Law of Return

"that Palestinian refugees from 1948 should be allowed to return to homes in what has become Israel - a move that threatens Israel's very existence as a Jewish state. " (BBC)

a very good example of spin where one thing is made to look as the direct cause of another: especially when the result is "threatening Israel's existence" which is the most unforgivable thing in the book. Once you read the word "threat", the preceding proposition of course becomes unacceptable to liberal minds in Europe, without really reading or trying to understand what the proposition is:
simply that people should be able to return to their homes

Bab al-Asbat

(Lonely Planet: Although Süleyman called it Bab al-Ghor the name never stuck and it became known as St. Stephen's Gate)

Is this the gate
that we negotiated
with the taxi driver
for him to take us to the closest entry
to the Holy of Holies,
during that bit of night
when it is another day when you might
tell a black thread from the white

is this the gate
that launched a thousand...
no, unleashed a squadron
of Israeli soldiers
to 'capture' the city
and whose fame is now immortalized
on the wall of the muslim graveyard
that might be home to martyrs
other than St. Stephen?

is this the gate
that Palestinian school children
come in through early Sunday morning
to commit to heart verses from the Koran
that mentions the masjid?
the masjid in whose memory
Helena built Hagia Sophia,
and Süleyman built Süleymaniye
and these walls and gates
protecting his home away from home,
his Constaninople away from Masjid al-Aqsa

Bab al-Asbat
that finds no room in annals of today
but shall forever remain in the taste of the bread we broke
making our way towards home
during that bit of day
when you just start to be able to tell
the black thread from the white.

Tire 16.03.08

They were here before us
we were here before us

My great grandfather who fled
(a flight similar to those who were here before us)
to found a dynasty, here on this patch of earth
one that perpetually warred
perpetually laid to ruin
all that he had ferreted
inherited
from those
that were here before us

we were here before us

the birds still chant
to the same tune
tempered by marble columns
imported from the ends of the Empire

red earth brick and round shaped domes
and that colour of blue in the sky
over the same old grey-green olive trees
they still chant in concert
with the church bells
and the call of the müezzin

they still sing to the birth of the praised one
as I today salute the dead
great grandfather who fled
and thus was named
"Gacan".

In Judea

A stone's throw from Jerusalem
I was running away from one Abraham to another

But he
he was a sight to see
as if bargaining for his life
as he asked
to pass

and slowly
yet surely
waiting at the gates
wailing at the gates
someone else's longing
became mine
yet again

in perpetual resistance
in perpetual surrender
we set offf
yet again
on Via Dolorosa.