ONE STATE SOLUTION: TO END THE MURDERS IN GAZA AND BRING SHARED PEACE TO THE NEW STATE

INTERVIEW: Ilan Pappe, an Israeli scholar, historian, and professor (UK) argues the media’s demonization of Hamas provides Israel cover for continuing its siege and occupation of Palestinian territories – Most recent book “The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge – July 29, 2014 by JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER on The Real News Network

Click for Source Video (text) Interview on The Real News Network

Gaza’s only power plant was destroyed by Israel to exacerbate horrible humanitarian situation on Gaza. Israel also destroyed water and sanitation in the Palestinian territories = “The targeting of civilian objects under situation of hostilities is prohibited according to International Humanitarian Law and is considered a war crime.”

QUOTE: ex-President Bill Clinton said = “Hamas was perfectly well aware of what would happen if they started raining rockets into Israel. They fired a thousand of them. And they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them.”

DESVARIEUX: Is Clinton’s portrayal of the situation accurate?

ILAN PAPPÉ: No, it’s a very narrow kind of context. In order to understand the situation involves a more immediate past and another a more distant past.

ILAN PAPPÉ: 2 Months ago Israel decided to use the pretext of an abduction and killing of three settlers in order to implement a plan to politically destroy Hamas, that Israel has had for many years. The reason that Israel chose this particular timing for this initiative was the Palestinians’ creation of a unity government (Hamas and Fatah), a new strategy, to involve the international community and UN on the basis of a human rights and civil rights agenda, which Israel totally refuses.

ILAN PAPPÉ: Hamas is keeping its part of the 2012 deal for a long ceasefire. However, Israel re-arresting all the political leadership and activists in the West Bank, including those Israel was pledged to release under the prisoner exchange deal known as the Shalit exchange deal. This Violated the ceasefire arrangement.

ILAN PAPPÉ: But the deeper historical background since 2006 when the people of Gaza elected democratically Hamas to try and stop the BLOCKADE (APARTHEID) ghetto that Israel created.

ILAN PAPPÉ: 1994, Long before the Hamas took over Gaza isolation means Israel doesn’t really know what to do with it, so it ghettoized it. Fatah failed to save the people of Gaza from that situation and the people turned to the Hamas. Israel reaction an immediate brutal military response. So Hamas responded within that context by launching missiles to challenge Israel’s policy of strangulation, siege, and starvation. So Clinton is wrong.

DESVARIEUX: Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal was interviewed byCharlie Rose

MASHAL: “We are not fanatics. We are not fundamentalists. We do not actually fight the Jews because they are Jews, per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers…On the contrary, we actually respect religious people. We ask for tolerance, for coexistence between the Buddhists, the Jews, the Christians, or the Muslims. As God created us as nations, we are different. And the Quran says that, in order for the nations to live together and coexist together without occupation and without any blockade.”

KHALED MASHAL, CHIEF OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU, HAMAS

ROSE: “You believe in the coexistence of peoples, and therefore you believe in the coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East…Without occupation you can coexist.

MASHAL: I am ready to coexist with Jews, Christians, Arabs, and non-Arabs. However, we cannot coexist with Occupiers, Settlers, and those who apply Apartheid.

ROSE: So you can coexist with Jews. Can you want coexist with the state of Israel – as a solely Jewish state?

MASHAL: No we cannot live with a state of Supremacist Occupiers.

ROSE: Assuming they’re no longer occupiers and Israel recognizes your right to exist could you recognize their right to exist?

MASHAL: If the Palestinian people have their say in their own state without occupation. They can then decide.

DESVARIEUX: You wrote recently about how Israel empowered Hamas to come about. Can you just explain that a bit?

PAPPÉ: PLO President Abbas refuses to recognize Israel as Pure-Jewish-Rights state. So Charlie Rose’s implication that Hamas is inflexible or unwilling to be a partner for reconciliation is wrong. Secondly, the Palestinian perspective on the Israeli colonization of Palestine started in the late 19th century. Three generations later, Palestinians understand that the Israelis are there to stay, or even want the Israelis to go. It’s a question of a fully democratize government that sees all propel as equal.

PAPPÉ: Palestinian forces led by the Fatah in the ’60s and the ’70s were moving towards the idea of a two-state solution with the hope that one day they will be able to live in one democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948 could return.

PAPPÉ: Israel rejected all ideas; a two-state solution or a one-state solution. So the Israeli occupation continued with jewish settlers colonization the West Bank expanding. Today that takeover of land is so extreme that it’s ridiculous to talk about a two-state solution.

PAPPÉ: Today we are left with is an equal number of Jews and Palestinians living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean under one a Jewish Supremacist Regime that discriminates against Palestinians. There is a secular strategy to try and change that supremacist concept.

PAPPÉ: That secular strategy failed so Palestinians tried a more religious version of that strategy, because Israel believed that this should be enhanced and supported as a counterbalance to the secular Fatah leadership. So Israel didn’t invent Hamas, but they definitely allowed it to emerge, to prosper, to become powerful, hoping that this would defeat the secular leadership of the Palestinians.

PAPPÉ: This is not limited to Israeli policies = US did the same inventing Taliban and the AQ “jihadists” in Afghanistan to defeat the Russians + US did a similar thing in Egypt and in Iraq. So Israel = USA methods in deciding who would be the leaders and representatives of the people under the disguise of democracy = This kind of crisis.

PAPPÉ: So Hamas resulted in being both democratically elected and an alternative to a FAILED SECULAR POLICY that did not end the OCCUPATION OR APARTHEID (Israel’s chosen method of defeating Fatah).

PAPPÉ: I still think the only way forward for the Palestinians is a united leadership. But Israeli fear of that kind of unity is what brought this present wave of MURDER AND DESTRUCTION by Israel. Israel fears a united Palestinian leadership that bases the Palestinian demands on human rights and civil rights. Israel can NOT defeat that approach. It’s far more dangerous than any rocket the launched into Israel.

DESVARIEUX: So, Israel essentially empowered Hamas? How can the Apartheid Blockade be removed?

PAPPÉ: If the Apartheid Blockade and ghetto of Gaza continues to be sealed by Israel, and Israel continues to determine even the level of calories the Palestinian people to not starve but not to live too well, if this kind of abuse, collective abuse of the Palestinians who are incarcerated in the Gaza Strip would continue, then the Hamas will use any desperate means at its disposal to continue the struggle.

PAPPÉ: That would likely lead to a third intifada; namely, the people in the West Bank, regardless of whether they are Hamas or not, will join in, and maybe even the Hezbollah. So a continued Israeli policy of Apartheid Siege has the potential for a much wider and bloodier conflict.

PAPPÉ: A removal of the Apartheid Siege will enable Palestinians in Gaza to reunited with their brothers and sisters in the West Bank, to be reunited with the world, and the end of the kind of boycott that America and the E.U. imposed on the Hamas will include them in a political process that can change the reality in Israel and Palestine for the better.

PAPPÉ: But for that to happen, you have to change the basic attitude of SUPREMACIST Israel that uses its military power to dictate to the Palestinians how to live and where to live. Removing that kind of Supremacist Israeli conviction, hopefully by international pressure, then there is a chance for a painful but hopeful political and legal regime in one united state.