Americans know Netanyahu thumbing his nose at US: Activist

Americans are aware that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been thumbing his nose at the US for the last seven years, an author, political analyst and human rights activist says. 

Rich Forer, who is based in Denver, Colorado, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday, after the US State Department condemned Israel’s decision to expand a settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank, saying it hampers efforts to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.

“Continued settlement activity and expansion raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions and will only make achieving a two state solution much more difficult,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

Forer said that “the United States has been saying the same thing for decades. Really what they do is it’s like a game between the United States and Israel, and they are playing on the same side.”

“Israel decides to expand settlements even they know that the world is against it, and that is in opposition to official American policy. Americans not always but often though then issue critical statements against such a decision and always claim that it hampers peace efforts, and then the United States says nothing about it,” he added.

“So Israel keeps playing this game where incrementally they keep taking more and more and more land; they do it slowly because they know that can’t be too blatant about it. And then the United States objects but then does nothing to stop it,” he continued.

The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlement colonies built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of its future independent state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

US knows Israel doesn’t want peace

Forer said that “the United States really knows, I think they are really aware that Israel doesn’t have any intentions of making peace.”

“They are aware that Benjamin Netanyahu has been thumbing his nose at the United States for the last seven years, since he has been prime minister for this last time, like he did when he was prime minister in the 90s,” he stated.  

The analyst went on to say that Americans “know that everything he does is designed to capture more and more land even though he may occasionally express support for peace. It’s just a ploy.”

“So until Americans really wake up and see that their legislators have really sold them out by giving their allegiance to Israel, not on the basis of morality or on the basis of fairness, or international law certainly, but on the basis of money,” he noted.

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