Israeli authorities implemented a full closure on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on June 10, adding to a long line of punitive measures that have been carried out since the deadly attack in Tel Aviv two days earlier. An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that all passages to the West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip would be sealed until Monday June 13 at midnight after an army "situation assessment," with the exception of humanitarian and medical cases. However, the spokesperson said Palestinians from the West Bank with permits to attend Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem would be allowed passage. The sealing of the West Bank and Gaza is one of several punitive orders that have been implemented by the Israeli government following an attack in Tel Aviv that left four Israelis killed and another six wounded.

Four agonizing days after Peru's June 5 presidential race, the final tally was at last announced, giving the center-right Pedro Pablo Kuczynski the narrowest of victories over the openly fascistic Keiko Fujimori. (Diario Uno, DW) The uninspiriing "PPK" is a neoliberal technocrat and veteran cabinet minister. As a World Bank economist he promoted mining and extractive industries in the developing world. He was made minister of Mines & Energy by president Fernando Belaunde in 1980, and went on to become finance minister and cabinet chief under Alejandro Toledo in 2000. Under Toledo, he continued the privatization policies initiated under the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori. (Peru Reports) But his opponent Keiko is the now-imprisoned dictator's daughter—who intransigently defends her father's blood-drenched legacy. (As the race heated up, she did pledge not to repeat his "mistakes," a rather euphemistic term for massive human rights violations. She similarly pledged not to have him pardoned if she won—after having for years previously called for his pardon.) (TeleSur, Villager) In other words, she represented a return to fujimorismo—a mix of law-and-order populism and an aggressively pro-corporate economic program. Does this sound familiar?

Former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Sabrina de Sousa will be extradited to Italy to serve a four-year prison sentence following a ruling by Portugal's Constitutional Court on June 8. De Sousa filed an appeal in April, a last attempt to prevent her extradition to Italy to serve a sentence for her involvement in a US extraordinary renditions program. De Sousa was arrested at a Portuguese airport after she had been convicted in absentia by an Italian court for her part in the 2003 kidnapping and "rendition" of Egyptian terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr (AKA Abu Omar). The Portugal Supreme Court rejected her appeal of an extradition order, leaving de Sousa no choice but to argue that her extradition order is unconstitutional. De Sousa was one of 26 Americans convicted in the kidnapping.

The passing last week of Mohammed Abdelaziz, longtime leader of Western Sahara's Polisario Front, occasioned confusion in media coverage as to the difference between Arabs and Berbers—which is fast becoming a critical issue in the contest over the Moroccan-occupied territory. Most embarrassingly, the New York Times writes: "The Polisario Front was formed in the early 1970s by a group of Sahrawis, indigenous nomadic Berber tribesmen, in opposition to Spain's colonial presence in Western Sahara. When Spain withdrew from the region in 1975, the Sahrawis fought attempts by both Mauritania and Morocco to claim the territory." The Sahrawis are not Berbers. They are Bedouin Arabs who arrived from across the Sahara centuries ago. The Berbers are the actual indigenous people of North Africa, who had been there for many more centuries before that. Ironically, the Times goes on to state: "He was selected as secretary general [of Polisario] in 1976 after the death in combat of the front's military leader, Al Ouali Mustapha Erraqibi. Later that year, he was elected president of the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic." 

A court in Ecuador's city of Loja on May 30 sentenced two indigenous activists to four years in prison for their role in protests last year. Supporters gathered outside the courthouse, calling the convictions a transgression of justice and asserting that the violence at the protests last August was sparked by police. The defendants, Luisa Lozano and Amable Angamarca, are among 29 comuneros from Saraguro village arrested during the protests and facing charges including "sabotage," "terrorism," and "paralyzing public services."  On June 6, a rally in support of the "Saraguro 29" was also held outside the Consejo de la Judicatura, Ecuador's justice department, in Quito. Supporters from the indigenous alliance CONAIE chanted "Liberty, liberty!" Lozano and Angamarca issued their own private statement to Diego Zorrilla, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ecuador, condemning the sentence as a criminalization of protest movements. (CONAIE statement via INREDH, June 8; El Comercio, Quito, El Universo, Guayaquil, June 7; El Universo, EFE, June 6)

The US Supreme Court on June 6 declined to hear an appeal by the government of Ecuador of a $96 million arbitration settlement awarded to Chevron oil company. The high court let stand a 2015 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, upholding the 2013 award in Chevron's favor issued by The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands. Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, originally brought suit in Ecuador for breaking terms of oil contracts and international agreements. Chevron initiated the arbitration proceeding at The Hague in 2006, seeking to hold Ecuador's government liable for damages from pollution of the rainforest. Chevron claimed Ecuador violated provisions of a 1997 investment treaty by failing to resolve lawsuits in a timely fashion. With interest, the arbitration award stands at approximately $106 million, Chevron said. Other Chevron cases related to matter before The Hague panel remain pending. (AP, Reuters, OilPrice, June 6; Chevron press release, Aug. 31, 2011)

Rojda Felat, a Kurdish revolutionary feminist, is leading the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces' offensive on Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State's self-declared caliphate. A three-year veteran of the struggle against ISIS, she is serving as commander of 15,000 Kurdish and Arab fighters, backed by US special forces and warplanes, under the banner of the SDF. "My main goal is liberating the Kurdish woman and the Syrian woman in general from the ties and control of traditional society, as well as liberating the entirety of Syria from terrorism and tyranny," she told the London Times. 

The annual Hong Kong vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre took place June 4 amid a split, with the city's biggest student union boycotting. The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) broke from the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, to emphasize a "localist" position. An estimated 125,000 attended the vigil in Victoria Park, compared to 135,000 last year. Disturbingly, a localist protester even rushed the stage at the event, seizing a microphone to exhort: "We don't want a democratic China, we want Hong Kong independence!"