News Highlights:
- The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas goes ahead, but does not include any minors nor at least 8 of the women Palestinian prisoners nor all the top imprisoned leaders.
- Rights groups state the forced exile and deportation by Israel of some of the released Palestinian prisoners constitutes a “serious war crime”.
- Late reports indicate the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike has been suspended after Israeli authorities agreed to end solitary confinement.
- Israeli authorities plan a new illegal settlement on occupied Palestinian land, which will also totally cut off occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
Feature:
There was a live interview from Boston with Leila Murad, a community activist there who is working with the Free Tarek Mehanna campaign (www.freetarek.com). Leila talked about FBI repression in general in the Boston area against activists who stand up for the community’s civil rights and also against those who defend the Palestinian people. She gave details of Tarek Mehanna’s case, which is about to go trial. She also noted that Tarek was pressured to become an informant by the FBI and then when he didn’t cooperate, he was suddenly faced with “terrorism charges” and has been in pretrial solitary confinement for almost 2 years.
Focus on Zionism:
Highlights of an October 15th, 2011 report from the Alternative Info Centre about the hardships faced by Palestinian farming families in Qalqilya due to the Israeli Separation Wall.
Here is an audio file of this show: