December 9, 2007 at 20:53:52

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The First Palestinian Intifada

By Chris Gelken (about the author)     Page 3 of 3 page(s)

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Sizer, is equally unimpressed with the Israeli withdrawal, but for quite different reasons.

“The Israelis have not left Gaza, they merely moved from inside the jail to outside the jail. The Israelis control the air, the land, and the sea. Gaza is a prison, and they control it, they go in whenever they want and they are strangulating the Palestinian population.”

Sizer expressed deep pessimism over the creation of any future Palestinian state.

“The Israeli agenda is very clear,” he said, “they have no intention of sitting down and agreeing to share the land. That’s been their agenda since the 1920s, and it has followed a doctrine of the iron wall which is to seize the maximum amount of land from the Palestinians and deny any rights for the Palestinians to exist alongside Israel.”

He cited the construction of a “security” wall around the city of Bethlehem, designed to deter suicide bombers, as evidence of what lies in store for the Palestinians.

“Bethlehem is an experiment, a prototype, surrounded with a separation wall,” he said, “If the West and especially the Christian West doesn’t object to what Israel is doing in Bethlehem we are going to see the same in Jericho, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, and we’re going to see the expansion of this strategy of using ghettos, some call them zoos or reservations for the Palestinians. And so we must come back to international law and say this is illegal, immoral and unjust, and the Palestinian intifada is a legitimate resistance to this illegal occupation.”

Sizer also squarely holds Israel responsible for the Second Palestinian Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada that began in September 2000 after a controversial visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon.

“In my opinion it was the Israelis that provoked the second intifada because they did not want to follow through on the Oslo Accords and the roadmap to peace. They provoked the Palestinians in order to continue their illegal occupation.”

Describing Israeli operations in the occupied territories as genocide, Sizer blames the United States for failing to restrain the Israelis and for preventing the intervention of international peacekeepers to keep the warring sides apart.

“Why no peacekeepers? A very simple reason, the American establishment supports the Israeli agenda in Gaza and the occupied territories unconditionally. The American establishment is funding the settlements, the separation roads and the wall in complete disregard to international law,” he said, “and so you will never find the international community being enabled to intervene.”

The above article is based on the international debate program “Middle East Today” hosted by the author and first broadcast by PressTV on Saturday 8th December, 2007.
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