News Highlights:
- An Israeli air strike in Gaza kills two young Palestinian children and a teenager, and wounds another 14.
- The “Quartet” (U.S., U.N., EU and Russia) agrees to channel aid to Palestinians through a World Bank fund.
- Palestinian groups meeting to try and find agreement and form national unity government.
- On June 19th – World Refugee Day, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a report that said, according to UNRWA, there are over 4.2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide; Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories are 42% of the population there and 47% of those are under 15 years of age.
- Israeli Supreme Court rejects challenges to the route of the apartheid wall in and around East Jerusalem and accepted government allegations that security outweighs humanitarian concerns; in one case, the wall will go through a cemetery and an Israeli advocacy group says Israel’s goal is to strengthen its hold on east Jerusalem.
Feature:
Sid Shniad was the guest for the feature and talked about the upcoming World Peace Forum and the various activities that will be held. He spoke about the June 26th meeting entitled Palestine and Israel: No Justice, no Peace that will feature Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Cindy Corrie and Miryam Rashid, three women who bring unique perspectives to the issue. There was also analysis by the VOP host of the questionable pro-Israeli alliances of some people associated with the WPF, in particular local and Canadian politicians. (See www.cpavancouver.org for details)
Focus on Zionism:
Due to the length of the feature, Focus was not presented this week.
Here is an audio file of this show: