Israel determined to take all Palestinian land: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Paul Larudee, co-founder of Free Palestine Movement in Berkeley, about Israel planning to seize hundreds of acres of Palestinian agricultural land to expand its illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Under President Barack Obama there are lots of records that Israel is setting, this being one of them. It seems like the land grab under Obama has been quite a bit by Israel?

Larudee: Yes. I think it would not make much difference whether it was Obama or somebody else. Israel is determined to take all the land and to expel all the Palestinians. Prior to that, it will drive the Palestinians into the ground and make their lives so miserable that expelling them is a mere detail at the end of it.

You mentioned that the international community is expected to react. Well I wish I could share your thoughts on that but in fact the international community rarely reacts in any meaningful way to Israel - a few words here and there and a few condemnations. The job of diplomacy, which is international relations, is to provide a cover for the real intentions of mostly all countries but certainly the United States and the most aggressive nations which of course the United States is certainly one of those and Israel.

So their practices on the ground are to seize as much Palestinian land as possible, to kill as many Palestinians as possible, to imprison them, to expel them, to do all of these things and yet on the diplomatic front they try to excuse all of this with all sorts of foolish reasons.

Press TV: Do you think that Israel is at all afraid that if it gets to a tipping point – if it hasn’t already I guess - but if it gets to a point where it is going to push Palestinians, for example what is happening now on the occupied lands that it may endanger its own security? We know what is going on right now, some are calling it the third Intifada, if it is not already, but it could get worse. Isn’t Israel afraid of that?  

Larudee: The methods that the Palestinians have used to resist are largely ones that Israel welcomes. It welcomes violence because it has tools of almost the monopoly on the tools of violence and it intends to use those tools as a means of further expulsion.

There are certain tools that are available to Palestinians and all people which are mass resistance and noncompliance with the occupation regime but one where all the people participate in this. That is very difficult to achieve and also it can be very, very painful.

So I do not know, we have never seen this on a massive scale in Palestine and I do not know whether it is possible to expect that but in order to succeed, the Palestinians must make the occupation very, very painful for the occupier and even when there were attacks, the … bombs in the period from 2000 to 2006 that did not cause Israel to lose sight of its goal. So I do not know if it is really possible, that sort of resistance is really possible.        

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