Israel ignores international law by expanding settlements: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Anthony Hall, professor of globalization at Lethbridge University in Munich, about Israel’s approving of extra funds for the illegal settlements.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: On the one hand we continue to see the expansion of settlements, on the other hand we see that it is illegal under international law. What has to be done basically to enforce international law in that area?

Hall: Really there is no international law these days. Many forces, nations, politicians live above the law. It is kind of the law of the jungle, if anything, and it is really demonstrated by the lawlessness of the Israeli state in the West Bank, which going back to the origins of Israel there was to be an Arab state, a two-state and of course these settlements announce Israel’s intention, the Israeli government’s intention, to ignore international law, to ignore the United Nations underlying resolutions and of course we are seeing Avigdor Lieberman, the politicians representing the settlements have kind of taken full control of the Netanyahu government, which is becoming more and more extreme, more and more zealous siding with the extreme Talmudic Orthodox interpretations, theocratic interpretations.

It is an extremist state and it announces to the world that international law does not apply to Israel, that there is some sort of sense being chosen somehow to violate people.

We have seen 9/11 was an Israeli-based effort to demonize local people, the Palestinians and to build up this imagery of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists to justify this kind of assault on human rights.

Press TV: How do we get here? What has happened? How is it that Tel Aviv can do whatever it wants and no one - or at least in the so-called Western side of the globe -basically is going to say anything?

Hall: Going back to 1996 in the Clean Break document up until that point the sort of labor Zionist heritage resulted in some efforts to negotiate something with the Palestinians but since this Netanyahu government came to power first in 1996, we have seen just a policy that basically Palestinians are to be wiped out, basically there is not going to be negotiations, basically there is going to be no dealing with the shared humanity of the Palestinian peoples and their treatment of course becomes a model for what is going on in the United States, what is going on since 9/11 where the courts and the rule of law is more and more pushed to the margins and we have pure police state operations within the United States, within the society of Israel. We are far past calling Israel now an apartheid state. It is into full genocidal mode with the likes of Avigdor Lieberman now, czar of the West Bank, calling the shots. 

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