Israel, Sociopath Inc.

THE ABSURD TIMES

Israel has come to this.  Their new flag in honor of Netenyahoo.  A ceasefire had been arranged by Egypt and to celebrate Israel conducted underground or undercover operations against a Palestinian or Hamas leader.  It failed, and what's more, even Fox news as well as every major news outlet admitted that this current fighting is a result of Israel's aggression.  [Flag done by my our prior illustrator, Hugh, now deceased.  He died shortly after the Sociopath in chief was elected.  Tom Hayden died before he was elected.  Farewell both.]

First, we have to come to terms with the sociopath in the White House, the Sociopath in Chief.  He is so desperate for attention, admiration, approval, even hatred, any attention (it doesn't matter) that he will go to any lengths to keep himself on the front pages.  What would happen if everyone finally realized that he is genuinely nuts?

I'm not sure I ever explained about Psychopaths here.  If I did, too bad, if I didn't, here it is:

1) I pointed out that although what Trump has is now called an "anti-social personality defect" was previously called a Sociopath. The next few entries will distinguish between a Sociopath and a Psychopath.

 2) a Psychopath can not tell right from wrong. A sociopath can, but deems it irrelevant.

3) A Psychopath can empathize with others and often enjoys doing so. A Sociopath can not.

4) A Psychopath is legally insane, a Sociopath is responsible legally.

5) A Psychopath does not feel emotional pain. A Sociopath does, when it involves him/her.

So, now that we have a Sociopath running things and very angry that nobody seems to like him right now, but at least people are focusing on him, we are safe.  But what if we simply ignored him?  He would obviously try to get front page news, perhaps by starting a war, as mentioned.  This could happen if he was either ignored or, worse, if his darling son or daughter after whom he secretly lusts, were under investigation.  What would save us?

I never thought I'd be reduced to this.  I didn't think it could possibly happen, not in my most Kafkaesque nightmares, but we would be in the position of depending on the four star generals to refuse to follow his orders and conduct an unprovoked nuclear attack against Russia, China, and perhaps Canada and Mexico, just to get back on the front page.  Imagine being in the position where the only hope for survival of the planet is a revolt of the military against the Sociopath in Chief?  We are counting on them.  Otherwise, we will have to continue to say things about him, no matter what things they may be, just to satisfy his lust for attention.

Now to Israel.  The Zionist state.  Palestinians have been peacefully demonstrating for some time now for the right of return, the same argument as used to justify the Balfour declaration that established the State of Israel in the first place and displaced many Palestinians, many of whom still have the original deed to the homes they once occupied. 

* * * *

The death toll in Gaza has risen to at least six after Israel launched its heaviest airstrikes on the region since 2014, targeting scores of buildings, including the TV station Al-Aqsa TV. Israeli airstrikes also reportedly hit dozens of homes. Militants in Gaza responded by launching hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel. One person in Israel, a Palestinian man in Ashkelon, was reportedly killed. Some 16 others were injured, including at least two critically. The escalation began after a team of Israeli commandos drove into the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis Sunday in a clandestine raid that killed seven Hamas members, including a commander. Israel said one of its soldiers had been killed in an exchange of fire before Israel called in tank fire and airstrikes while the commandos escaped back to Israel. We speak with Muhammad Shehada, a writer and activist from the Gaza Strip and a student of development studies at Lund University, Sweden. He writes for Haaretz, The Forward and other publications.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The death toll in Gaza has risen to at least six after Israel launched its heaviest airstrikes on the region since 2014, targeting scores of buildings, including a TV station, Al-Aqsa TV. Israeli airstrikes also reportedly hit dozens of homes. Militants in Gaza responded by launching hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel. One person in Israel was reported killed, a Palestinian man in Ashkelon. Sixteen others were injured, including at least one—two critically. The recent escalation began after a team of Israeli commandos drove into the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis Sunday in a clandestine raid that killed seven Hamas members, including a commander. Israel said one of its soldiers had been killed in an exchange of fire before Israel called in tank fire and airstrikes while the commandos escaped back to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we're joined by Muhammad Shehada, a writer and activist from the Gaza Strip, writes for Haaretz, The Forwardand other publications.

Muhammad, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain to us what you understand is happening in Gaza, as you join us from Sweden, where you're a student?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, it started with Israel carrying out an undercover assassination against the top Hamas leader, Nour Baraka, at the worst and most inexcusable time one could ever think about: only a few days after Hamas and Israel supposedly reached an understanding to restore tranquility and calm and reintroduce progress to Gaza. Once the Israeli cover was blown up, Hamas retaliated with a barrage of improvised, primitive projectiles on Israel's south, with the aim to draw a red line of deterrence for Israel, that it cannot do as it may please in the Gaza Strip. Israel responded immediately with an explicit implementation of the Oxford definition of "terrorism," basically intimidating and terrorizing Gaza's civilian caged population as an instrument to achieve political gains—essentially, to send strong messages to Hamas and, according to a senior Israeli officer, exact a price from the other side.

The bombed buildings are usually predesignated targets, where Israel's choice of the next target is carefully calibrated in accordance with the desired magnitude of pain it wishes to leave Gaza with in order to teach it a lesson, so that when people wake up, they see destruction, rubble and funerals everywhere. They would be, presumably, terrorized back into passivity. This morning, a senior Israeli Air Force commander said that the nature of the targets, quote, "are completely different from anything we've known in the past." These targets are high-rise buildings in the city centers.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk—

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: And so, eight—

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the bombing of Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, Israel claims to have warned people in advance that the building is going to be targeted, a compound for Al-Aqsa TV. However, it doesn't make it any better to give people a choice between losing their constructions or homes or losing their lives. Today, for instance, people were awakened at 4:30 in the morning, in the very early morning, to an Israeli phone call saying, "You have only one minute to leave your homes, or else you will die inside them." Afterwards, Al-Yaziji Tower, in the very heart of Gaza, was obliterated from existence, reduced to rubble and misery. And people—that construction, in addition to seven others, including Al-Aqsa TV compound, used to house tens of Gazan families, civilian families, essentially, including kindergartners—kindergartens and entrepreneurial centers. So what we are seeing here is that Israel is trying to teach Gazans a lesson not to walk out of the line, not to be loud about their slow death, by inflicting the severest and most traumatic pain it could afford to do.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about the timing of this assassination attempt that touched off these latest troubles, especially in light of the fact that there appear to be at least some potential for restarting some kind of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and the involvement of other powers in the region in some sort of mediation?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, Gaza has shown extraordinary commitment to overwhelming nonviolence over the last at least six months of protest, demanding the right to life at the 5-meter fence that entraps the enclave. Eventually, Israel decided that if the protests are distant from the fence, in return, Gaza would be given an influx—an increase in the influx of Qatari fuel and money to pay the salaries of government officials, and increase the electricity daily dose for Gaza's population. However, once this, let's say, ceasefire understanding settled in, Israel seized the opportunity to immediately target Hamas, thinking that they cannot retaliate, with the interest of maintaining the ceasefire. We are seeing, apparently, international efforts to restore progress in the Gaza Strip that are being exterminated from existence by the Israeli persistence to play a political game other than caring for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you give us the context? When you talk about the last six months of peaceful protest, since March 30th, over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. What is the number? Fifteen thousand, 18,000 injured, more than 5,000 of them shot by Israeli soldiers. Can you talk about these ongoing protests and what the demands are now in Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, Gaza has been rendered unlivable by the year 2020 by the United Nations. The United Nations officials came out recently to say that "We've been optimistic about this deadline. Gaza is already, in fact, unlivable." If you look at the humanitarian situation in Gaza, you have an ever-increasing segment of extreme poverty. About 80 percent of the population depend on food packages and humanitarian aid to survive. And you have 97 percent of the water unfit for human consumption, totally polluted.

For this, Gazans decided to rise against their slow death and take initiative with their own hands. People have been marching to the Gaza borders for more than six months every Friday, and on other days of the week, to demand their right to life, to demand that the blockade shall be removed. And Israel, time and again, refuse to of knowledge the basic facts that people in Gaza are caged in a toxic slum from birth to death, where they are being suffocated out of hope, out of life, out of any sense for progress, and hollowed out of their souls eventually. And hence, they came to the borders to bring it down, to bring the bars that surround Gaza and besiege it into slow death down. And that's basically what they were demanding, that they shall no longer suffer at this time of their history.

AMY GOODMAN: Your final words—we have about 30 seconds—on the situation and what you feel needs to be done?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, The Guardian, a couple of years ago, opened an op-ed by saying Palestinian nonviolence should be met by global nonsilence. However, the equation that we have here is that if Gazans do not throw rockets or improvised projectiles, nobody at all listens to them whatsoever. Once these projectiles begin to fly over Israel, immediately the international community is concerned with restoring tranquility. However, what is made synonymous to tranquility is restoring the status quo that led to the explosion of these troubles in the first place, the very suffocating status quo. So it's a catch-22 that is being repeated over and over again. What Gaza needs in order to assuage existing problems, including security problems, is the very minimum of human dignity. They need to live as other people around the world, clear and simple.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Muhammad Shehada, writer and activist from Gaza Strip, student of development studies at Lund University in Sweden, where he's speaking to us from. Muhammad writes for Haaretz, The Forward and other publications.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Turf War in Palestine

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Latuff again.  The last Intifada was 2000.  This is 2015.  Not a time for another lost generation.

            If you have been paying any attention lately, you have probably heard of the "unrest" on the West Bank.  Actually, this time the Palestinians are not using slingshots that much anymore. 

            The knife has become the weapon of choice.  While watching the scenes, including that of one guy shot 12 times in the back while running away, it was mentioned that 7 Israelis have been killed in the last two weeks by stabbings.  It is assumed that these were all done by knives, but actually a couple used screwdrivers that being the only weapon available.

            Even more interesting, to a kid that grew up in Chicago in the "Old Days" was that these 7 were about the same amount that were supposedly killed by missiles during the Gaza War when between 2000 and 3000 Arabs were massacred by Israeli air strikes.  If you can count, it would seem that the knife is mightier than the missal.  So, what kind of training camps are needed?

            Probably any large city would provide many area were one could learn to use a knife quickly, and efficiently, or else.  The switchblades of today are more complicated than they were in the old days, but seem quite as effective.  So, either a real two-state solution or get knifed.  I mean, that's the way gangs in Chicago, New York, Detroit, and one hope Los Angeles has caught on as well.

            So, Jews stay on their side of the border of 1967 and Arabs on their side.  All will be well.  And Mr. Nitwityahoo, take down that damn wall!

            It should be pointed out that there is no fear of another Holocaust on the part of Israelis.  That is more or less kept alive as some sort of justification.  We have to be against oppression, right?

            We can't let this go without mentioning the Democratic Debate, just briefly.  The dumbest statement was from Webb, the short guy on the left of the screen when he complained about Assad "INVADING" Syria.  No, Webb, he FUCKING LIVES THERE!  The other issue was Bernie saying we are sick of Clinton's damn e-mails.  Well, we are, but comments right afterwards pointed out that Bernie lost an "opportunity" to be President.  Well, so be it, we are tired of the damn e-mails, no matter who is President.

            So, here is a discussion of Palestine.  It is not that long, but it is something that has been ignored for too long.  The three people are people who actually live in the region, one of them a Jew and two are Arab:

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the latest round of violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories, the worst since last year's Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip. A series of uncoordinated stabbing attacks by Palestinians on Israelis has sparked a new Israeli crackdown on Arab areas. Israel says seven of its citizens have been killed and many more wounded by Palestinian assailants armed with knives and other weapons this month. Four of the deaths came on Tuesday, when separate knife-wielding attackers targeted a bus and a busy thoroughfare. Another rammed a car into civilians standing on a street. Israel has imposed new checkpoints and closures on Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and intensified military attacks in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 11 suspected Palestinian assailants, though questions have been raised over whether all were armed or posed a threat. In the latest violence, two knife-wielding suspects were fatally shot on Wednesday. Overall, at least 33 Palestinians, including eight children, have been killed, and more than 1,600 have been wounded this month.

In a speech on Wednesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel is threatening to spark a religious war.

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS: [translated] These days, the Israeli aggressive assault against our people and its land and its holy places is escalating, and the racism is showing its ugly face and is making the occupation uglier. It is threatening peace and stability and is threatening to spark a religious conflict that would burn everything, not only in the region, but also in the whole world.

AMY GOODMAN: In the deadliest day of violence so far, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in Gaza Friday as hundreds marched on the border wall with Israel. Meanwhile, a Jewish assailant killed four Bedouin Arabs in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Dimona. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. considers the Dimona attack an act of terrorism. He also raised concerns the Israeli military is using excessive force.

JOHN KIRBY: I think you're going to ask me what—do we consider it an act of terrorism? And we do. ... Certainly, individuals on both sides of this‚ of this divide, have proven capable of—and in our view, guilty of—acts of terror. ... We've certainly seen reports of security activity that—you know, that could indicate the potential excessive use of force. And again, we don't want to see that anywhere. We don't want to see that here in our own country. So—so, yeah, we're concerned about that.

AMY GOODMAN: The new flare-up appears partially fueled by Palestinian concerns over Israeli control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and ongoing attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians. It's also sparked new demonstrations across the occupied West Bank that have revived talk of a Third Intifada.

For more, we're joined by three guests. Diana Buttu is with us, an attorney based in Palestine. She served as a legal adviser to the Palestinians in negotiations with Israel, previously an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Gideon Levy is with us. He is Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is the author of The Punishment of Gaza. And Budour Hassan is a Palestinian writer, activist and law student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her most recentpiece for Electronic Intifada is called "'Son of Palestine' mourned by thousands."

We're going to go first to Haifa to Diana Buttu. Can you tell us what's happening right now? Are we seeing a Third Intifada?

DIANA BUTTU: Well, it doesn't matter how you classify it, if you classify it as an intifada or not as an intifada. But what is happening is that Palestinians are being killed at will by the Israeli government and by Israelis. It's turned into a lynch mob scene, where all it takes is for one person to scream out that the person is an Arab or a terrorist, and suddenly you see the shoot-to-kill orders that have been issued by the government come into effect. We've seen this with at least a few children just this past week, with Fadi Alloun, who was killed last week. And all that it takes is simply one shoot-to-kill order, and there you have it. And so, what we are seeing now is protest. We're seeing people who are fed up with living under Israeli military rule and who are demonstrating and demanding that they be free.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Diana Buttu, could you give us some sense of what you think accounts for this upsurge in violence? And also talk specifically about what's happening in East Jerusalem. Israel has sealed many of the neighborhoods there. Tell us a little bit about who the residents principally are of East Jerusalem and what this means.

DIANA BUTTU: Well, first, in terms of East Jerusalem, we're talking about a population of 200,000 Palestinians, many of whom actually hail from West Jerusalem but were removed from the city in 1948 and now reside under Israeli military rule. These are people who are not citizens of the state of Israel; they are permanent residents. And living as permanent residents means that their residency is considered temporary by Israel, even though generations of these people have lived there.

The newest measures that have been put into place are everything from searching entrances into cities; demanding proof that people have paid their taxes, for some reason; also things such as indicating that they're going to demolish homes of anybody who is suspected of being involved in any resistance or otherwise; and basically the shoot-to-kill orders that I've been speaking about.

Some of the videos that you've seen that have gone viral are videos of children who have been—one video, in particular, of a young boy who was hit in the head with a metal rod, who was run over by a jeep and then stood over by an Israeli settler telling him that he should die. These are—this is the type of activity that is taking place in Jerusalem.

Now, in terms of the protests themselves and what's happening and what's going on, or the reasons for it, it's because it's been going—this is a new generation that has lived exclusively under Israeli military control. This is a generation that hasn't seen anything but the false promises of the Oslo agreements. It's a generation that has to apply for permits to be able to go visit the sea, to be able to go to Jerusalem. It's a generation that recognizes that the denial of freedom is not something that is normal or natural, and they are resisting this and standing up and saying to the Israelis, "Once and for all, we want to be free. Enough is enough." And if the world is very concerned about these protests, etc., they should be actually demanding that Israel end its occupation, rather than demanding that the protests be quashed.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Budour Hassan. You have written for Electronic Intifada. You're a student at Hebrew University. We're speaking to you in Jerusalem. You have had the chance to speak with the family of Subhi Abu Khalifa, who stabbed and wounded an Israeli on Thursday. Can you talk about what the family said and what you understand is happening right now?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Subhi Abu Khalifa lives in Shuafat refugee camp, which is literally a ghetto, which the Israeli occupation since the 1970s has tried to crush with all means possible, turning it into a poverty hub, turning—putting drugs in the camp, smuggling arms to some of the residents. So they've tried to do everything in the camp, not just to destroy the community there, but to also prevent this camp from being active in the Palestinian resistance movement. And Subhi Abu Khalifa comes from this background. And despite all the attempts to destroy this generation, Subhi Abu Khalifa and his brothers and his family and thousands who live in Shuafat refugee camp, despite all the hardships, are standing up against the Israeli occupation and resisting.

And what was astonishing about the interview with his family is that his father told me that just one day after the alleged stabbing, he was fired from his job, because he works at the Israeli occupation municipality's cleaning services. And I've asked him, "Do you regret that, resent your son's actions?" He told me this—he told me, "I will never value my job over my dignity." And it was—his grandmother said the same. She said that "I will not accept that my children and my grandchildren will see the Israeli occupation or colonize our city, destroy our lives, stab our children and slaughter our children in front of our eyes, and they'll be silent."

So, this is just the case of Subhi Abu Khalifa, but there are tens of Subhi Abu Khalifas who have carried out these lone-wolf attacks and who—not only they are fed up with the Israeli occupation, they're also fed up with the Palestinian Authority, with the Oslo Accords, with the neoliberalization of the Palestinian society. They are fed up with being preached all the time about being civil, about being respectable, in the face of the most uncivil and unrespectable army in the world. And they are fed up with being told that we should be nonviolent, when all that this so-called nonviolence and peace talks have brought is just further colonization, not only of Jerusalem, but also of the West Bank, further destruction of the Gaza Strip, and further attempts to erase Palestinian identity from Jerusalem, take over the urban space that Palestinians once had in Jerusalem, and also sort of pacify and try to take over the Palestinian mentality in Jerusalem, because what's harder than what's happening in Jerusalem is all these attempts to Israelify or to try to contain the anger in Jerusalem, try to pacify the spirits of people in Jerusalem.

So these people are saying, "No, we will never be Israelified. We will never be contained. And we will never be domesticated by all these attempts, even the slighter repression, the attempts of the Israeli municipality, for example, to sugarcoat the occupation by putting all these community centers, by trying to sound sweet and kind and visit Palestinian neighborhoods." So these people, these young people, are not stupid to be deceived by this kind of sugarcoating. They are saying that "We don't accept neither your hard repression, which is embodied by the checkpoints and the closures, nor do we respect your slighter repression, which is personified by these attempts to actually appeal or appease the Palestinian communities in Jerusalem."

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to take a break and then come back to this discussion. Budour Hassan is a Palestinian writer. She's a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Diana Buttu is a Palestine-based attorney. She is joining us from Haifa. And when we come back, we will also be joined by Gideon Levy, the Haaretzcolumnist. He's in Tel Aviv. Stay with us.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Diana Buttu—she's in the studio in Haifa, a Palestinian attorney. Budour Hassan is joining us by Democracy Now! video stream from Jerusalem, a Palestinian student and writer. And Gideon Levy is also with us,Haaretz columnist, in Tel Aviv.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In an appearance at Harvard University, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to draw a link between the wave of violence and increased Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody. And there's been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years. Now you have this violence because there's a frustration that is growing—and a frustration among Israelis, who don't see any movement. So, I look at that, and I say, you know, if that did explode—and I pray and hope it won't, and I think there are options to prevent that—but we would inevitably be—you know, at some point, we're going to have to be engaged in working through those kinds of difficulties. So, better to try to find the ways to deal with it before that happens than later.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Secretary of State John Kerry speaking Tuesday. Gideon Levy, could you respond to what he said and give us a sense of what the mood there is?

GIDEON LEVY: Unfortunately, I must say that John Kerry's declaration is rather hypocritic. The Americans could have prevented long time ago; the Americans know exactly how to prevent it. If they really wanted to put an end to the occupation, the Israeli occupation would have come to its end long time ago. This policy of only serving carrots to Israel, of flattering to Israel again and again, is now decades long and never worked, never, ever worked. And the Americans never really tried the alternative path of putting pressure on Israel in order to bring Israel back to the international law, back to legal and order, back to morality.

And now John Kerry is saying that this can be prevented and should be prevented? Where were you in the last 67 years, in the last 48 years, when Israel is so much depending on the United States like never before, and you just gave Israel a carte blanche to go wild in Gaza, in the West Bank, again and again, build settlements, go for wars, and never tried to push Israel and to put an end to all this? So, really, with all the respect to John Kerry's good intentions, this is not the way to deal with Israel after all those years.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: But Israeli government officials, Gideon Levy, if you could give us a sense of how they've responded to remarks made by U.S. officials? The defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, for example, accused Washington of completely misreading the situation on the ground in Israel-Palestine. The public security minister called the U.S. remarks "foolish."

GIDEON LEVY: Yeah, they got all the same message from the prime minister's office: now to condemn the United States. In the last years, they found out that condemning the United States doesn't take any price. Israel can talk to and about the American administration as if Israel is the superpower and the United States is just like one of those small countries which depend on Israel. They allow themselves what no country in the world allows themselves vis-à-vis the United States, going and trying to sabotage an international agreement with Iran in the American Congress against the American administration. Things which are unheard of by any other country, Israel learned in the recent years that they are possible—and not only possible, they are productive, and they are working. So, sure, Israel will attack now the Americans for any kind of criticism—

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Diana—

GIDEON LEVY: —because, you know, the Americans will not punish Israel for this.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Diana Buttu into—back into the conversation. Also, Netanyahu was speaking at the U.N. General Assembly saying that Israel will now negotiate with the Palestinians without any preconditions.

DIANA BUTTU: But that is a farce. I mean, one of the things that Netanyahu has said over and over again is that he's not going to stop any settlement construction, in fact that he's going to continue it. And, in fact, this is what has actually happened. In addition, what he's also said is that they reserve the right to continue to kill Palestinians. And so, while he indicates that he has no preconditions, in fact, it's quite the opposite.

But the issue is not whether there are preconditions, it's whether the negotiations process actually works. And it doesn't. I was part of the negotiations process. You cannot negotiate with one very powerful party, backed by a superpower—the United States—and a very weak party. We call that dictation. The negotiations have failed over the course of the past 22 years.

And so, now is the time, rather than heading back to negotiations, which only serve to give Israel more legitimacy, only serve to give Israel more international recognition—in fact, more countries started recognizing Israel after the negotiations process began than before it—rather than going back to that process, which was failed and futile for Palestinians, there needs to be a different way. And this different way is to be pushing for boycotts against Israel, to be pushing for divestment, and to be pushing for sanctions, to be pushing for Israel to be held accountable under international law, and to be pushing for Israel's isolation. All of those measures will work. But going back to a failed negotiations process will not.

AMY GOODMAN: How does the Al-Aqsa Mosque fit into this, the current unrest?

DIANA BUTTU: Amy, this is one of the reasons that we are seeing these latest round and latest wave of protests. If you just look back about a year ago, a year ago there was a very brutal Israeli attack on Gaza in which Israelis—in which the Israeli army killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. A hundred thousand Palestinian homes and businesses were demolished or destroyed, and still to this day remain unbuilt. Add to that this summer's attacks by Palestinian—excuse me, by Israeli settlers on Palestinians, including the burning of a Palestinian home in the West Bank town of Duma that ended up killing an 18-month-old and his two parents. Add to that the Israeli measures to allow the Temple Mount Faithful, a group that actually believes in the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, allowing them onto the Al-Aqsa compound under the guise of religious freedom, when there is nothing involving prayer there at all, allowing them to be able to go there while simultaneously denying Palestinians and denying Muslims the ability to be able to go to their holy sites. This is exactly the recipe that the Israelis have been laying out time and again in order to spark another wave of protests or an intifada, what have you. And so, the issue of Al-Aqsa plays—is very central, but it's not just Al-Aqsa, it's all of the other measures that have been taken, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, we want to thank you for being with us, joining us from Haifa, a Palestine-based attorney. Budour Hassan, who was joining by video stream from Jerusalem and a Palestinian writer, writes for The Electronic Intifada. And the Israeli writer Gideon Levy, a Haaretz columnist, joining us from Tel Aviv.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/10/15/gideon_levy_us_criticizes_settlements_while?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=5f5cda80bb-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-5f5cda80bb-190349145