Israeli PM seeking more massacres in al-Quds: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and activist from Seattle, to discuss a new Israeli measure against Palestinian protesters.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.                       

Press TV: To use force against Palestinian stone-throwers; is this just another excuse to clamp down on Palestinians?

Baroud: Well I do not really think that Israel requires another excuse to crack down on Palestinian protesters. What I think really matters in this story is the context and the political context of this is rather convoluted and very, very interesting. You know as far Netanyahu’s (…) regime is concerned right now, we have this right-wing element; the ultra-nationalist elements which kind of really moved from the fringe of Israeli political class into the center. Now they mainstream Israel’s politicians.

And now they are really kind of influencing Netanyahu’s thinking as far as the need from their point of view to annex al-Aqsa mosque, [the] Haram al-Sharif and to kind of end the status quo. And the current status quo is that the al-Haram is under the control and the management of the Islamic Waqf, Islamic trust. There has been lot pressure to change that and to turn al-Aqsa and Haram al-Sharif, and give it to the same status. As of Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron following the great massacre in 1994 when Baruch Goldstein killed over 30 and the Israeli army killed over 24 Palestinian protesters on that day.

They want to see a duplication of that scenario and this is why they have been, since last Sunday, creating obvious provocative acts, trying to get Palestinians to fight back and to use that as an opportunity to push for new laws and regulations and one of them is this latest that is pushed by Prime Minister Netanyahu where Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein finally approved the use of snipe rife fire on protesters. By the way, this is really the first time really in international law history where they are faced with this question where a supposedly democratic  (…) regime is actually calling for allowing the use of sniper rifle against Palestinian stone-throwers who are mostly young people under the age of 16.

Press TV: What do you think about the proportion of the response by the Israelis to stone-throwing Palestinians?

Baroud: Not really, but it really never I mean. Israelis action against Palestinians anywhere has never been in proportion. Just today, in fact, there was a new report by Defense for Children International that came up with a report that says nearly 2000 Palestinian children who are killed by Israel since the year 2000. Almost none of them were involved in any sort of combat or any violence acts against the Israelis.

So this is the reality that Netanyahu thinks it is not just good enough and yet they still want to escalate. So imagine a scenario in which the war on Palestinian children is escalated beyond the killing of this very large number of children within the matte of few years. It is really kind of quite an unprecedented not just in international law but even within the thinking that this …military thinking of the Israeli army and the Israeli (…) regime.   

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