Israel maintains occupation with violence

Q: What do you think about the areas that have been targeted? Mr. Alderman, our guest in London, is saying Hamas control centers are being targeted and not residential areas.
 
Suliman: It is completely ridiculous that Israeli officials would claim that they are targeting only Hamas affiliated training camps or sites because there is actually no such thing in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the most highly and densely populated areas in the entire world. There is no area that is purely Hamas and every area is surrounded by civilians.
 
Every airstrike that targets a Palestinian target in the Gaza Strip would eventually result in civilian casualties. And in terms of numbers if we look at the numbers so far Israel has killed 15 or 16 Palestinians in just one day. Five of them are children, some of them are women. The number of injuries is over 90, mostly children and women.
 
So I wonder how Israelis would claim that they are actually targeting only Hamas and what they call terrorist sites when numbers would prove otherwise.
 
So again, it does not make sense that Israeli officials would claim that they are actually targeting Hamas sites when there are no such thing.
 
Q: Let’s talk about the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel – our guest is saying they deliberately attack residential areas.
 
Suliman: As far as you want to talk about violence, or this renewed cycle of violence… first we have to differentiate between the two types of violence in this context: First we have the greater violence, that is, violence committed by the Israeli occupation forces.
 
    We need to understand that Israeli violence is by no means similar to Palestinian violence; we need to understand that violence committed by Israeli forces is done in order to maintain its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is violence, which is perpetuated on a daily basis in order to keep Palestinians under the hold of Israeli forces.
 
We need to understand that Israeli forces commit violence on a daily basis – they are blockading the Gaza Strip; they are shooting on a daily basis against Palestinian fishermen in the fishing zone, which they have reduced to only 3 nautical miles; they target Palestinian farmers; they prevent Palestinian patients, Palestinian students from traveling; they continue to build settlements; they arrest Palestinians in the West Bank, they continue to demolish houses in the West Bank. So, this is one type of violence.
 
The other type of Violence is Palestinian violence, which is reactionary violence. It is more than anything else symbolic violence. It has to be understood in the context of anti-colonial movements. It is violence, which is done as a declaration of resistance by the Palestinians.
 
The Palestinians are not going to sit by and just watch as Israel continues to carry out its attacks against the Palestinians. This is violence, which is done as a response to the primary injustice done by Israel against the Palestinians. So, this is one thing.
 
The second thing is, we need to understand that Palestinian violence is by no means as destructive, as lethal as Israeli violence. If Israelis continue to claim that Palestinians shoot rockets against Israelis into Israeli cities indiscriminately and intentionally and that they do not admit this, we need to look at numbers. How many Israelis were killed by Palestinian rocket fire?
 
Of course, human rights organizations condemned Hamas rocket fire, but we need to understand also that human rights organizations greatly condemned Israeli forces for using disproportionate indiscriminate violence against the Palestinians.
 
We need to understand that Israel does not respect its obligation under international; under Fourth Geneva Conventions; it does not respect the principle of proportionality; the principle of discrimination; and the principles of taking necessary precautions in order to avoid civilian casualties.
 
From Israel’s procedures we need to understand that what it does is try and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties in order to exact the highest price from Palestinian resistance movements and apply pressure on them in order to surrender to Israeli forces and their attacks against the Palestinians. So, their claims that they do not target civilians deliberately are completely found-less and counter-factual.               
 
Q: We know that before all this new conflict began Hamas had become part of a unity government with Fatah; things were looking very good indeed in terms of Palestinian unity. A lot of people are concluding that the current situation, the fact that Hamas was blamed for the murder of the Israeli teenagers – although it’s been rejecting it all along – this is all endangering that unity deal.
 
Do you think the unity government is in danger and do you think Israel would want that to happen?   
 
Suliman: Well, I don’t think that the unity government has actually formalized in reality. The unity government has done nothing, absolutely nothing so far for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. So this is the last thing that Palestinians here need to worry about, or Palestinians in general in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank need to worry about.
 
Actually there are a number of problems that occurred since the formation of the unity government and we can understand that the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas - Israel’s friend - has actually disregarded the fate of the entire Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip after the formation of the unity government. So this is something I do not wish to address as a major concern for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
 
Back to the question of violence in this context, what your guest in London said actually symbolizes the official Israeli line, i.e. absolutely no respect for the principles of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. So if the principle of proportionality is nonsensical I do not understand what actually might be a good principle in order to spare civilian lives in military conflicts like these.
 
We always try to get involved in this ‘blame game’ - who started this - who’s violence is greater - and we tend to ignore the elephant in the room, which is the Israeli occupation. I do not understand how your guest would justify Israel’s violence and its occupation, its ongoing occupation and its ongoing atrocities against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
 
If Israel wants to live in peace with the Palestinians it simply needs to dismantle its settlements in the West Bank; it needs to recognize the Palestinians as equal human beings; it needs to grant them their rights.
 
And if Hamas is claimed to be a racist organization I cannot think of a better term to characterize Israel as a state. If Hamas is a racist organization, Israel has become an apartheid settler colonial state…           
 
Q: Your response to our guest comments around Israel violations against international law saying that ethnic Jews have the right to establish and maintain communities in Judea and Samaria. It is not to his knowledge against international law.
 
Suliman: What about the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in 2003? What about the separation wall, which was declared completely in contradiction with the Fourth Geneva Convention. There is an international consensus - Only two states opposed this consensus, Israel and the United States. Other than Israel and the United States there is an international consensus that Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank.
 
    Of course Jews and Palestinians have the right to exist on this land. What Israel refuses to accept is the right to treat both Jews and Palestinians equally. Israel wants to treat Jews as first class citizens, Palestinians as second and third class citizens and this is the heart of the debate. This is why Israel has become an apartheid state.