ISRAEL WANTS POLITICIDE: But Despite Renewed Attacks, Israel No Closer to Defeating Palestinian Resistance

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+972’s Samer Badawi reports Palestinians in remain steadfast in their resistance of Israeli Apartheid occupation, and UCLA’s Gabriel Piterberg says Israel is no closer to its goal of defeating Palestinian political and military resistance – August 21, 2014

Gabriel Piterberg, Professor of history and Director of Near East Studies in an Expert on settler colonialism and Zionism. Published “The Returns of Zionism” in 2008.

Samer Badawi, Regular contributor to +972, on-the-ground reporting and analysis of events in Israel and Palestine. He served in Palestinian’s occupied territories.

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Violence continues in Palestine as Israel attempted to assassinate Mohammed Deif, its military commander, failed, instead taking the lives of his wife and infant child.

2,016+ Palestinians murdered, 80+% civilians
3 Israelis civilians dead

PITERBERG: The clear victimizer is the colonial occupier of the Palestinian territories, which is Israel. A settler colonial domination of the indigenous Palestinians and the settlers take their land but not their labor. What bothers Israelis for 100+ years is the mere presence of Palestinians. Israelis covet the land.

PITERBERG: Israel cannot succeed in eliminating Palestinian resistance, but they kill people in Gaza including activists and fighters, but unless they Murder and eliminating all Palestinians from historical Palestine, they cannot eradicate resistance. Israel propaganda ruse must stop. Israel is the occupier of Gaza and controls it with a complete blockade from land, sea, and from the air. Israel even determines how many calories Palestinian children will eat in their diet. Palestine is an occupation by different means. Tight military and colonial occupation still goes on.

NOOR: Talks broke down and now Israel taking a play out of its old playbook and trying to assassinate a Hamas commander.

BADAWI: In Gaza the sense is that Israel was never negotiating in good faith. Over the last 24 hours the very same people Israel was negotiating with are the same people that Israel is now trying to assassinate/Murder. So it’s the clearest sign of what Israel’s intentions have always been.

BADAWI: Not only is Israel an occupying power, but it displaced 75% of the Palestinian population, the indigenous population of Palestine, during its creation in 1948 — Worse refugee crisis than even Syria (10%) and Iraq, it is atrocious. Israel’s intentions have always been to literally cleanse the land of its indigenous population. And Gaza represents a microcosm of that attempt with 80% either refugees themselves or descendents of refugees from 1948.

NOOR: Level of destruction in Gaza is unprecedented in Israel’s most horrible attack to date. Why do the Palestinians still have this heart to resist and to fight the Israeli occupiers?

BADAWI: The Palestinians have nowhere to go because are completely sealed off by land, by air, and by sea and can go nowhere. In Gaza are scenes of half a million people displaced from their homes across the 25-mile strip of land literally leveled to the ground, and seeking shelter in one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

BADAWI: Israelis have pushed the Palestinians to EXTERMINATION = The very same accusation Israelis have been leveling at the Arab world for the past 65 years Israel has done to the Palestinians in Gaza. These half a million people, even in an extended ceasefire, have nowhere to go, as UN says 100,000 homes have been destroyed in Gaza. + Fact that many of these people are already refugees themselves running away from refugee camps, it is quite astonishing.

BADAWI: UN debates “what do you call somebody who has been displaced from a refugee camp?” International laws and International human rights have been violated by Israel causing not internally displaced person (IDP), but in Gaza we see refugees who have become IDPs in their own land. = Utter lunacy us what the Israelis have done in Gaza.

BADAWI: Netanyahu’s most recent escalation of targeted assassinations of the very people who can resolving this conflict really makes no sense. I see no endgame here other than continued killing and continued suffering on the part of Palestinians.

NOOR: Professor Piterberg where can they possibly go from here?

FACT: ISRAELI GOAL IS COMPLETE EXHAUSTION OF PALESTINIANS IN PLACE OF COMPLETE EXTERMINATION.

PITERBERG: The Israelis have not managed to completely ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Palestine. But they’re trying to create “politicide” by inflicting such exhaustive, damaging, oppressive rules and regulations on the Palestinians that they’ll become so exhausted they will not constitute a political community able to lay claim to sovereignty even on a fraction of Palestine. That’s their basic goal.

PITERBERG: EXHAUSTION is the maximum they can achieve and they are achieving it. Chilling statements of Israeli generals/officials in Gaza is we are “mowing the lawn” = Causing MASSIVE PAIN AND DESTRUCTION repeated every two or three years. = Want to achieve is COMPLETE FRAGMENTATION AND EXHAUSTION of Palestinian society (West Bank and Gaza) that any legitimate political claim to historical Palestine is gone.

NOOR: Is Israel any closer to achieving its goal of crushing all political opposition?

BADAWI: I agree with the professor that that is the goal, but what I’ve observed among Palestinians in Jerusalem and in the West Bank repeatedly is a sense of determination + solidarity + national purpose for a liberation movement as a shared common strategic vision. Palestinians want the reconciliation agreement (FATAH/PLO + HAMAS) and to set down that strategic vision and work together to confront the Israeli occupation in a meaningful way.