News Highlights:
- Palestinians plan state funeral for Mahmoud Darwish, the famous Palestinian poet who passed away on August 9th, 2008 following heart surgery.
- Israeli military raids the West Bank village of Yabad, near Jenin, and stops work on water reservoirs; the village is currently not connected to either the water or electricity networks and suffers from lack of basic services.
- Palestinian negotiators say two state solution may be impossible due to Israeli demands and therefore a single binational state would be the only solution left.
- Palestinian Centre for Human Rights welcomes the Spanish High Court decision to issue arrest warrants for the six Israeli officials accused of war crimes in bombing a residential Gaza neighbourhood.
Feature:
The feature was a tribute to the poetry and legacy of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian “poet laureate” who passed away on August 9th, 2008. Local Palestinian Abed Mustafa spoke of his memories of Darwish, as they were both from the same village and grew up together (a village that was destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948). Several of Mahmoud’s poems were also presented in both Arabic and English, as well as musical adaptations. The feature concluded with comments about the enormous contributions of Darwish, both culturally and politically, to the Palestinian and Arab peoples.
Focus on Zionism:
Due to the length and importance of the feature, Focus was not presented.
Here is an audio file of this show: