Israel brutalizing Palestinians with impunity: Pundit
Israel brutalizing Palestinians with impunity: Pundit
Press TV has conducted an interview with Asaad Abu Sharkh, a professor at al-Azhar University, in Gaza, about the strong Israeli reaction against the people of the West Bank following the abduction of three Jewish settlers.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Hamas itself has been rejecting this and it said in response to the claim by Tel Aviv and I quote here, “Tel Aviv wants to sabotage the recent reconciliation accord reached between Hamas and Fatah”. First of all let’s have your view about this abduction and the possible role of those behind it?
Sharkh: Yes I think Israel was not happy about the recent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas; and Israel is totally against the Palestinian national unity. But there are other reasons:
Israel wants to justify for her own people the failure or fiasco, the total fiasco of her security pressures for the disappearance of these three settlers.
So Israel in conducting house to house searches and brutalizing the Palestinian people, rampaging through the West Bank wants to give a message to her own people that Israel is going to do her best in order to get the settlers released.
But nobody knows who actually did it because not one Palestinian organization has claimed responsibility for it.
But anyway, I think if Israel were keen to get her settlers - which are soldiers actually – released, I think Israel would change her brutal and aggressive behavior against the Palestinian people because as long as Israel is brutalizing the Palestinian people, as long as Israel is imposing siege, occupation, maltreating the Palestinians I think there will be always problems.
The Palestinian people will not stand idly by and of course they will resist this brutality and they will resist the occupational forces because Israel should have long ended its occupation and unfortunately the Palestinians have been always waiting for the international community, for all people, to do something to end their sufferings to end their occupation, but nobody listened to them and always their calls fell on deaf ears.
So, probably there is some Palestinian organization, which held them back in order to exchange them for our beloved ones in the Israeli jails.
Press TV: What’s your idea about this, we are hearing and I’ll just refer to a letter by Mr. Saeb Erikat on especially the issue of administrative detention. He said Israel denies these people the right to see the evidence against them; the detention is renewable – has no upper limit; and prisoners are not informed of their release date and they do not stand any trial.
What can you tell us about the legality of administrative detention?
Sharkh: Actually Israel is imposing a slow death on those Palestinians in Israeli jails and this is against international law, against humanitarian international law, against humanity against mankind.
Israel does not respect international law. Israel is an outlaw state and everybody says it is above the law unfortunately because it is being supported by the West and the Americans.
So, what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people is a collective punishment not only to those people who are in Israeli jails – our beloved ones, but to the Palestinian people because Israel as I told you before is conducting house to house arrests and cordoning off large areas, towns and vicinities imposing sanctions on the people and restriction of movements, killing and brutalizing families and children.
This is collective punishment of course on the part of the Israelis and unfortunately nobody is listening to the Palestinians and Israel is taking the law into her own hands and this is why probably some Palestinians did that in order to exchange them for our beloved ones in Israeli jails for the three missing Israeli settlers.
I say ‘probably’. Probably this was done also by Israeli security forces because there are internal problems in the Israeli cabinet… controversies. Some of those generals or parties or gangs in Israel may have done it, but nobody knows up to this point whether it was Palestinians Israelis behind it.
There are just rumors whether it is in Palestine or anywhere else, but nobody so far knows and so I say ‘probably’. Some people think this was done by Israeli security forces for political reasons and for internal and local consumption.
Press TV: What can you tell us about the situation of these children who are taken by Israeli forces?
Sharkh: Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinian children. Israel has wiped out and annihilated whole families, entire families in the last two wars, which she launched against the Palestinian people.
Israel everyday is killing Palestinian people and Israel once she imposed this siege on the Gaza Strip it is kidnapping all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; it is abducting all Palestinians in the West Bank.
Whether you know where they are hiding or whether you don’t know as long as Israel is controlling the lives of the Palestinian people, putting them in jails, refusing to release our beloved ones from Israeli jails, making our life like hell...
Our life is actually death and life and life and death because of the Israelis because they refuse totally the peace; they refuse totally to withdraw from the West Bank; they refuse totally to give us our rights even though the United Nations gave us all our rights – the rights of refugees, the right of return, our right to self-determination, the right to live with honor like in any other nation.
We’re asking Israel to withdraw and end its occupation and to end its siege, but Israel is a state above the law, it is a rogue state - In the words of a Jew, Noam Chomsky, this is what Noam Chomsky said about Israel.
I think Israel is threat to war and security in the Middle East. As long as Israel… this is the behavior of Israel, there can never be peace in this part of the world because Israel is threatening everybody including its own people.
Press TV: How important do you think this unity now is for the Palestinians and do you think in the face of the current situation that unity can be kept?
Sharkh: I think this unity will be kept because the Palestinians are quite determined to maintain this national unity and to mobilize their own people in the face of their enemies because the Palestinian people want to end the occupation and to end this siege and even to improve their position when it comes to negotiation, so I think it will remain.
The Palestinians decided that this is a very bad chapter in their history and everybody is keen to maintain this unity whether inside Palestine, occupied Palestine or outside Palestine.
SC/NN
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/06/18/367479/israel-brutalizing-palestinians/