US must stop backing Israel atrocities against Palestinians: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Richard Forer, a Denver-based author and political commentator, to discuss Israel’s continued kidnapping of Palestinians.

Press TV: It seems with every step forward that is taken, another ten steps are taken backwards. We did have that deal to release Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq who was held without charge or trial, however, administrative detention for another 45 Palestinians has been extended.

Forer: That is not surprising, and this is a typical Israeli issue; the more they feel threatened by international opinion, the more repressive they become towards the non-Jewish population. This is really nothing more than just a slight acceleration of their, as you said, intimidating, suppressing policy against Palestinians.

It is not going to end because Israel is not interested in actually ending it. If they were interested in ending it they would just say ‘well, the cause of the outrage amongst the Palestinians is our outrageous behavior against them.’

Stealing their land, humiliating them and their family, preventing them from having basic civil rights and not allowing them to have a country of their own or at least be equal citizens within the state of Israel...especially when you have a population that is so young as Palestinians are.

Israel knows that their policies of dispossession and denial of human rights are going to cause a backlash, but rather than deal with that problem and simply make peace so that those problems do not happen, Israel continues with ethnic cleansing, continues with stealing of land and then deals with the problem of reaction, which in many cases is not violent, with violence... Israel feels much more comfortable dealing with violence than with non-violence.

Press TV: What needs to be done to break this cycle of course, because we have seen increasing tensions since October, but as you have also just pointed out it has only increased the pressure on Palestinians; more house demolitions, more settlements activity on Palestinian land and more mass arrests.

Forer: …What really needs to be done...is for the United States to stop providing aid to Israel and stop vetoing resolutions at the [UN] Security Council that criticize Israel, and the United States should abide by its own laws and not give Israel billions of dollars every year until Israel complies with international law.

But as long as the US and Israel subvert international law, Israel will continue its policies. And most policies are designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Palestine. This is simply what is going on. Israel does not care what the world thinks; it only cares what the United States thinks and it is only concerned that how far can it go in mistreating the Palestinians before the US or Congress will finally realize that enough is enough.

And Israel obviously has a lot of leeway, when you consider the US Congress often votes 100-0 and when you hear the rhetoric of these completely insane candidates for presidency like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz basically saying that the US should be one-sided in favor of Israel and these candidates do not even know the slightest thing about the actual history or what is really going on, or they do not want to know.

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