News Highlights:
- Israel has begun seizing East Jerusalem land owned by Palestinians under the obscure “absentee owners” law; many of the landowners, some of whom live 100 metres from the land about to be expropriated, now live on the wrong side of the apartheid wall.
- Israeli official says Israel seeks only interim accord with Palestinians; Zalman Shoval, advisor to Ariel Sharon, says he sees “no final accord in our generation”.
- Palestinian resistance groups close to ceasefire, but will need Israeli commitment to halt its incursions, release prisoners, and remove checkpoints.
Feature:
An interview with Matthew Cassels, an American Jewish activist from Chicago,
who is now volunteering in Palestine. Matthew is a member of the Palestine
Solidarity Group – Chicago, and is currently helping Addameer, a prisoner rights group in Ramallah. He spoke about how he became involved in Palestinian support work and also about the situation of Palestinians on the ground, especially students at Bir Zeit university.
Focus on Zionism:
Excerpts of a Jan. 24th, 2005 report from the Israeli Haaretz newspaper,
regarding an Israeli Finance Ministry report about the dropping birthrate in
the Israeli Arab sector due to cutbacks in child support allocations. One
Ministry official said, “we are reversing the graph, to defend the Jewish
majority in the country”.
Here is an audio file of this show: