International solidarity activists accuse Israeli military of break-in
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – May 04, 2010
When their apartment in Hebron was broken into on Saturday May 1st, the international solidarity activists stationed there said they have strong evidence that it was the Israeli military that carried out the illegal robbery.
They say that they were suspicious that this was not a regular robbery because laptops, video cameras, and flash drives were stolen – but not cash and credit cards that were left in the apartment. Similar items were taken by the Israeli military when they twice raided the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)’s office in Ramallah in February of this year.
ISM activist Beatrice Smith said, “It seems likely that this was Shin Bet [the Israeli Intelligence Service]. Our neighbours have told us twice in the past week or so that soldiers have been coming up to our apartment when we’re out and they’ve been looking through the windows. If it was a normal robber, why would they have left cash and credit cards, but taken USB sticks and memory cards? This person wanted information, not money”.
The robbery follows a recently released affidavit from Shin Bet to the Israeli High Court of Justice. In it, they admit that they have been keeping close surveillance on ISM activist Bridget Chappell, seemingly for the past several months.
Smith says, “It is clear from the surveillance and arrest of our activists, from the previous raids on our office in Ramallah, and now from the break-in here in Hebron that the Israeli authorities are determined to do all they can to stop us working here. They know that we’re non-violent, but they are scared because they don’t want the outside world to know what they are doing here. Anybody who comes here to bear witness to the occupation is a threat to them”.
Settlers take over Beit Safafa home
Ma’an – 03/05/2010
A Jewish settler squatting in a Palestinian home in Hebron in 2006 [MaanImages/Mamoun Wazwaz]
Jerusalem – East Jerusalem residents of the Beit Safafa neighborhood said Israeli police accompanied a group of settlers into the area Sunday night, where they took over a family home and set up dozens of flags overnight.
Witnesses described a moderate police presence entering the neighborhood south of the Old City. Officers reportedly entered the home and forced the two elderly residents to evacuate the building, after which at least a dozen settlers moved in.
Upon the eviction of the family, one man described, “the settlers started dancing in the yard,” and immediately began installing strings of Israeli flags around the building.
Muhammad Ibrahim Salah, resident of a nearby building and son of the man evicted on Sunday, said the eviction threatens the lives and livelihoods of at least 40 men, women and children who live on family land around the targeted building. He said the home is in the center of the family lands, where other buildings belonging to the family also stand. Sahal explained that he was worried about the fate of other buildings.
An Israeli police spokesman said he would look into the report.
On 28 April, residents said settlers evicted two elderly Palestinians from the Salah family, with an order issued by the Israeli High Court. It was not immediately clear whether the couple had moved back into the home, or if a second family was targeted.
Hajj Ali Ibrahim Salah, 99, and his wife Sheha Hassan Ali, 90, said they had lived in the home for their entire married lives, noting settler court action “started in 1993, when settlers first alleged that they bought the land where our house is built.”
The elderly man insisted that his late father bought the home with valid legal papers.
Ongoing antagonism
In October 2009, the Salah family reported being attacked by 12 settlers, though Israeli media reports at the time said the number was six while police said three.
Witnesses said the settler group pulled up to the home in a car, carrying an eviction order for the family home of Ali Ibrahim Salah and his children – the same home of the on Sunday night eviction.
At the time, Salah said the buildings sheltered 55 residents, 30 of whom were under the age of 12 and include his children, Ismail, Mohammad, Mahmoud, Ahmad. He said the settlers claimed they bought the homes from their Armenian owners.
An argument erupted as the settlers demanded the family get out of their home. One of the settlers, reportedly all in their 50s, was armed with a gun, and fired on the family members. Sources said between one and four Palestinians were injured.
The Israeli online news site Ynet said the middle-aged extremists fled the scene after the shooting, but were later found and arrested.
An Israeli police spokesman had a different version of the incident, saying, “Three Jewish people came to the home in Beit Safafa to deliver the eviction order to the family then fighting erupted. It seems one of the Jewish people opened fire with his personal weapon and injured one of the Arab residents in the hand… then the Jewish people fled the scene driving their car.”
Undercover Forces Kidnap Six Children in Raid on Village
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – May 03, 2010
The Palestine Solidarity Project reported that undercover forces of the Israeli army kidnapped six children in Beit Ummar town, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and handed them to the army on Sunday evening.
The undercover forces, dressed as Palestinians, drove into the town in a White Ford Transit carrying a Palestinian license plate, and kidnapped six children, aged between 13 and 16. The forces then hurled several stun grenades and fired tear gas bombs into the narrow streets of the town and drove away.
One undercover soldier was hit in the head by a stone hurled by one of the protesters during clashes with the invading forces. Mohammad Awad, spokesperson for the Palestine Solidarity Project, stated that clashes took place near the Karmie Tzur illegal settlement, installed on Palestinian lands. Awad stated that it is believed that the kidnapped six youth were taken to the Karmie Tzur settlement.
Four of the six kidnapped children were identified as Hussein Shihda Sleiby, 16, Rashid Mohammad Awad, 15, Ali Said Sabarna, 16, and Odai Saady Ikhlayyil, 13.
On Sunday evening, a number of fundamentalist settlers of the Karmie Tzur settlement held a demonstration at Highway 60 and attacked several Palestinian villagers of Beit Ummar. The police arrived at the scene and used loud speakers to order the villagers back to their homes and fired tear gas and stun grenades at them instead of removing the settlers.
The army used excessive force against the villagers who were protesting the illegal settler-takeover of their land and the destruction of dozens of trees.
The Palestine Solidarity Project reported that Israeli soldiers were filmed in recent weeks while attacking and beating journalists. Also, a 10-year-old child was shot with a rubber coated bullet by soldiers from Karmie Tzur.
Video: Settler shoots at Palestinian demonstrators with soldiers present
Video: Qassem Saleh, resident of Asira al-Qibliya, volunteer with BTselems camera distribution project
On Friday, 26.2.2010, residents of the village of Asira al-Qibliya in Nablus District held a joint demonstration with Israeli activists from Combatants for Peace and Rabbis for Human Rights, protesting takeover of their lands by settlers. During the demonstration, youths from the village went over to a guard tent that settlers had erected near the outpost and took it down. Following their action, soldiers and armed settlers arrived at the scene. The soldiers fired tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets at the demonstrators, and a settler standing near them opened fire from an M-16 rifle at the demonstrators, who posed no danger as they were running away from the spot.
Volvo equipment: Israel’s weapons to destroy al-Walaja homes
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 29 April 2010
On 16 April, approximately 100 Palestinian villagers and internationals walked towards the construction site of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank village of al-Walaja, four kilometers northwest of Bethlehem. When the protesters were leaving the village, four Israeli army jeeps and one police vehicle entered and surrounded a Palestinian home. At least 40 persons, including women and children, were trapped for two hours.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided several other homes, detaining three young men for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli forces. During the raids al-Walaja was closed off, and soldiers prevented the media from entering the area.
Six days later, Israeli bulldozers were working full speed deeper inside the village’s lands, leaving destruction in their wake. Ma’an news agency reported that border guards and soldiers had imposed a curfew early in the morning. A cameraman was denied entry to the village by the army, according to representatives of the village’s Popular Committee.
The following day approximately 200 villagers, together with a few internationals, came together for yet another demonstration. They walked from the mosque, which has an Israeli-imposed demolition order against it, to the lands which were bulldozed the previous day. Standing on the bulldozed lands, representatives of the village held speeches calling for more demonstrations. Youths used boulders to block the road used by the Israeli bulldozer operators.
A day later, approximately 50 Palestinians and internationals managed to stop the work of the bulldozers for several hours. The Israeli soldiers had to violently drag the villagers away one by one.
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| An uprooted olive tree in al-Walaja with the Har Gilo settlement seen in the background. |
History of injustices
The residents of al-Walaja have protested the confiscation and demolition of their property for many years. The Israeli settlements of Har Gilo and Gilo, established in the 1970s, are built on land confiscated from the village. While Israeli forces try to silence the protesters with harsh measures, Volvo and Caterpillar equipment is used by the Israeli forces in the illegal construction of the wall on the village’s land.
The old village of al-Walaja was occupied and destroyed by Zionist forces in October 1948 and its 1,200 Palestinian residents expelled. The 1948 Armistice line passed through the southern lands of the village and while most of the villagers fled to Jordan and Bethlehem, some villagers stayed on the lands of the village that were unoccupied at the time and eventually rebuilt a new town.
The remains of the old village of al-Walaja are two kilometers outside the new town, on the western side of the armistice line between Israel and the West Bank. According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, a few stone houses still stand on the old village site. Today the old village of al-Walaja is used by Israeli settlers for picnicking and bathing.
Following the June 1967 war, Israel annexed the rest of al-Walaja’s lands, bringing them under the authority of the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality. The villagers did not receive the right to live in Jerusalem, however, and they live under constant threat of expulsion. And while the villagers of al-Walaja are not allowed to build on their own lands, the settlement of Har Gilo is expanding.
After the Oslo accords of 1993, al-Walaja was designated “Area C,” giving Israel full military and administrative control. As a consequence, villagers who want to build a house on their own land have to ask permission from Israel. Israel denied 94 percent of the building permit requests of Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank from 2000 to 2007, according to Peace Now.
Villagers are facing increased pressure from the Israeli occupation forces to leave their land. The wall which is currently under construction will surround the village from all sides, isolating the villagers completely from their land, East Jerusalem and the old village.
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| Israel uses Volvo equipment to destroy homes and farmland in al-Walaja. |
Volvo equipment destroying homes
At the end of the 1980s Israel started to demolish Palestinian homes in al-Walaja and residents had to pay fines for their “illegally”-built homes. Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, Israeli forces demolished more than 24 houses in the village, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem.
On 18 March two house owners in al-Walaja found military orders in Hebrew on the front doors of their homes. The orders concern the demolition of the two houses because they are located too close to the path along which the wall will be built. The following day, volunteers from the Stop the Wall Campaign, the YMCA and other international volunteers gathered with the owners of the houses under demolition in order to show their solidarity.
ActiveStills photographer Anne Paq witnessed Volvo equipment being used to destroy a home in the nearby village of al-Khader. Two days earlier she had taken pictures of Volvo and Caterpillar equipment working between the road and the fence of Har Gilo settlement, just a few meters away from Palestinian houses in al-Walaja. There was an Israeli police car parked next to the works. When Paq asked what they were building, they refused to answer.
Two years ago The Electronic Intifada first reported the use of Volvo equipment in Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied West Bank. So far the company has taken no action to investigate the use of its equipment in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
Volvo Group’s vice president of media relations and corporate news, Marten Wikforss, wrote in response to The Electronic Intifada’s report: “we do not have any control over the use of our products, other than to affirm in our business activities a Code of Conduct that decries unethical behavior.”
While the villagers of al-Walaja steadfastly continue their protest against the construction of the wall, the confiscation of their land and the destruction of their property, Israeli forces are increasing the oppression. Some houses have been rebuilt three or four times. Director of the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA, Nidal Abu Zuluf, explained: “Israel’s current repressive policies aim to prevent acts of popular resistance. They don’t want the media and internationals to be around.”
Perhaps neither does Volvo, as its equipment continues to be photographed destroying Palestinian homes and violating Palestinian rights.
Walled Horizons
OCHAoPt — November 11, 2009 — Walled Horizons is narrated by and features Roger Waters (founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd), who visits the Wall in the Palestinian territories and comments on his observations as a musician and a songwriter who has written on walls. The film explores how Palestinians in urban and rural areas have been impacted by the Walls construction since the International Court of Justices Advisory Opinion in 2004, which declared the Wall’s route in the West Bank illegal. Several senior Israeli security officials are interviewed in the film, two of whom were directly responsible for planning the Wall route and who explain the Israeli position for constructing it. The film was made by the United Nations Jerusalem. http://www.ochaopt.org
“Egypt Responsible For The Death Of Four, Gassed In Tunnel”
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – April 29, 2010
Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri, media spokesperson of the Hamas movement, held the Egyptian Authorities responsible for the death of four Palestinians who died in a tunnel after Egypt’s Border Police gassed it.
Abu Zuhri demanded Egypt to conduct an immediate probe into the issue, and to prosecute those in charge.
Speaking at a press conference in Gaza, Abu Zuhri said that Hamas is following the developments, and strongly denounced Egypt for using gas against the residents. Besides the four who were gassed to death, two residents are currently in serious conditions. He added that this is not the first time Egypt uses gas in the tunnels as 45 residents previously died after being gassed in different tunnels, and a total of 145 residents were killed in different accidents and incidents.
The Hamas spokesperson said that the Palestinians need the tunnels, and resorted to them due to the urgent necessity due to the ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip. He further stated that the solution is not killing the residents, and added that the solution is opening all border terminals.
Abu Zuhri demanded the Arab League to act immediately and end the siege.
Photo credit – Ma’an Images
Defending their land
ActiveStills — April 26, 2010
Report from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators managed to stop the construction of the Wall in the village of al Walaja, south of Jerusalem for the second time this week. If completed, the path of the Wall in the area will surround the village completely, isolating it from all its lands, the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and essentially the rest of the world.
Demonstrators managed to block the bulldozers in the early morning, and even climb and take over one of the machines. A Border Police force at the scene arrested on of the demonstrators – 15 year old Nabil Hajajla – who was beaten and pepper-sprayed. Following Hajajla’s arrest, Border Police officers managed to drag the demonstrators away from the bulldosers and construction was resumed.
Al-Walaja is an agrarian village of about 2,000 people, located south of Jerusalem and West of Bethlehem. Following the 1967 Occupation of the West Bank and the redrawing of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, roughly half the village was annexed by Israel and included in the Jerusalem municipal area. The village’s residents, however did not receive Israeli residency or citizenship, and are considered illegal in their own homes.
Once completed, the path of the Wall is designed to encircle the village’s built-up area entirely, separating the residents from both Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and almost all their lands – roughly 5,000 dunams. Previously, Israeli authorities have already confiscated approximately half of the village’s lands for the building of the Har Gilo and Gilo settlements, and closed off areas to the south and west of it. The town’s inhabitants have also experienced the cutting down of fruit orchards and house demolition due to the absence of building permits in Area C.
According to a military confiscation order handed to the villagers, the path of the Wall will stretch over 4890 meters between Beit Jala and alWallaja, affecting 35 families, whose homes may be slated for demolition.
Beit Jala is a predominantly Christian town located 10 km south of Jerusalem, on the western side of the Hebron road, opposite Bethlehem. Once completed, he Wall will Isolate 3,200 Dunams of the town’s lands, including almost 3,000 Dunams of olive groves and the only recreational forest in the area, the Cremisan monastery and the Cremisan Cellars winery.
Settler Sewage Ruins Palestinian Crops, Drinking Water
By Mel Frykberg | IPS | April 28, 2010
BEIT UMMAR, West Bank – Residents of this Palestinian village refuse to buy the idea that the flood of raw sewage from the adjacent Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion, that destroyed vineyards and contaminated their drinking water, was an accident.
The Israeli Civil Administration, which administers the occupied West Bank, claims the spillage was the result of an accidental power malfunction which caused excess settlement sewage to overflow onto Palestinian land.
“This was no mistake,” says a British activist who has been documenting life in the village for several months. “The pipe was deliberately unscrewed by hand so that the sewage would spill over into Beit Ummar. That has nothing to do with an electricity cut,” he told IPS.
Villagers standing near a completely destroyed 70,000 sq m vineyard belonging to the Sabarneh family said they believe it was a deliberate act of sabotage and part of a concerted campaign by the settlers to harass their Palestinian neighbours and vandalise their property.
Beit Ummar has been the target of a number of Israeli military raids at night last month. Activists who have been organising non-violent protests against the expropriation of their land for the settlements have been arrested and the village blockaded.
In a similar incident last week the Palestinian village of Bruqin, in the northern West Bank, was flooded with sewage from the nearby Ariel settlement, causing contamination of underground water and springs and damaging crops.
These incidents are part of a larger problem of scarce water resources where a Palestinian population of 2.5 million survives on 17 percent of the West Bank’s main underground aquifer.
The remaining water is channelled towards the West Bank’s (including East Jerusalem) 500,000 Israeli settlers, and into Israel proper.
The water shortage is compounded by the lack of wastewater treatment plants and inefficient treatment of waste and sewage in the Palestinian territory which fouls its water sources.
Israeli rights group B’tselem released a study last year called ‘Foul Play: Neglect of wastewater treatment in the West Bank’.
According to the organisation, more than 90 percent of Palestinian wastewater is not treated while only 20 percent of Palestinian homes, primarily in towns and cities, are connected to sewerage systems.
Furthermore, only 81 of 121 illegal Israeli settlements are connected to wastewater treatment facilities. Over half of the settlements’ treatment plants are too small to treat waste effectively and are ill-equipped to handle the burgeoning settler population.
The result is continual technical breakdowns and sewage overflow. Most of the settlements are situated on ridges and hilltops so sewage flows down towards the Palestinian villages and towns in the valleys below, contaminating their drinking water supplies and destroying their crops.
The Israeli settlers are not affected by this as they are connected to Israel’s water supply.
The planning and building authorities in the settlements and Israeli industrial areas also ignore Jordanian building and planning laws which govern how wastewater is to be treated in the West Bank.
The B’tselem report further outlines the neglect of the territory’s water treatment plants by the Israeli Civil Administration during the decades of occupation and the current difficulties faced by Palestinian Authority (PA) water officials in trying to build new wastewater treatment plants or repair the old ones.
There is currently only one wastewater treatment plant operating in the West Bank in Ramallah. Three others have ceased to function and the PA has been unable to repair them or build new ones.
The West Bank is divided into Area A, which is under Palestinian control, Area B under joint Palestinian and Israeli control, and Area C which is under full Israeli control.
Area C comprises 60 percent of the West Bank. Areas A and B are mostly built up with little free land available.
However, in order to move around or build new wastewater treatment plants in Area C Palestinian officials from the PA Environment Authority require building permits from the Israeli Civil Administration.
B’tselem and PA officials complain of the delays these officials face in getting building approval if they get them at all.
“There is an enormous amount of red tape and bureaucracy that Palestinian officials have to overcome before they get the permits,” says Eyal Hareuveni, the author of the B’tselem report.
“The Israeli Civil Administration says that the Palestinians don’t provide the necessary detailed building plans as they have been instructed but I think the administration is being deliberately difficult,” Hareuveni told IPS.
Issa Moussa from the PA’s Environmental Authority denied that the PA provided insufficient details.
“We have the case of wanting to build a new wastewater treatment plant in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. We provided absolutely everything requested but we were still waiting for a permit,” Moussa told IPS.xxxxx
Other difficulties facing the more efficient handling of wastewater are the restrictions placed on Palestinian movement in the West Bank by the Israeli military. This has led to increased costs for donors who support wastewater projects and who in turn have cut down on their expenditure.
A Joint Water Committee between Israel and the PA was established following the Oslo Peace Accord of 1993, to address water issues.
One of the disputes between the sides is the Israeli insistence that settlement sewage be connected to future Palestinian wastewater treatment plants.
The Palestinians reject this as this implies that the settlements are permanent and say their refusal to approve this condition is one of the reasons for approval being withheld on the construction of wastewater plants.
With no higher authority to settle the disagreement the situation will only worsen in the future.
“Neither side seems to be making the urgent issue of water and waste treatment a priority,” Hareuveni told IPS.
Japan premier approval rating drops
Press TV – April 26, 2010
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s approval rating has dropped sharply as a row over the US military presence heats up in the country. More than two-thirds of the respondents to an opinion poll published by the Nikkei newspaper have disapproved of Hatoyama’s policies. The survey shows that public disapproval of Hatoyama’s performance has jumped by more than ten percent in just a month.
The survey comes a day after tens of thousands of protesters rallied on the southern island of Okinawa. They gathered to call on Tokyo to move an unpopular US airbase off the island. The protesters lambasted the primier for failing to keep his campaign promise of moving the base to another location or even outside the country.
Hatoyama is facing growing criticism over his failure to settle the row over the base. The Japanese premier has promised to resolve the matter before the end of May. Fifty-seven percent say Hatoyama should resign if he does not meet his deadline to resolve the dispute.
Some 47,000 US troops are based in Japan, with more than half of the soldiers stationed in Okinawa. The issue has threatened the political future of Hatoyama with both Washington and his political allies putting him under pressure to find a solution to the deadlock.
Afghan anti-US protest turns violent
Press TV – April 25, 2010
A crowd of hundreds block a highway in central Afghanistan and have torched five NATO fuel tankers to protest the killing of three people by US-led forces.
US and Afghan troops raided a house in Puli Alam, capital of Lugar Province south of Kabul, killing three men and arresting two others on Saturday. This is while the Afghans assert the occupants of the house were innocent civilians.
Early Sunday, hundreds of local residents blocked the main highway linking the capital city to the southeastern provinces, Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the provincial governor, told a Press TV correspondent.
“The protestors burned five tankers that were transporting fuel to NATO forces in the province,” he said, adding that they were dispersed by police. Demonstrators chanted anti-US and anti-government slogans, asking for an independent investigation into the killings.
“Most of the protesters are relatives of the three dead men,” Darwish said, adding that the provincial governor had assigned a team to investigate the incident. The protest came two days after another demonstration in the same area by residents slamming the US forces for killing five civilians during a raid on Thursday.
Erekat: Israel incites settler violence
Press TV – April 22, 2010
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has blasted Tel Aviv for inciting a new wave of Israeli settler violence as part of a culture of vandalism and extremism.
“Settler violence and the wanton destruction of Palestinian property replicate what is being done on a much larger scale by Israel as it pushes ahead with illegal settlement construction across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (al-Quds),” Erekat said in a statement on Wednesday.
“They bring into full view the violence that underpins Israel’s policy of illegal settlement construction and the cost to Palestinians,” he added.
The Palestinian official described Israeli settlers as the direct beneficiaries of Tel Aviv’s policy which encourages occupying Palestinians’ land and demolishing their houses to further expand its “apartheid system that promotes settlements by stripping Palestinians of their basic rights and freedoms.”
“The result is a culture of violence, hatred and extremism in which Israeli settlers, often accompanied by Israeli soldiers, run riot across the West Bank,” Erekat noted.
The remarks come a day after a group of residents from the Israeli settlement of Givat Hayovel uprooted 250 olive tree seedlings planted by Palestinian farmers in the village of Qaryut to mark Earth Day.
On Monday, settlers attacked the General Union of Palestinian Workers’ housing complex in Ein Sinyia, north of Ramallah, destroying water tanks and nearby property.
Israeli settlers also vandalized a mosque in the village of Huwwara last week and painted racist slogans on its walls. They also torched two cars and damaged more than 300 olive trees.
Erekat charged Israeli officials with encouraging extremists “to intimidate and destroy at will, armed with the absurd notion that they have a divine right to steal, to vandalize and to persecute another people.”
He reiterated his criticism of Israel’s refusal to halt expansion of illegal West Bank settlements as “the major obstacle to peace and the greatest threat to the two-state solution.”
The settlements “are a black hole in which hopes of peace are fast disappearing,” he warned.
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From the Archives
The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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