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Paul Larudee: Israeli cabinet meeting on control over Golan aggressive move

Tuesday, 19 April 2016 1:04 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 19 April 2016 1:03 PM ]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) chairs the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem (al-Quds) on April 3, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Paul Larudee, the co-founder of the Free Palestine Movement from Berkeley, about Syria’s complaint against Israel’ move to impose control on the Golan Heights.

The following is a rough transaction of the interview.

Press TV: Why do you think that Israel has taken this time to go and have this cabinet meeting although symbolic, as they say, in the Golan Heights?

Larudee: I think there are two reasons and Dr. al-Ja’afari is exactly right that it’s an intentional provocation. And this provocation has two things.

First of all, it wants to put pressure on Syria. This is on top of the airstrikes against Syria before and this is being coordinated with the Western NATO powers in order to affect the talks concerning Syria. But the second one is that of course Netanyahu is always under pressure to create a movement towards annexation of more land and expulsion of more Palestinians in this case actually Syrians.

And so this is an aggressive move and they’re increasingly aggressive. Part of Israel’s policy is to be as aggressive as possible. And if you ask me the reason they’re aggressive is because they feel that all of their aggression is not bringing necessarily the result they want. So they want to use their aggression while they still have the power to do that.

Press TV: If you were to really take a look at it, do you think that this is perhaps a move meant to somewhat distract the intention and focus that’s on the Syrian war right now for Israel to move in this direction and serve as a distraction maybe?

Larudee: In essence it’s a kind of another front for Syria to watch and for the Western press to concentrate on keeping Syria in the news. Of course, the Western press is going to put Syria in a bad light and say that Syria has been provocative by protesting about this. This is probably the way that press will go in the West. So it’s part of trying to put pressure on Syria.

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