International action needed in support of Palestine: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Kamel Hawwash, vice chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from Birmingham, about United Nations’ criticism of razing Palestinian homes by the Israeli regime.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Israel continues to grab more land and build settlements ignoring international law. What help does this condemnation by the UN chief do to stop settlement activity.

Hawwash: This is exactly the point. It’s just condemnation, words, whether it’s Ban Ki-moon or whether it’s Joe Biden, who apparently the American vice president who today said he is very frustrated with the Israeli government and specifically talked about settlements, about land grab and whether it’s the UK, all these Western governments and these figures such as Ban Ki-moon are very good at words. What we lack of course in Palestine is action.

And in fact when it comes to potential action, governments around the world immediately say they would not sanction Israel. They in fact are condemning and fighting against very peaceful Boycott, Divestment Sanctions Movement, but not offering an alternative. At the very least, you would have thought that the United Nations Security Council would meet very quickly swiftly take the resolution that Palestine wishes them to adopt, condemning the settlements and do it, but we all know the Americans even though they talk like this will not be acting in any meaningful way.

Press TV: Of course how do Palestinians react to Israel’s settlement activity? What is left for them to do?

Hawwash: This is absolutely what the Palestinians say as a people but the leadership as well. They’re always asked to condemn any acts of violence by Palestinians and the wording, I think, even today Joe Biden used was, ‘No matter how frustrated you are, your country is too violent,’ but at the same time, so what do you leave the Palestinians with? Do they just sit there in the hope that an Israeli government, an enlightened one, will one day come in and decide to stop the settlement activities? It’s not going to happen, because not only have Israeli governments moved to extremism, Israeli society has moved so far to the right that they actually don’t believe in peace with the Palestinians either.

So that is what frustrates Palestinians. The world tells them not to resort to anything but peaceful means of resistance and even when they do, that like requesting support for the BDS movement, they are told that is unacceptable too. So it is a real dilemma for the Palestinians, but at the end of the day as a people under occupation, they are entitled to do whatever they need to do to end this brutal brutal and really terrorist occupation that they encounter on daily basis.

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