SYRIA: WARNING..."A False Flag" anticipated in Syria"

mage: The symbols for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The West is the undisputed champion of deploying each of these weapons of mass destruction against their enemies - from nuclear bombs upon Japan, to depleted uranium and white phosphorus upon Iraq, to Agent Orange all across Vietnam - it stands to reason that these weapons would eventually end up in the hands of the their proxies as well. 

 

British Paper Claims Western Troops are in Syria

 

With zero mandate, SAS allegedly "hunts for WMDs" as West attempts incremental intervention at any cost. 

by Tony Cartalucci - Sunday, August 26, 2012

The British Daily Star has reported in their article, "SAS HUNT BIO ARMS," that, "nearly 200 elite SAS and SBS troops are in or around Syria hunting for Assad’s weapons of mass destruction." The Star also claims that the SAS are accompanied by British MI6, US CIA, and both French and American soldiers. This after US' Barack Obama made comments claiming the US would military intervene if Syria so much as "moves them [unconfirmed WMDs] in a threatening fashion."

Like Iraq, the West has provided no evidence that such weapons even exist, let alone prove that the weapons have or even would be used against terrorists operating across Syria. And like in Iraq, another false pretext is being developed through leaks, and limited hangouts in an attempt to prime the public for a desperate intervention designed to bolster the West's collapsing terrorist front.

The West also categorically lacks any semblance of an international mandate to act militarily within Syria - meaning that if SAS soldiers are in Syria, they are in egregious violation of international law. 

Should chemical weapons "move" or be "used" in Syria, it will be in the form of a false flag attack, with weapons brought in by Libyan terrorists now confirmed to be leading the so-called "Free Syrian Army" with US, UK, European, and Gulf State weapons, cash, and logistical support.

 

 

US, British, French, and Gulf State-backed Al Qaeda militants have been attempting to infiltrate and violently overthrow the government of Syria, as well as terrorize the population into submission in a brutal, year and half long terror campaign. In July and August, NATO-backed terrorists attempted to seize Syria's two largest cities, Aleppo and Damascus only to be dealt severe losses and a rebound of Syrian forces enjoying increasing public support for ending the violence.
 

The Syrian conflict was engineered by Western interests as early as 2007.

....

For more news and information on Syria, please visit Land Destroyer Report's Syria news archives.

THEY'RE COOKING

 

ISRAEL: Israeli vets confess to 'no mercy' abuse of Palestinian 'terrorist' kids

Israeli veterans have spoken out, describing a degrading culture of abuse and harassment of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza. A report containing 30 veterans’ testimonies details numerous cases of violence committed by Israeli soldiers.

The report was released to world media on Saturday by Breaking the Silence, an organization made up of Israeli army veterans formed in 2004. They compiled more than 850 accounts from current and former Israeli soldiers describing abuses they committed or witnessed.

The investigation seeks to serve as “a witness to the ongoing decline of the military system into increasing immorality."

“The words of the soldiers included here constitute an urgent call to Israeli society and its leaders: We must foster a serious discourse regarding the price of military rule of the Occupied Territories,” said the report.

A number of reports pertain to the detention and abuse of minors who pelt Israeli soldiers with stones and the imposition of Israeli control in occupied areas.

A first sergeant in an armored corps unit described his job as “population control,” in a testimony entitled "What is that job, really?" His unit would enter Palestinian villages on a daily basis to “make their presence felt” and to show the local residents that the area did not belong to them.

“A patrol goes in, or two patrols, two Hummers secured by a jeep, and raise hell inside the villages. A whole company may be sent in on foot in two lines like a military parade in the streets, provoking riots, provoking children,” said the first sergeant.

He said that his commander’s aim was to “grind the population down” so that they would not even think of throwing stones at their occupiers.

­

‘We’d lost all sense of mercy’

Another veteran described how his troop would trash shops and buildings because they were bored, purposely triggering riots.

He related an incident where Israeli soldiers waiting for civilians outside a mosque began to fire rubber rounds in order to spark a riot. He said that if Arab children threw stones at them they would use them as human shields.

“You know how badly beaten they get? You catch him, push the gun against his body, he can’t make a move, he’s totally petrified. He only goes: "No, no, army." You can tell he’s petrified.”

­

Report slanders IDF

In response to the report the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that Breaking the Silence had revealed its true intentions “to generate negative publicity regarding the IDF and its soldiers, rather than facilitating a proper investigation."

"As a matter of policy, the organization chooses not to provide the IDF and other relevant bodies with the critical material necessary for investigation. By compiling testimonies over long periods of time and refusing to provide additional detail, [Breaking the Silence] proves its true intentions – rather than facilitating proper investigation, the organization seeks to generate negative publicity regarding the IDF and its soldiers.” the IDF told The Weekend Australian.

Breaking Silence member Yehuda Shaul hit back at the IDF, saying "over 70 of our testifiers have come out publicly with their names and identities revealed, and I'm one of them."

“If the IDF was interested in investigating our claims, we probably would have already been summoned to interrogations," concluded Shaul.

 

NEWS: News updates

 

 

Visit Israel: play at killing terrorists!

August 25th, 2012

Of all the qualities that countries offer in order to attract tourists, the most distasteful come from Israel. Fun for all the family in training in how to kill 'terrorists'; trips to highly militarised areas in the hope of catching a glimpse of violence. It's not just the tourists' money that is wanted. It is also their impressionable minds. Blog from Foreign Policy and article from Ceasefire on Israel as military theme park. 

The UK-Israel plan to get Raed Salah banned and deported failed. Why?

August 24th, 2012

Last summer the UK's Israel/Palestinian media were filled with news of the arrest of Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of a branch of the Islamic Movement, after he arrived in London despite a banning order against him. He was freed on bail a few weeks later; in September a high court judge ruled his detention had been unlawful and awarded him damages, A letter from JfJfP played an important part. He won an appeal against the deportation order at an immigration tribunal last April. At every stage, judges ruled Mrs May had relied on flimsy evidence supplied to her by Israel, which judged Salah a terrorist and antisemite, and the CST which had, ineptly, moved into intelligence gathering at, it seems, her request. Asa Winstanley surveys the case and the value of finding and using reliable factual evidence. 

Israeli state wants school segregation for children of ‘infiltrators’ aka Africans

August 23rd, 2012 

Eilat, a tourist city in southern Israel, has refused to enroll immigrants' children in its schools since 2008. It has sent them to segregated schools outside the city. This year the Be'er Sheva District court ordered the city to admit the children of African immigrants. The council appealed to the Supreme Court and the national education ministry has taken up the appeal on the grounds that integration harms other children. Two reports from Ha'aretz. 

Rabbi obsessed with sex, race and property appointed to emergency aid committee

August 23rd, 2012 

In Israel, emergency aid is provided by Magen David Adom (MDA), which actively seeks volunteers and donations from home and abroad. MDA has just appointed Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Tzfat/Safed, to its halachic (law deduced from scripture) committee. The rabbi seems to live in a paranoid fantasy where Arab men always steal Jewish women and property and so must be kept apart. Reform Jews are campaigning for his appointment to be rescinded.

Morsi’s use of its military and diplomatic powers upsets Israel

August 23rd, 2012 

Egypt's President Morsi is pressing ahead with his own military and diplomatic path by sending troops into the turbulent Sinai and defying the US/Israel policy of isolating Iran as a pariah nation. He has also decided to attend the non-aligned nations' summit in Tehran next week. Richard Silverstein reads the new Egyptian script . 2nd, a brief news item from MEMO says that Morsi has receved no complaint from Israel about sending tanks to Sinai. 

Lieberman tries to re-focus international concern on Abbas’ failure to make peace

August 23rd, 2012 

Israel's demagogic foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has gone over Netanyahu's head to appeal for Mahmoud Abbas to be replaced as president of the PA. His letters went to the Quartet and Lady Asthon, the EU's foreign policy representative. It appears to be a flamboyant attempt to focus blame for the lack of Israel/Palestine peace negotiations on President Abbas at a time when Israeli belligerence towards Iran is under scrutiny. Al Arabiya and Huffington Post. 

Children exposed to political violence in Israel & Palestine more aggressive than other children

August 22nd, 2012 

A study of children of Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians found a direct link between the political and ethnic violence to which they are exposed and aggression in the children. Palestinian childen were most exposed to political/ethnic violence and most affected. Summary from Medical Express and a longer report from the Institute of Social Research, Michigan. Researchers from the U.S., Palestine and Israel conducted the research. 

The boats that broke the Gaza siege

August 22nd, 2012 

Four years ago, two boats - Free Gaza and Liberty - did manage to reach Gaza. The 44 'ordinary people' aboard received a jubilant welcome from Gazans and their daring and imaginative initiative brought new publicity and attention to the condition of peope isolated in the Gaza strip. Rod Such reviews a new book on this first voyage. Some of the sales profit will go to Gaza's Ark, a boat which Palestinians hope will sail out of Gaza carrying their products for export. 

Israeli teacher: Lynching comes from an entire culture of being the chosen people who are allowed to do whatever we like

August 22nd, 2012 

Although, as Jesse Benjamin points out, foreign media have had little to say about the Jerusalem lynching (it doesn't fit the stereotype, good Israel bad settlers) Israelis have responded with horror, anger and a recognition that the dominant political culture has poisoned youth values. The idea that all Arab (alien) men want to have Jews' (owners) women is a familiar feature of racist and misogynist societies in which the ethnically dominant men should be lords of all. 6 items. 

Bibi – “The State of Israel does not tolerate racism and the combination of racism and violence.”

August 22nd, 2012 

The inclusion of settler attacks in the US State Department's report on terrorist incidents and Secretary of State Clinton's harsh criticism of a firebomb attack on a Palestinian taxi in the West Bank, and the Israeli state's failure to use its power to crack down on the spreading racist thuggery have finally got through to PM Netanyahu. Seven Jewish youths have been arrested for an attempted lynching of Arabs last week. Netanyahu claims racist violence is not tolerated in Israel. 

South African govenment shuns Israeli blandishments

August 21st, 2012 

South Africa's apartheid regime had close relations with the Israeli government. Today, the post-apartheid national government and the KwaZulu Natal provincial government have cancelled a planned visit by Israeli municipal governors. The decision is being claimed as a victory for BDS campaigners and a defeat for the 'Jewish community' aka the conservative Jewish establishment. Reports from Ha'aretz and BDS S.Africa. 

Jewish establishment stoops to vilification to silence critical diaspora Jews

August 21st, 2012 

In an another example of using propaganda and pressure rather than evidence and reason, the British Jewish establishment has long vilified the critics of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, including Antony Lerman when he was head of Jewish Policy Research, in the hope of silencing them. Similar efforts by the Israeli government are failing to shut up diaspora Jews who, says Lerman, are needed by Israel for their views as well as support. 

A rabbi who breaks the silence on Israeli injustice

August 21st, 2012 

Robert Cohen interviews Rabbi David J. Goldberg, author of 'This is Not the Way - Jews, Judaism and Israel'. The rabbi is, says Cohen, an important and fearless voice, alert to the failure of Christian-Jewish dialogue to hold an honest debate on what is done in the name of the 'Jewish and Democratic' state. 

Protest letter at appointment of Josh Treviño as Guardian columnist

August 20th, 2012

A letter expressing 'shock and dismay' at the Guardian's decision to appoint the aggressively right-wing Josh Treviño as a columnist, signed by 27 people in public life, was published by the Guardian on Sunday (online) and Monday (print). 

Israel lacks the sane leadership to launch war on Iran: debate over

August 20th, 2012 

Netanyahu's drive for an attack on Iran has rested on a gamble that Romney will be the next US President. This is not a stable basis for such a momentous/catastrophic act and has increased doubts about the capacity for sane leadership in Israel - voiced last weekend by General Uri Sagi. This ends the debate says Shai Feldman. Uri Avnery also questions the sanity of Israel's leaders and, with different conclusions, agrees Israel will not attack Iran. 

Violent Israeli settlers classified as terrorists by US

August 20th, 2012 

Anybody who has followed the news over the last year of increasingly violent attacks on Palestinians and their property is likely to have seen the terrorist aim behind the asaults. Now, reports Barak David, the US State Department annual report on terrorism includes 'price-tag' attacks as terrorist acts. Hence the unusually forthright criticism from Clinton and Netanyahu quoted in the post below 'This way they will finally be afraid'. Harriet Sherwood, also reports, 2nd. 

EUROPE: European Muslims and the politics of veils

Veils and "polleras" are modern expressions of "political contestation and negotiation" between state and society.

Last Modified: 26 Aug 2012 07:53

Quito, Ecuador - What a difference a piece of cloth makes. Indigenous' polleras, or Muslim headscarves tend be read as signs of poverty and subjugation whereas a mini-skirt usually asserts a woman's emancipation. Of course, women’s rights do not reside in dress. Yet the way one dresses has political significance. A mini-skirt or a headscarf can both be symbols of oppression or emancipation, depending on the context.

At first sight, indigenous women wearing polleras in the Bolivian Congress do not seem to have much in common with young Muslim women defending their right to wear the scarf to attend French universities. Looking closer, however, their insistence in bringing cultural attire into public realms points at similar practices of resistance. In both cases, clothing becomes a strategic site of political contestation to negotiate rights and authority.

Backward dress

Polleras, the vibrant wool skirts one sees indigenous women wearing in national-geographic-like imagery, depict a supposed cultural authenticity. Dressed in colourful textile as they harvest millennia-old grains, indigenous women are portrayed as guardians of pre-Colombian languages and practices.

In fact, the current Venezuelan Constitution claims to "protect" indigenous women as "guardians of tradition". Imagined as the quintessential descendants of the Incas and the Aztecs, indigenous women are perceived by the dominant society as isolated in time and space, untouched by political or social modernity. 

Polleras are a marker of ethnicity as much as marginality. They are the dress of the uncivilised,evoking poverty, scarce opportunities and restricted agency. The women who wear them often work in poorly remunerated jobs, in fields and markets or labouring in the houses of wealthier women, surviving at the political and economic margins of society. Despite representing strong cultural identities, polleras are read as the absence of choice. 

Other cultural clothes evoke a similar backwardness, the one of "other" cultures, exotic but inadequate to development, civilisation and, yes, gender equality. Take the veil, for instance. Less exotic, perhaps, it too is a loaded symbol of oppression, signifying multiple un-freedoms. This is apparently the thought process of French parliamentarians, who voted to forbid its use in public spaces in the name of women's rights, protecting the nation's modern national identity against the barbarian invasions. 

Both polleras and veils are perceived as signs of cultures that keep women down, cultures that have not yet achieved political modernity. As different as they may be, in the collective imaginary both are signs of the oppression of women, visual reminders of gender inequality and implicitly indicators of underdevelopment. 

The politics behind cultural attire  

Since women who wear polleras and use the veil are perceived as victims of their cultures, they cannot be understood as possessing political agency. Hence, the surprise when veiled women exercise leadership roles in the Arab Spring revolutions or the dismissal of indigenous women mobilising for water rights across the Andes. The assumption is that indigenous women wearing polleras personify inheritances from the past, disconnected from the politics of today. 

Of course, to objectify veils and polleras as symbols of the immutability of cultures misses the point of their dynamism and inevitable interaction with a globalising world. It also misses the point that culture is relational and that public displays of cultural belonging are directed not only inward to one's own community, but also outward at society at large. Politics takes place everywhere, in myriad forms, from ministerial decrees to the food we eat. Dress is one of the ways women use to practice politics whether in the form of the veil, the pollera, or the miniskirt. 

In fact, dress is the façade of deeper political struggles. Forbidding the headscarf in public spaces in France will neither make women safer from domestic violence nor expand their economic opportunities. The problem is not the headscarf, but the dangerous non-white other it represents, the "terrorist" societies of which it is emblematic. 

Prohibiting the headscarf does not empower French women as much as condemns being a Muslim to a stereotypical threat to European notions of its own cultural superiority. Likewise, the expensive, hand-woven polleras represent the "other" against which the nation-state in the Andes continues to imagine its modern, European political identity.

Veils and polleras are not the sources of oppression from which women are seeking their emancipation. Imposing global fashion trends will not improve their well-being. What is at stake is how national discourses and governmental policies continue to invoke culture as a border, a difference to objectify or exclude people from the project of the nation. 

At the end of the day, it is, yet again, the state regulating women’s lives - enforcing mandatory dressing and marginalising expressions of cultural belonging. Women's dress thus becomes enmeshed in the exercise of state authority. And that is when dressing stops being a "private" choice to become a form of political defiance. 

Daily sites of political contestation 

Whether they are sitting at the UN or ploughing a field, women wearing colourful, traditional attires are manifesting political allegiances. They are visually articulating demands for political autonomy. Just like the mini-skirt became a symbol of women's liberation, polleras represent ethnic emancipation. 

Joan W Scott has analysed the French headscarf controversy, pointing to the assumed superiority of gender relations in France and the racism embedded throughout that political debate. Scarves and polleras are relational to the state and can easily be used as sites of resistance. Strong ethnic movements frequently lead more women to reclaim cultural rights by wearing their attires in public spaces. Polleras may represent the Andes on touristic ads in Europe. They also represent forms of social and political authority that precede the contemporary state. 

Indigenous dress does not necessarily indicate oppression, nor does it connote the antithesis of feminism. To the contrary, in subtle ways it often manifests collective struggles for self-determination - struggles which are at the core of feminist ideas. Discourses aimed at protecting women from their cultures must give way to a practice of creating spaces for the voices and concerns of all women. 

Far from being signs of allegedly immutable cultures of the past, veils and polleras are in fact modern expressions of political contestation and negotiation between state and society, like mini-skirts once were. These pieces of cloths represent today a vanguard practice of global politics because they make sense of international women's rights in their cultural contexts - the only way any right can be exercised. 

Perhaps polleras and veils disturb, in a way mini-skirts no longer do, because they pose the challenge of how to recognise politically the once-colonised other, redefine national identities and redistribute access to rights more equitably. Changing attitudes towards cultural attire implies addressing in substantial ways current structures of power and inequality.

Women need policies that enable more complex forms of citizenship compatible with the diversity of their own realities, not repressive legislation that perpetuates the homogenising authority of states.

Political contestation is not only to be found in the formal corridors of power, it also expresses itself in daily acts of transgression. Coco Chanel challenged gender norms in the 1920s by dressing Parisian women in men's clothing. Today, wearing polleras on the floor of the Peruvian Congress or headscarves in French universities represents a more fundamental challenge to oppressive power structures than women donning high fashion silk "power suits" as they struggle for conventional forms of success in the executive suites of governments or multinational corporations. 

Manuela Picq has just completed her time as a visiting professor and research fellow at Amherst College.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

BLOGGER COMMENT: Although the blogger believes that the "nikab" is a relic of the past and a cultural thing based on the environment in which people lived, he believes that wearing it is a matter of being a personal choice as long as it has to be lifted up under certain circumstances for security reasons and identification. A woman has the right not to let passer-by identify her. And a passer-by is not entitled to identify a passer-by woman.

As for the "hijab", there should be no complain about it. Hasn't it been worn by Hollywood actresses in the past? Did anybody complain about it?

It is also worth mentioning that people against "nikab" in the videos haven't brought forth any convincing argument for being against "nikab", but have shown ignorant zeal, hatred and bigotry.

She is not a nun, 

and she is beautiful. 

Nothing is wrong with thway she is dressed up

ISRAEL: Up in salt: Israeli firm omits woman from kosher for Passover products.

The exclusion of women from the public domain in Jerusalem has reached a new level. This time, the topic of discussion is a packet of Salit table salt.

 

By Ido Kenan Aug.26, 2012 | 7:20 PM

Brit Harel’s boyfriend couldn’t understand why she kept staring at the bag of salt he had brought back from the market in their neighborhood of Nahlaot in Jerusalem. “Don’t you notice something missing here?” she asked him. “There used to be something blue here,” he recalled. “Yes, a woman!” she responded.

The exclusion of women from the public domain has reached a new level. This time, the topic of discussion is a packet of Salit table salt that was bought in a non-ultra-Orthodox market in Jerusalem. The package typically features the familiar blue drawing of a woman sprinkling a pinch of salt but on this particular package, the woman was nowhere to be found.

Jerusalem has already seen the disappearance of women from billboards and the ads on the sides of buses. Some of the incidents are institutional – when advertising companies refuse to promote photos of women, or when promoters themselves self-censor. Others occur when people take the law into their own hands – obliterating photos of women with black spray paint and ripping down or burning advertisements showing women.

Following a petition to the High Court of Justice by the group Yerushalmim (“Jerusalemites”), the state announced that the Egged bus company and Canaan, the company that owns the concession to advertise on Egged buses, are not permitted to bar advertising featuring pictures of women. Moreover, the court ruled, the supervisor of transportation must condition the operating of the lines on a complete and total ban on discrimination.

At the beginning of the month, Canaan agreed to run advertising by a movement against the exclusion of women, which does show photos of women. The Jerusalem Municipality also announced that it would act against billboard companies that refrain from presenting photos of women.

This is not the first time women have been erased from packaging in Jerusalem: a few months ago the owner of a toy store in Ramat Eshkol reportedly used stickers to cover images of women in bathing suits that appeared on packages containing flotation rings and pool toys. But in the Salit case, the decision to remove the woman from the salt packaging was made not by a store owner, but rather by the manufacturer, Salit Salts.

“Stickers are almost understandable,” Harel told Haaretz, “because the exclusion of women is not new in Jerusalem. But to remove the salt’s emblem [from the logo] – everyone would agree she’s a modest woman and it was very weird that they took it off. The emblem is Salit – they can’t do that!”

 Salit is a subsidiary of Shari Arison’s Israel Salt Industries, the country’s largest salt manufacturer. The American-Israeli businesswoman’s Arison Group is also the controlling shareholder in Bank Hapoalim, which recently removed a female character from its advertisements. TV personalities Erez Tal and Alma Zack starred in its long-running campaign, until a few months ago when Zack was removed from billboards in Bnei Brak and replaced with the bank’s familiar emblem of a dwarf called Dan Haschan (Dan the Saver).

In response, the bank said it “respects all its customers, regardless of religion, race and gender, and takes into account only professional considerations regarding advertisements.”

Responding to the removal of Salit’s brand emblem, the company said, “The character of the woman was removed from the packages of Salit table salt that are kosher for Passover under Badatz [rabbinical court] supervision, so as to create a distinction between Passover and non-Passover products. Packages of Salit table salt that are sold throughout the year under Badatz supervision bear the image of the woman.”

Since the first report of the incident in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz Magazine on Friday, dozens of readers have responded with comments saying the decision to remove the woman from Salit packaging was like rubbing salt into the wound of the exclusion of women from the public domain. Many tried to understand how the modest image on the Salit package posed a threat to Israeli men, at times referring to the ultra-Orthodox community with hostility.

 Oops... 

seems to be the opposite

ISRAEL: Eid (Ramadan Feast) under occupation...

Palestinians are home for the holiday – at least for now Eid al-Fitr was celebrated by with joy, but also fear, since many Palestinians are not sure they'll get to enjoy the traditional celebrations again on the land of their fathers. 

By Gideon Levy | Aug.24, 2012 | 12:46 PM

Othman Abu Kabeita drove this week to bring his family food for the Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan - bottles of cola and date cookies, as usual. But Abu Kabeita, who was driving alone, according to his brother Abbas, had the audacity to drive on a dirt path that the Israel Defense Forces has deemed is only for the use of Palestinian tractors. An IDF force appeared immediately, as did the police. A policeman gave Abu Kabeita a NIS 1,000 fine, but an IDF officer decided to confiscate his car as well. Now the jack and the bottle of motor oil for the car are sitting on the floor of the Abu Kabeita family's cave, while the vehicle is parked at the military facility near the Beit Yatir checkpoint.

The IDF Spokesman's Office said the soldiers, in cooperation with Israel police, "carried out an activity ... in the course of which the vehicle of a driver of illegal residents was confiscated and transferred to the police. At the conclusion of the police investigation of the issue the fate of the vehicle will be decided. It should be noted that this is a vehicle that lacks the registration and licensing required by law, and belongs to a driver who collaborates with illegal residents."

Welcome to the land of the caves in the south Hebron hills, where the ongoing and systematic attempt by Israel to remove residents from these dwellings, as well as tents and homes, continues, on behalf of all the Jewish settlements, outposts and farms hat have cropped up here in the last few years. Recently there has been an increase n the onfiscation of cars and tractors, in addition to demolitions and the expropriation of water containers - the same types of activities Palestinians in the Jordan Valley are facing.

Such was the start of Id al-Fitr, one of the most important Muslim holidays, for the Abu Kabeita family. Abbas, welcomed in the holiday last Sunday, sitting alone in his family's cave watching his tiny television set. At least he, who lives in a strange and crowded enclave behind the Yatir checkpoint, bordering the settlement of Beit Yatir, has solar electricity.

But the other families we visited over the holiday are not so lucky. They lack not only power, but running water as well. In the past few months, the Israel Civil Administration destroyed the electricity poles in the area; they are still lying crushed in the Fakara compound, in the cave-neighborhood of the Hamamdi family.

Meanwhile, another four new trailer homes were erected recently in Mitzpeh Avigayil, the nearby illegal outpost, the reason that the IDF has been trying to evacuate Fakara for the past few years. Here's what the Mount Hebron Regional Council says about the outpost on its website: "In all the communities of Mount Hebron there are attractive permanent homes, playgrounds and lawns, well-developed transportation, electricity and water infrastructure, educational and cultural institutions and many memories of the early years ... In Mitzpeh Avigayil they are living the memories that veteran communities have managed to forget."

It's all true: playgrounds, lawns, electricity and water infrastructure in an outpost named after the wife of the biblical Nabal the Carmelite. The street lamps of the settlement shine day and night. At its foot, in Fakara, live 16 families, about 180 souls, in harsh conditions, without electricity or water. Only the three new trailer homes - provided to the village by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - lend the place a semi-modern look. Those homes were a replacement for the caves that were destroyed, but Israel has issued demolition orders against them as well.

Mahmoud Hamamdi is the unofficial leader of the Fakara village and of its battle to stay on the land. He is 47 years old and, like his father and grandfather, was born here in the cave.

Mitzpeh Avigayil was built overnight, on Yom Kippur, in 2001.

Last week forces from the IDF and the Civil Administration raided the village and photographed every cave and every tent, every bathroom and every sheep pen. The entire area, except for Mitzpeh Avigayil, was declared an IDF training area.

"That's the politics of the State of Israel," says Hamamdi, "to come and say that our village is a closed military area but not the settlement. Any child will laugh at these politics. There's no country that evicts residents because of a firing range. Why wasn't there a firing range in the 1980s, and now there is? Only because Avigayil was built here. Everything is because of the settlers. What an embarrassment it will be for the State of Israel if they evacuate us and not the settlers."

All the village children were dressed festively for the holiday today - meaning new T-shirts over ragged everyday pants for the boys, and colorful lace dresses for the girls. After the morning prayer came the family visits, the heart and soul of this holiday that brings an end to the hot and difficult Ramadan month of fasting. According to tradition, brothers travel to visit their sisters.

Hamamdi, for example, traveled this morning to visit his sisters in Yatta, and brought them special gifts for the holiday: a handful of bananas, some apples and NIS 100 for each one. It's the custom, he says: "We explain to our children on the holiday that we're living on our land. That land is more important than children. Children - you can take another wife and make more children, but not land. I saw Palestinian refugees in Lebanon on television, how they cry on the holiday. They have children but they don't have land. They've lost everything. Land is more important than you yourself are. If you die, you die, but as long as you're alive you have to guard the land. That's what we explain to the children today. I bought them new clothes, and the main thing is for them to understand that this is their place."

This is Hamamdi's first holiday without his eldest son: Mohammed has been in prison in Israel for two months, after being caught living illegally in Rahat, where he worked. He was sentenced to four-and-a-half months in jail and his father does not even know where his son is being held. This morning, Mohammed phoned his father in honor of the holiday. Hamamdi says that it would have been better had he not called: "Every year he's with us and it's hard this time."

Here too, last week, they confiscated two cars of residents who were driving in the "firing range."

Some two dozen men from Yatta enter the cave, paying a holiday visit. They shake hands, drink tea, munch on date cookies and remain silent in the cool space, with "air conditioning from Allah." Hamamdi says that tomorrow he'll go back to working with the sheep, although Id al-Fitr lasts for three days.

"It's like your holidays," he tells his Jewish guests. "You have a holiday of seven days and you don't work, you only impose a closure on the territories. We have only two holidays a year and we work even on them. All during Ramadan we didn't think about the eviction. But now, with Ramadan over, we've started thinking about it again."

In the afternoon everyone returned from the family visits to their tents and caves; a burning-hot sun was high in the sky of this hilly desert. One neighbor, Fadel Hamamdi, gathered his family in one of the "defiance houses" that was recently built here with the help of international volunteers and the members of Ta'ayush, a Jewish-Arab partnership working for coexistence. It's a hut of gray bricks, without mortar and without a roof; they're living there instead of in a cave that was destroyed.

An infant coos from his iron cradle, completely wrapped in a thin blanket to protect him from the rays of the sun that beat through the cloth roof of the uncompleted house. Ezra Nawi, one of the most dedicated Ta'ayush activists, who comes to this land of the caves almost every day, embraces the tiny baby, whose name is Ahmed, and says: "He doesn't know yet what kind of life awaits him here." Nawi is distributing balloons here today to all the children in the area, and there is great happiness.

In the neighboring Bir Ayad cave-village, there is even greater joy. Ismail Adara has 33 children, he is 67 years old and married to four women, two of them here in the cave and another two in Dirat, another hamlet on the mountain. In Dirat the authorities have already destroyed almost everything belonging to him, but have not yet done so here. His wives and children are inside. Adara welcomes us in a white tent. Thanks to the Palestinian aid organization Comet-ME there is solar electricity in the dwellings, and batteries and other electrical equipment are kept inside and protected.

Adara's hundreds of offspring, his children and grandchildren, have come today to visit him. His village is planted between Mitzpeh Yair and Lucifer Farm, and sometimes the settlers destroy the pipes that bring water to the slope from the well. The sight of the dozens of children blowing up the balloons that Nawi brought them, and then proudly displaying them, gives the village a joyous appearance, even if it is the joy of the poor and oppressed.