informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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10.11.02

The Israeli claims do not explain why two months later the army returned to flatten the rubble of the caravanserai. It had been earmarked for a �3.5million restoration project funded by the EU.
Eight people were killed on 9 April when the al Shu�bi hosh on the southern edge of the town was bulldozed to drive a path into the souk. Two more were pulled alive from the rubble a week later when the curfew was temporarily lifted�as was shown on Israeli television.
Further up the street two teacher sisters, Zoha and Soha Fretekh, were killed, according to Nablus radio reporter Ala Badarneh, when their historic family hosh and the adjacent Okasha family hosh was blasted by an Apache helicopter.

The oldest surviving operational hammam in the country near al Kabir on An Nasir street (probably built around 1480) also survives despite shells having smashed through its central dome and shattered its multi-coloured lantern.

The Israeli army claims the hammam was being used to shelter Palestinian fighters. Its owner, Nablus Fire Chief Yosef Jabi, says it was being used as a telephone relay station for the nearby mosque which was serving as a hospital for the wounded. Either way, he says, it does not justify firing rockets at a 15th-century building.
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Hundreds of Arab villages across Israel were destroyed in the wake of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In their determination to create irreversible �facts on the ground�, new, exclusively Jewish settlements have been built on seized Arab land (contrary to UN resolutions) and Palestinian towns put in a strangle-hold.
The built environment and archaeological remains have become highly politicised as both sides argue the merits of their historic claims to the land.

In the wake of the Israeli destruction in Nablus, the sacred Jewish site of Joseph�s Tomb on the edge of the town was again destroyed by local Islamic militants. It is vital for the world�s collective heritage that damage caused to the architecture of Nablus, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, does not descend into the ugly cultural cleansing that was such a feature of the Bosnian war.

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