Israel to continue to commit illegal acts: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Paul Larudee, a member of the Free Palestine Movement in Berkeley, about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing his strong support for settlement construction activities in the occupied West Bank, in defiance of international calls on the Tel Aviv regime to end its illegal expansionist moves.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Certainly settlements are not a new move by Israel but it seems that they are being expanded in a much quicker pace. Why is that do you think?

Larudee: Israel loves doing illegal things. Its very existence is illegal. Its presence in the United Nations is an affront to legality and so the more it finds that it can do illegal things with either no consequences or with from its point of view positive consequences for its objectives, then it is going to do it.

I mean if you allow a child to do forbidden things and there are no consequences for it, you end up with an adult, a teenager who is a criminal because he has learned the whole time that being a criminal brings him things that he wants and it has no consequences. Well Israel is no different. It is human.

Press TV: And let’s talk about the consequences of it because certainly many people say the two-state solution is long dead, so if you talk about a one-state solution what is that looking like going forward considering even now Naftali Bennett says the Palestinians should stop dreaming of having any control ever over the West Bank?

Larudee: Yes. Naftali Bennett and Netanyahu and many are proceeding even if they do not say it out loud, they are proceeding on the assumption that there will be one state, that it will be a Jewish state in all of Palestine and beyond and that over a sufficient period of time, essentially the only people living in this Jewish state will be Jews. This is what their intention has always been and they have been pursuing it very consistently.  This is part of that.  

Press TV: And so going forward obviously we have the US which has come out with its usual expected condemnations and disagreement with settlement expansion. Will it ever really act?

Larudee: That is up to Americans like me and other Americans and the pressure that we bring. There is more pressure today than there has been in the past and we can hope to augment it with things like BDS and so forth.

It really depends on us because we cannot expect our government officials to do it on the basis of conscience. When was the last time we saw anyone in power in the United States and other Western countries act on the basis of conscience? It is exactly the opposite.

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