Israel’s ramped-up crackdown on Palestinians boils over into third Intifada: Analyst

An analyst has said that the situation in Palestine could lead to a third Intifada (uprising) as the coalition cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu, has stepped up crackdown against Palestinians in different ways.

Brecht Jonkers, geopolitical analyst and anti-imperialist activist, made the comments on Monday in an interview with Press TV’s Spotlight, discussing the most right-wing newly-sworn in Israeli cabinet extreme moves against Palestinians and its unavoidable consequences. 

Since the beginning of the New Year, Tel Aviv has pulled a number of outrageous moves against Palestinians including withholding millions of dollars in tax revenues from the Palestinian Authorities (PA), ordering the removal of Palestinian flags from public spaces, ensuring unimproved conditions for Palestinian prisoners, and enforcing restrictions on Palestinian lawmaker’s visits to prisoners, among others. 

The latest developments followed the PA’s successful lobbying for a UN General Assembly vote referring Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 30. The regime has been fuming ever since.

“It is of course hard to say in advance exactly what is going to happen, but I believe we are definitely looking at it as sort of third intifada situation,” Jonkers said of the recent developments.

He further explained that the reason behind the rapid escalations is the “big existential fear” that exists across the Zionist entity and its implication for the regime’s existence as it is “running out of demographic power.”

“They are running out of Zionist settlers and they are not reproducing quickly enough to demographically take over the Palestinian population,” he said, adding that “if they just leave things the way they are the Zionists start to fade and eventually the Palestinians will quite simply outnumber them massively to such an extent that they can take their country back.”

Therefore, they resort to extreme amounts of violence in order to really escalate the situation into total war and then they think their military superiority, in terms of technology and weaponry, will win the day, Jonkers said.

However, he added, “when the third Intifada breaks up and when the forces of resistance take over in Palestine we will see in the end the Palestinian victory.”

Israeli crackdown on Palestinians

This episode looks at the extreme moves by the coalition cabinet of Netanyahu, and what this means for the future of Palestinians and Palestine.

‘Two-state solution is a lie’

Elsewhere in his remarks, Jonkers deemed the entire concept of a two-state solution, so often loudly trumpeted by the West in particular, a lie.

“It has been a lie from the very beginning,” he said, stating that the Zionists were never planning at all to abide by the rules and agreements they themselves forced the Palestinians to agree to.

He explained that the Zionist regime wants the “complete eradication of Palestine as a nation”, not necessarily by exterminating all Palestinians, but by either subduing them to live as “second-class citizens” or forcing them to leave their own country.

“They are basically talking about completely demolishing any semblance of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian autonomy,” he said.

Israel occupied the West Bank and East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967. It later annexed East al-Quds in a move not recognized by the international community.

The UN Security Council resolutions have in the past called for the two-state solution based on the 1967 boundaries, and pronounced settlements in the two areas “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution.”

Palestinians want the resolution of the conflict with Tel Aviv based on the so-called two-state solution along the pre-1967 boundaries. However, Israeli officials insist on maintaining the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement construction activities in the occupied lands.

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

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