville by Louis Burkhalter and said to be on the beach near the Orent, the site was discovered by Lortet in 1894 and discussed by Godefroy Zumoffen in 1900. The flint industry from the site was described as Mousterian and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, Beirut II, or Umm el Khatib, was suggested by Burkhalter to have been south of Tarik el Jedideh, where P. E. Gigues discovered a Copper Age flint industry at around 100 metres above sea level, the site had been built on and destroyed by 1948. Beirut III, Furn esh Shebbak or Plateau Tabet, was suggested to have located on the left bank of the Beirut River. Burkhalter suggested that it was west of the Damascus road, although this determination has been criticized by Lorraine Copeland, P. E. Gigues discovered a series of Neolithic flint tools on the surface along with the remains of a structure suggested to be a hut circle. Auguste Bergy discussed polished axes that were found at this site. The area was covered in red sand that represented Quaternary river terraces, the site was found by Jesuit Father Dillenseger and published by fellow Jesuits Godefroy Zumoffen, Raoul Describes and Auguste Bergy. Collections from the site were made by Bergy, Describes and another Jesuit, a large number of Middle Paleolithic flint tools were found on the surface and in side gullies that drain into the river. They included around 50 varied bifaces accredited to the Acheulean period, some with a lustrous sheen, Henri Fleisch also found an Emireh point amongst material from the site, which has now disappeared beneath buildings. Levallois flints and bones and similar material were found amongst brecciated deposits. The area has now built on
Beirut
–
clockwise from top left: Mosque in Downtown Beirut, Beirut Souks, High rise construction near Manara, Place de l'etoile, Cafés in Downtown, Saifi Village
Beirut
–
Seal
Beirut
–
Canaanean Blade. Suggested to be part of a
javelin. Fresh grey
flint, both sides showing
pressure flaking. Somewhat narrower at the base, suggesting a
haft. Polished at the extreme point. Found on land of the Lebanese Evangelical School for Girls in the
Patriarchate area of Beirut.
Beirut
–
View of Beirut with snow-capped
Mount Sannine in the background – 19th century
42.
PLO Executive Committee
–
The Executive Committee is the highest executive body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the government of the State of Palestine. It has been chaired by Mahmoud Abbas since November 2004, the EC represents the organization internationally. It represents the Palestinian people, supervises the various PLO bodies, executes the policies and decisions set out by the PNC and it meets abroad and in the Palestinian territories. The Executive Committee has 18 members, elected by the Palestinian National Council, as of 2015, the EC was headed by Mahmud Abbas, who succeeded Yasser Arafat. The EC appointed Abbas Chairman within hours after Arafats death in 2004, the quorum for legitimate decisions is twelve, according to the Constitution of the PLO. On 27 August 2009, the PNC elected six new members to the EC, the vote took place in an extraordinary meeting, due to lack of the PNC quorum. Among the six elected were Ahmad Qurei and Hanan Ashrawi, some Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, boycotted the meeting. Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian Central Council Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Palestine Liberation Organization Palestinian government PALESTINIAN ORGANISATIONS, al-bab. com
PLO Executive Committee
–
State of Palestine
43.
Palestinian Declaration of Independence
–
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence is a statement written by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and proclaimed by Yasser Arafat on 15 November 1988. It had previously adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was read at the session of the 19th Palestinian National Council to a standing ovation. Upon completing the reading of the declaration, Arafat, as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization assumed the title of President of Palestine, in April 1989, the PLO Central Council elected Yasser Arafat the first President of the State of Palestine. The PLO was hence a government in exile between 1988 and 1994, in 2012, Palestine was upgraded to the status of non-member observer state in the UN. It references the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947, the Partition Plan served as the basis for Israels declaration of independence, but was not accepted by the Palestinian Arab leadership at the time. The 1988 declaration does not explicitly recognize the State of Israel, the declaration then proclaims a State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem. The borders of the state are not specified, the population of the state was referred to by the statement, The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be. The state was defined as an Arab country by the statement, The State of Palestine is an Arab state, the declaration was accompanied by a PNC call for multilateral negotiations on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242. This call was later termed the Historic Compromise, as it implied acceptance of the two-state solution, the PNCs political communiqué accompanying the declaration called only for withdrawal from Arab Jerusalem and the other Arab territories occupied. As a result of the declaration, the United Nations General Assembly convened, inviting Yasser Arafat, one hundred and four states voted for this resolution, forty-four abstained, and two - the United States and Israel - voted against. By mid-December,75 states had recognised Palestine, rising to 93 states by February 1989, on 29 November 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 67/19 upgrading Palestine to non-member observer state status in the United Nations. The draft resolution was proposed by Palestines representative at the United Nations and it, however, maintains the status of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people within the United Nations system. On 31 December 2014, the United Nations Security Council voted down a resolution demanding the end of Israeli occupation, eight members voted for the Resolution. However the resolution did not get the minimum of nine votes needed to pass the resolution, australia and the United States voted against the resolution, with the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Nigeria, South Korea and Rwanda abstaining. Society and Settlement, Jewish Land of Israel in the Twentieth Century, State University of New York Press
Palestinian Declaration of Independence
–
Area assigned for a Jewish state;
44.
Haaretz
–
It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently still in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International New York Times, both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet. In North America, it out as a weekly newspaper. It is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic, as of 2016, the newspaper had a weekday exposure rate of 3. 9% in Israel, significantly lower than the countrys other national newspapers. Haaretz was first published in 1918 as a newspaper sponsored by the British military government in Palestine, in 1919, it was taken over by a group of socialist-oriented Zionists, mainly from Russia. The newspaper was established on 18 June 1919 by a group of businessmen including prominent philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg, later, the name was shortened to Haaretz. The literary section of the paper attracted leading Hebrew writers of the time, the newspaper was initially published in Jerusalem. From 1919 to 1922, the paper was headed by a succession of editors and it was shut down briefly due to a budgetary shortfall and reopened in Tel Aviv at the beginning of 1923 under the editorship of Moshe Glickson, who held the post for 15 years. The Tel Aviv municipality granted the financial support by paying in advance for future advertisements. Salman Schocken, a wealthy German Jewish Zionist who owned a chain of department stores in Germany and his son, Gershom Schocken, became the chief editor in 1939 and held that position until his death in 1990. Until August 2006, the Schocken family owned 100% of the Haaretz Group, the deal was negotiated with the help of former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor. This deal was seen as controversial in Israel as DuMont Schaubergs father, Kurt Neven DuMont, was member of the German Nazi party, while his publishing house promoted Nazi ideology. On 12 June 2011, it was announced that Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin had purchased a 20% stake in the Haaretz Group, buying 15% from the family and this means that the Schocken family now owns 60% and M. DuMont Schauberg and Leonid Nevzlin have 20% each. In October 2012, a union strike mobilized to protest planned layoffs by the Haaretz management, as a consequence, both the Haaretz newspaper and its TheMarker business supplement were not printed for one day. According to Israel Radio, it was the first time since 1965 that a newspaper did not go to press on account of a strike, the newspapers editorial policy was defined by Gershom Schocken, who was editor-in-chief from 1939 to 1990. Schocken was succeeded as editor-in-chief by Hanoch Marmari, in 2004 David Landau replaced Marmari and was succeeded by Dov Alfon in 2008. The current editor-in-chief of the newspaper is Aluf Benn, who replaced Alfon in August 2011, charlotte Halle became editor of the English Print Edition in February 2008. Haaretz describes itself as having a liberal outlook both on domestic issues and on international affairs
Haaretz
–
Front page of the Hebrew and English editions
45.
Knesset
–
The Knesset is the unicameral national legislature of Israel. As the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister, approves the cabinet, in addition, the Knesset elects the State Comptroller. The Prime Minister may also dissolve the Knesset, however, until an election is completed, the Knesset maintains authority in its current composition. The Knesset is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, as the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the president, approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government through its committees. It also has the power to waive the immunity of its members, remove the President and the State Comptroller from office, the Knesset is presided over by a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker. The Knesset is divided into committees, which amend bills on the appropriate subjects, Committee chairpersons are chosen by their members, on recommendation of the House Committee, and their factional composition represents that of the Knesset itself. Committees may elect sub-committees and delegate powers to them, or establish joint committees for issues concerning more than one committee, to further their deliberations, they invite government ministers, senior officials, and experts in the matter being discussed. There are four types of committees in the Knesset, permanent committees amend proposed legislation dealing with their area of expertise, and may initiate legislation. However, such legislation may only deal with Basic Laws and laws dealing with the Knesset, elections to the Knesset, Knesset members, or the State Comptroller. Special committees function in a manner to permanent committees, but are appointed to deal with particular manners at hand. Parliamentary inquiry committees are appointed by the plenum to deal with issues viewed as having national importance. The Ethics Committee is responsible for jurisdiction over Knesset members who violate the rules of ethics of the Knesset, within the framework of responsibility, the Ethics Committee may place various sanctions on a member, but is not allowed to restrict a members right to vote. The Knesset numbers 120 members, a subject which has often been a cause for proposed reforms and this proposed law has also been favoured by other politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu. The 120 members of the Knesset are popularly elected from a single electoral district to concurrent four-year terms. All Israeli citizens 18 years or older may vote in legislative elections, Knesset seats are allocated among the various parties using the DHondt method of party list proportional representation. A party or electoral alliance must pass the threshold of 3. 25% of the overall vote to be allocated a Knesset seat. Parties select their candidates using a closed list, thus, voters select the party of their choice, not any specific candidate. The electoral threshold was set at 1% from 1949 to 1992, then 1. 5% from 1992 to 2003
Knesset
Knesset
Knesset
–
Knesset chamber, celebrating 61 years of the Knesset
Knesset
–
Historic engraving on the
Frumin House,
King George St., Jerusalem.
46.
Yitzhak Shamir
–
Yitzhak Shamir was an Israeli politician and the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms, 1983–84 and 1986–1992. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Shamir was a leader of the Zionist paramilitary group Lehi, after the establishment of the State of Israel he served in the Mossad between 1955 and 1965, a Knesset Member, a Knesset Speaker and a Foreign Affairs Minister. Shamir was the countrys third longest-serving prime minister after David Ben-Gurion and those close to Shamir noted that he often recalls his childhood and youth in Belarus. Shamir later moved to Białystok, Poland and studied at a Hebrew high school network, as a youth he joined Betar, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement. He studied law at the University of Warsaw, but cut his studies short to immigrate to what was then Mandatory Palestine, Shamir once stated that every Pole sucked anti-Semitism with his mothers milk. The comment caused controversy within Poland as being slanderous and libelous, the Polish writer and former resistance fighter Jan Nowak-Jeziorański commented, To conclude from the 1941 pogroms that the Holocaust was the common work of Poles and Germans is a libel. All who feel themselves to be Polish have the responsibility to defend themselves against such slander, the difference is that Poles were eyewitnesses, defenseless witnesses living in constant fear for their lives and the lives of their families. His parents and two died during the Holocaust. However this story has never confirmed by other sources. His mother and a sister died in the camps and another sister was shot dead. According to an obituary, he had dreamed of living in the Land of Israel since he was a boy, in 1935, Shamir emigrated to Palestine, where he worked in an accountants office. He later adopted as his surname the name he used on a forged underground identity card and he told his wife this was because Shamir means a thorn that stabs and a rock that can cut steel. In 1944 he married Shulamit, whom he met in a detention camp when she migrated to Mandate Palestine from Bulgaria by boat in 1941 and was incarcerated because she entered the territory illegally and they had two children, Yair and Gilada. Shulamit died on July 29,2011, Shamir joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Zionist paramilitary group that opposed British control of Palestine. When the Irgun split in 1940, Shamir joined the militant faction Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang. In 1941 Shamir was imprisoned by British authorities, Shamir, together with Giladi, Anshell Shpillman and Yehoshua Cohen, reorganized the movement into cells and trained its members. In 1943, he one of the three leaders of the group, serving with Nathan Yellin-Mor and Israel Eldad. Shamir sought to emulate the anti-British struggle of the Irish Republicans, Shamir plotted the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister for Middle East Affairs, and personally selected Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri to carry it out
Yitzhak Shamir
–
Yitzhak Shamir (5 June 1980)
Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzhak Shamir
–
Shamir in the 1940s
Yitzhak Shamir
–
Wanted Poster of the
Palestine Police Force offering rewards for the capture of Lehi members: Yaakov Levstein (Eliav), left, Yitzhak Yezernitzky (Shamir), center, and Natan Friedman-Yelin (Yellin-Mor), right.
47.
West Bank
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The West Bank shares boundaries to the west, north, and south with Israel, and to the east, across the Jordan River, with Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has a land area of 5,640 km2 plus a water area of 220 km2, consisting of the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea. As of July 2015 it has an population of 2,785,366 Palestinians, and approximately 371,000 Israeli settlers. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal under international law and this annexation was recognized only by Britain, Iraq and Pakistan. The term was chosen to differentiate the west bank of the River Jordan from the east bank of this river, the neo-Latin name Cisjordan or Cis-Jordan is the usual name for the territory in the Romance languages and Hungarian. The name West Bank, however, has become the standard usage for this entity in English. The analogous Transjordan has historically used to designate the region now roughly comprising the state of Jordan. From 1517 through 1917, the now known as the West Bank was under Ottoman rule as part of the provinces of Syria. At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allied powers allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine, the San Remo Resolution adopted on 25 April 1920 incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations were the basic documents upon which the British Mandate for Palestine was constructed. Faced with the determination of Emir Abdullah to unify Arab lands under the Hashemite banner, the West Bank area, was conquered by Jordan during the 1948 war with the new state of Israel. In 1947, it was designated as part of a proposed Arab state by the United Nations partition plan for Palestine. 1949 Armistice Agreements defined the boundary between Israel and Jordan. In 1950, Transjordan annexed the area west of the Jordan River, naming it West Bank or Cisjordan, Jordan ruled over the West Bank from 1948 until 1967. Jordans annexation was never recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom. King Abdullah of Jordan had been crowned King of Jerusalem by the Coptic Bishop on 15 November 1948. and granted Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, in June 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were captured by Israel as a result of the Six-Day War. With the exception of East Jerusalem and the former Israeli-Jordanian no mans land, the Israeli settlements were, on the other hand, administered subsequently as Judea and Samaria Area directly by Israel. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority officially controls a geographically non-contiguous territory comprising approx, 11% of the West Bank which remains subject to Israeli incursions
West Bank
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City of
Salfit, West Bank
West Bank
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City of
Bethlehem, West Bank
West Bank
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The Cave of the Patriarchs is one of the most famous holy sites in the region.
West Bank
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City of
Jericho, West Bank
48.
Gaza Strip
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Gaza, together with the West Bank, comprise the Palestinian territories claimed by the Palestinians as the State of Palestine. The territories of Gaza and the West Bank are separated from each other by Israeli territory, both fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, but Gaza has since June 2007 been governed by Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic organization which came to power in free elections in 2006. It has been placed under an Israeli and U. S. -led international economic, the territory is 41 kilometers long, and from 6 to 12 kilometers wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers. With around 1.85 million Palestinians on some 362 square kilometers, an extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gazas Palestinians. Gaza has a population growth rate of 2. 91%, the 13th highest in the world. The population is expected to increase to 2.1 million in 2020, by that time, Gaza may be rendered unliveable, if present trends continue. Due to the Israeli and Egyptian border closures and the Israeli sea and air blockade, Sunni Muslims make up the predominant part of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. Israel maintains direct control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza, it controls Gazas air and maritime space. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military, Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election,2006, Fatah refused to join the proposed coalition, when this collapsed under joint Israeli and United States pressure, the Palestinian Authority instituted a non-Hamas government in the West Bank while Hamas formed a government on its own in Gaza. Further economic sanctions were imposed by Israel and the European Quartet against Hamas, a brief civil war between the two groups had broken out in Gaza when, apparently under a U. S. -backed plan, Fatah contested Hamas’s administration. Hamas emerged the victor and expelled Fatah-allied officials and members of the PAs security apparatus from the Strip, since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been de facto governed by Hamas, which claims to represent the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian people. Israel maintains direct control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza, it controls Gazas air and maritime space. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military, Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The Gaza Strip acquired its current northern and eastern boundaries at the cessation of fighting in the 1948 war, article V of the Agreement declared that the demarcation line was not to be an international border. At first the Gaza Strip was officially administered by the All-Palestine Government, All-Palestine in the Gaza Strip was managed under the military authority of Egypt, functioning as a puppet state, until it officially merged into the United Arab Republic and dissolved in 1959. From the time of the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government until 1967, Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip under their unilateral disengagement plan, in July 2007, after winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas became the elected government
Gaza Strip
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Gaza Strip, with Israeli-controlled borders and limited fishing zone
Gaza Strip
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Flag of the State of Palestine, which claims the Strip
Gaza Strip
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Gaza City skyline, 2007
Gaza Strip
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Downtown Gaza, 2012
49.
Qalqiliya
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Qalqilya, is a Palestinian city in the West Bank. Qalqilya serves as the center of the Qalqilya Governorate. In the official 2007 census the city had a population of 41,739, Qalqilya is surrounded by the Israeli West Bank barrier with a narrow gap in the east controlled by the Israeli military and a tunnel to Hableh. The vicinity of Qalqilya has been populated since prehistoric times, as attested to by the discovery of flint tools. In 1596, Qalqilya appeared in Ottoman tax registers as a village in the nahiya of Bani Sab in the Liwa of Nablus and it had a population of 13 Muslim households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summercrops, olives, and goats or beehives. In 1882, Qalqilya was described as A large somewhat straggling village, with cisterns to the north, according to the Qalqilya Municipality, the modern city was founded in 1893 by residents of nearby Baqat al-Hatab. A municipal council to administer Qalqilya was established in 1909, in the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Qalqilya had a population of 2,803, increasing in the 1931 census to 3,867, in a total of 796 houses. In 1945 the population of Qalqilya was 5,850, all Arabs, of this,3701 dunams were for citrus and bananas,3,232 were plantations and irrigable land,16,197 used for cereals, while 273 dunams were built-up land. In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, during the war, many inhabitants from nearby and currently depopulated villages, including Kafr Saba, Abu Kishk, Miska, Biyar Adas and Shaykh Muwannis fled to Qalqilya as refugees. On the night of 10 October 1956 the Israeli army launched a raid against Qalqilya police station, the attack was ordered by Moshe Dayan and involved several thousand soldiers. During the fighting a paratroop company was surrounded by Jordanian troops, eighteen Israelis and between 70 and 90 Jordanians were killed in the operation. Qalqilya was occupied by Israeli forces during the Six-Day War in 1967, after the conquest of Qalqilya in 1967, dozens of its inhabitants were evicted by Israel to Jordan, and at least 850 buildings were razed. In his memoirs, Moshe Dayan described the destruction as a punishment that was designed to chase the inhabitants away, the villagers were eventually allowed to return and the reconstruction of damaged houses was financed by the military authorities. In September 1967, a census found 8,922 persons, as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, control of Qalqilya was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority on 17 December 1995. In 2003, the Israeli West Bank barrier was built, encircling the town, in November 2015, Israel arrested what it alleged to be a network of 24 Hamas militants active in the city. Qalqilya is located in the northwestern West Bank, straddling the border with Israel, Qalqilya has an average elevation of 57 meters above sea level. The average annual rainfall 587.4 millimeters and the annual temperature is 19 degrees Celsius. The 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics recorded Qalqilyas population to be 22,168, the majority of the inhabitants were Palestinian refugees or their descendants
Qalqiliya
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View of Qalqilya
Qalqiliya
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Martyrs' monument
Qalqiliya
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Route of separation fence around Qalqilya and
Hableh
50.
1982 Lebanon War
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The military operation was launched after gunmen from Abu Nidals organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israels ambassador to the United Kingdom. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blamed Abu Nidals enemy, the PLO, for the incident, the PLO, under the chairmanship of Yasser Arafat, had relocated its headquarters to Tripoli in June 1982. Following the assassination of Gemayel in September 1982, Israels position in Beirut became untenable and the signing of a peace treaty became increasingly unlikely. After Israeli forces withdrew from most of Lebanon, the War of the Camps broke out between Lebanese factions, the remains of the PLO and Syria, in which Syria fought its former Palestinian allies. At the same time, Shia militant groups began consolidating and waging a low-intensity guerrilla war over the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Civil War would continue until 1990, at which point Syria had established complete dominance over Lebanon. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Lebanon became home to more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees, after their settlements in Palestine and Israel had been depopulated as a result of the war. After its founding in 1964 and the radicalization among Palestinians, which followed the Six Day War, continual violence near the Lebanese border occurred between Israel and the PLO starting from 1968, this peaked, following the relocation of PLO bases to Lebanon after the civil war in Jordan. The violence between Israel and the PLO peaked during Operation Litani in 1978, provoked by the Coastal Road Massacre which was carried out by Palestinian militants, as early as 1976, Israel had been assisting Lebanese Christian militias in their sporadic battles against the PLO. But Israels main partner was to be the Maronite Phalange party, whose paramilitary was led by Bashir Gemayel, gemayels strategy during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War was to provoke the Syrians into retaliatory attacks on Christians, such that Israel could not ignore. In 1978, Menachem Begin declared that Israel would not allow a genocide of Lebanese Christians, hundreds of Lebanese militiamen began to train in Israel, at the IDF Staff and Command College. During the period June to December 1980 the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon recorded an increase in activities along the border zone, during the same period Israel protested numerous attacks by Palestinian forces, unrelated to the Lebanese border zone. In contrast the IDF had launched attacks on Lebanese territory often in support of the Lebanese Christian militia. In doing so Israel had violated UN Security Council resolution 425 on hundreds of occasions, in the subsequent period 16 June to 10 December 1981, a relative quiet was reported continuing from 29 May 1981 until 10 July. This was broken when Israeli aircraft resumed strikes against targets in southern Lebanon north of the UNIFIL area, led to exchanges of heavy firing between armed elements, on the one hand, and IDF and the de facto forces on the other. On 13 and 14 July, widespread Israeli air-strikes continued, armed elements fired into the enclave and northern Israel. Israeli-initiated attacks had led to rocket and artillery fire on northern Israel and this pattern continued in the coming days. Israel renewed its air strikes in an attempt to trigger a war that would allow it to out the PLO. On 17 July, the Israel Air Force launched an attack on PLO buildings in downtown Beirut
1982 Lebanon War
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Lebanese troops in Beirut, 1982
1982 Lebanon War
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Israeli troops in south Lebanon
1982 Lebanon War
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An aerial view of the stadium used as an ammunition supply site for the PLO, after Israeli airstrikes in 1982.
1982 Lebanon War
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IAF Cobra gunships on military exercise. These attack helicopters were successfully employed against Syrian
AFVs during the conflict.
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