Trump's deal of century aims to ‘liquidate’ Palestinian cause: Analyst

US President Donald Trump's so-called deal of the century and Israel’s annexation plan aim to “liquidate” the Palestinian cause, says a political commentator, stressing that the people in Palestine have the right to determine their future.

Charlotte Kates, activist and commentator from Vancouver, made the remarks during a Friday edition of Press TV’s The Debate program while commenting on the significance of the International Quds Day and Israel’s highly-criticized plan for the annexation of major parts of West Bank.

International Quds Day, celebrated on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, is a legacy of the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, who is revered as a spiritual leader by Muslims across the world.

Muslims, non-Muslims and freedom-seeking people worldwide have held massive rallies in the past couple of decades to mark the major occasion which reminds the world of the need to restore the rights of the Palestinians, infringed upon by the Tel Aviv regime over many decades.

The event is viewed as an opportunity for all pro-Palestine people to express their indignation at the apartheid regime of Israel, which has occupied Palestinian territories since the mid 20th century.

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This year’s Quds Day coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to annex Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank.

The new land grab project is a by-product of Trump’s so-called "deal of the century" peace initiative, which blatantly undermines the Palestine right to statehood in exchange for vague promises of basic economic opportunities.

Trump's highly provocative scheme, which further denies the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homeland, is also in complete disregard of UN Security Council resolutions and has been rejected by the vast majority of the international community.

“One of the things that is really important to focus on is the fact that for 72 years, Palestinian refugees have been denied their rights to return home, they have been denied their connection to Palestine; this is something that is taking place completely in violation of international law and UN resolutions. The fact is that the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and the right to determine their future and this includes the liberation of the land and the liberation of the people,” Kates told Press TV on Friday

“The movement for justice and liberation in Palestine that’s based on self-determination, sovereignty and the rights of the people in the region to return and liberate their land is something that the US and Israel have stood relentlessly against for the past 72 years because of the fact that it could undermine their ability to colonize the region as a whole, to extract value from the people in the region as a whole and deny basic rights to liberation through land theft, colonization and destruction,” she added.

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Asked whether the Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, were turning a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians with their covert attempts to normalize ties with the Quds-usurping regime of Israel, Kates described those countries as “client states” of the US and the imperialist partners of Washington.

“These reactionary regimes are the client states of the United States and its imperialist partners, with the rise of this blatant colonial rhetoric by the US government, they think they can get away more openly than ever, normalizing with Israel in an attempt to justify the existence of Zionism in the region,” said the political analyst.

“People in the region, despite their own sufferings and their own concerns, do continue to care about Palestine. Palestine remains a compass for justice in the region but these regimes are an integral part of the imperialist plan to divide the region and deny its people their sovereignty and self-determination, so it comes as no surprise that they are intimately involved in carrying out Trump’s plan for the region — the so-called deal of the century,” Kates continued.

“When we look at the so-called deal of the century and what it is aiming to do, we are seeing that it is attempting to liquidate the Palestinian cause… It is also an attempt to undermine and destroy any kind of sovereignty, resistance and self-determination in the region,” Kates underlined.

Michael Springmann, American author and former diplomat from Washington, was the other panelist invited to The Debate program, who denounced the unswerving support that the US and European Union lend to Tel Aviv and its atrocities in the region.

“The reason that the Israelis get away with murder and other war crimes and human rights violations is that they have the support of the United States and the European Union. They give lip service to freedom, national identity and state for Palestine,” Springmann said.

US support for Israel’s West Bank annexation anything but ‘peaceful’

As millions of Palestinians living in occupation or exile around the world remember the beginning of the Nakba, the Israelis seem determined to keep the 1968 tragedy alive.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem, al-Quds, as its capital. But Israel's aggressive settlement expansion and annexation plans have dealt a serious blow to any prospects of peace.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, al-Quds.

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