Israel seeking to get rid of Palestinians: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Haidar Eid, an associate professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, about Palestinians commemorating the 67th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) Day, when Israeli forces displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land in 1948.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Now 67 years on, how important and significant is the issue of the right of return for Palestinians or do you think it has been forgotten?

Eid: I think it is extremely important to understand that the essence of the Palestinian question is the right of return.

One of the problems that we have had with the Oslo Accords that were signed in 1993, is that it managed to deal only with one third of the Palestinian people that  is to say those who live in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, forgetting the right of more than 7 million Palestinian refugees or rather scattered all over the world living in miserable conditions in miserable camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and you name it.

And I think it is important that today we should not only pay lip service as the official leadership of the Palestinian people has been doing just to pay lip service and empty rhetoric about the right of return instead of taking concrete steps to implement United Nations Resolution 194 which clearly calls for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their compensation.

Press TV: Why do you think Israel is so adamant to block this right and not grant it to the Palestinians?

Eid: I think Israel itself is a settler colonialist that is based on either a policy of ethnic cleansing that is to say gettingrid of the indigenous population of the land exactly like what happened in Northern America, Australia and New Zealand or its right to follow a policy of apartheid and racial segregation like exactly what happened in South Africa. 

I mean it is not a coincidence that apartheid was declared officially as the official and political regime ruling South Africa in 1948 and that was the year when Israel itself was established but worse than the apartheid system I think Israel is looking at the Palestinians as the other, those who represent the other of the Ashkenazi Zionist self, and therefore in order to make sure that Israel will survive forever, Israel needs to get rid of the Palestinian people.

Notice also that Israel has been implementing a multi-tiered system of oppression against the Palestinian people. First, you have a direct military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and Gaza has been transformed into the largest concentration camp on earth. Second, you have an ongoing ethnic cleansing and settlement policy in the West Bank and you also have racial segregation and apartheid against 1.4 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

Press TV: And very quickly if you can Mr. Eid, as more Palestinian generations are born outside of Palestine in the form of refugees and they have not really been to Palestine, do you think that the issue of the right of return will continue to have any relevancy?

Eid: Well to answer directly I think that the only window of hope that Palestinians have, especially Palestinians who live in the diaspora,  is the rise and the growing momentum of the global BDS campaign - boycott, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel - until it complies with international law and the first objective of the global BDS campaign is the implementation of United Nations Resolution 194 which calls for the right of return.

AHK/MKA

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