Christian Sorensen - CounterPunch - "What would a just U.S. foreign policy look like? This faux bill lays forth a vision regarding one pillar of such a policy: justice for Palestinians." - id

IMEMC - "At least 1500 Palestinian detainees, held by Israel, are ongoing with their hunger strike for the fourth consecutive day, and intend to continue while more detainees are gradually joining the strike that started on April 17th, which also marks the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day." - id

Ronni Shaked - Ynet - "Through a hunger strike in Israel’s prisons, Marwan Barghouti wishes to fulfill his achievements in the last Fatah elections and position himself as Abbas’ successor. It may be time for Israel to change its tune and try to talk to the man who the Palestinians see as their leader." - id

Activestills - +972 - "When Israeli forces started body searching Palestinians outside Jerusalem’s Old City, an Activestills photographer on the scene started filming. They detained and searched him too." - id

PNN - Palestine News Network - "A group of Israeli settlers on Thursday noon have held a barbecue party outside Ofer prison, west of Ramallah, in response to the collective hunger strike lead by 1,500 Palestinian prisoners." - id

Ray Hanania- The Arab Daily News - "Biased American legal system that discriminates against the rights of Arabs and Muslims in favor of the rights of pro-Israel activists pushes biased lawsuit targeting Arab Bank in Jordan." - id

Features - ISM - "“Aida is a hotspot because it is so near the border.  They want us to be silent on every level.  They target the young to be collaborators.  The high unemployment rates lead to despair.  And when children feel despair, they feel unsafe.  At that point, the best thing is to want to die.”" - id

Suleiman Maswadeh - +972 - "Palestinians in East Jerusalem live in an ongoing state of limbo: either stay where they are and risk having any additions they make to their homes demolished, or move away and lose their residency status." - id

Uri Avnery - Gush Shalom - In Syria, a terrible war crime has been committed. The civilian population in a rebel-held town called Idlib was hit with poison gas. Dozens of civilians, including children, died a miserable death. Who could do such a thing? The answer was obvious: that terrible dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Who else? And so, within a few minutes (literally) the New York Times and a host of excellent newspapers throughout the West proclaimed without hesitation: Assad did it! No need for proof. No investigation. It was just self-evident. Of course Assad. Within minutes, everybody knew it. A storm of indignation swept the Western world. He must be punished! Poor Donald Trump, who does not have a clue, submitted to pressure and ordered a senseless missile strike on a Syrian airfield, after preaching for years that the US must under no circumstances get involved in Syria. Suddenly he reversed himself. Just to teach that bastard a lesson. And to show the world what a he-he-he-man he, Trump, really is.-rh

Asa Winstanley - Middle East Monitor - Liberal Zionist newspaper Haaretz published an interview with Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister and member of the security cabinet, in which he threatened to make Lebanon a free-fire zone: “Lebanese institutions, its infrastructure, airport, power stations, traffic junctions, Lebanese Army bases; they should all be legitimate targets if a war breaks out,” he claimed. If Lebanese missiles were then fired “at the Israeli home front, this will mean sending Lebanon back to the Middle Ages.”-rh

Mark Karlin - Truthout - Rebecca Vilkomerson: In our advocacy work for Palestinian rights, we must always be vigilant for cases of real antisemitism directed against Jewish people -- as opposed to protest against the Israeli state -- just as we need to do more to combat all forms of bigotry and oppression in all of our movements.-rh

Akiva Eldar - Al-Monitor - The traditional Passover Haggadah includes a series of questions designed to spark the curiosity of the children about the Exodus story. In addition to offering questions about why this night is different from other nights and the words to “We Were Slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,” the “Jubilee Haggadah” includes commentary by Jewish thinkers from Israel and the United States. One of the first pages contains a lament penned by the writer Amos Oz in August 1967, some three months after the war. “We are condemned now to rule people who do not want to be ruled by us,” the noted author wrote in “Davar,” the now-defunct daily newspaper of the then-ruling Labor Party, “condemned, not merry and euphoric.” Oz warned that all occupations corrupt the occupier. “I have fears about the kind of seeds we will sow in the near future in the hearts of the occupied,” he wrote. “Even more I have fears about the seed that will be planted in the hearts of the occupiers.” Like many of his friends on the political left, Oz did not imagine that five decades later Israelis would be “merry and euphoric,” celebrating the “liberation.”-rh

Farah Najjar and Shatha Hammad - Aljazeera - Currently, there are 6,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. The number includes 300 children and 53 women, according to the Jerusalem-based Palestinian prisoners support and human rights association, Addameer. Laith Abu Zeyad, Addameer`s international advocacy officer told Al Jazeera that between 500 and 700 arrests of children are made each year in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Upon arrest, Palestinian civilians residing in the West Bank are sent to be tried in Israeli military courts, where conviction rates are as high as 99.7 percent, according to Abu Zeyad. Being tried in a military tribunal is a violation of international law, and means that civilians` due process rights are routinely disrespected.-rh

Jonathan Cook - Countercurrents - Israel is to hold lavish celebrations over the coming weeks to mark the 50th anniversary of what it calls the “liberation of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights” – or what the rest of us describe as the birth of the occupation. The centrepiece event will take place in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. The West Bank settlement “bloc” enjoys wide support in Israel, not least because it was established long ago by the supposedly left-wing Labour party, now heading the opposition. The jubilee is a potent reminder that for Israelis, most of whom have never known a time before the occupation, Israel’s rule over the Palestinians seems as irreversible as the laws of nature. But the extravagance of the festivities also underscores the growth over five decades of Israel’s self-assurance as an occupier.-rh

Isaac Dabush - YnetNews - In an acrimonious interview with Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin, Haaretz columnist and Army Radio interviewer Ravit Hecht draws angry reactions by comparing convicted murderer and terrorist Marwan Barghouti to fighters from the Irgun and Lehi.-rh

Mary Pelletier - Aljazeera - Based on a series of tours through Katamon and Baka, former Palestinian neighbourhoods where Arab identity was swiftly erased after the 1948 Nakba, the project "Jerusalem, We Are Here" is a web-based interactive documentary that takes viewers on a journey in Jerusalem. The documentary revives the culturally rich landscape of Palestinian West Jerusalem, based around an interactive map embedded with original film footage, photographs, interviews and audio, directed and produced by Dorit Naaman.-rh

Eimear McBride - The Irish Times - I had not thought about the world for a very long time and, of all places, this place had seemed easier to ignore. I am driving down to Jericho now and, for the first time in a week, I breathe. Not because I have become accustomed to the hassle of checkpoints or seeing young men and women, still teenagers some, looking out at me from behind guns that they know how to use. Not because I have stopped noticing how grown men and women close themselves up behind a mask of quietude in order to cope with their every movement being at the whim of those same youngsters.-rh

Daoud Kuttab - Al-Monitor - While the Palestinian leader’s visit to Washington is to focus primarily on the peace process and the efforts of Trump’s peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt, to kick-start the talks again, it is expected that Abbas will also deal with several bilateral issues. These include security cooperation and intelligence exchange between the United States and Palestinian security on local, regional and international areas of mutual concern, and continued political and financial support by the Trump administration to the Palestinian people and government, sources in the Palestinian leadership told Al-Monitor.-rh

Jack Khoury - Haaretz "Gaza’s Health Ministry warned on Tuesday that the power shortage could create health problems and urged the international community to step in. It said the lack of steady power to hospitals, coupled with a shortage of fuel to operate emergency generators, could cause the hospitals to collapse. Moreover, it added, the hospitals are already treating only urgent cases, endangering the health of patients who must wait for treatment." ca

Rachael Stryer- The Forward "I’m active in the Stanford Hillel and deeply engaged with the conversation about Israel and with Israel advocacy on campus.So what’s the catch? I am a strong supporter of the two-state solution as the only way to secure Israel’s future as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people and to guarantee the rights of the Palestinian people. I see the occupation and the entrenchment and expansion of the settlement movement as a threat to these principles. Because of this, I make the personal choice not to buy products manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.According to a new law, this position means that I could potentially be banned from entering Israel." ca