Palestine’s ambassador to UK: Palestinian resistance must go ‘ALL THE WAY’

Video Transcript:

I'm Afton Retanetti, watching another lockdown edition of Going Underground on Nakhmer Day, known as the Catastrophe, 73 years after British Occupied Palestine turned it to Israel, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians this in a week of unspeakable atrocities in the Middle East, fueled by armed sales from Britain, EU countries in the United States, in part two. We'll be speaking to a Jerusalem post-correspondent, but first for Palestinian perspective, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, who serves on Zomla, joins me now from our to UK headquarters in London. Ambassador, thanks so much for coming on, so I said it was Nakhmer Day. What's your message to the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, that alone Gaza and Jerusalem and the significance of Nakhmer Day itself? The main message is that what happened in Sheikh Jarrah and Jerusalem and then has reached all over Palestine and with every Palestinian world wine, the 13 million Palestinians have risen all over, a sense of unity. Has really brought us back to our long march towards freedom, has really solidified our sense of unity, the unity of our purpose and the unity of our suffering. Regardless where we are, be it inside the occupied territories, being inside the 48 areas, being in the exile and the refugee camps, we all face the same oppression by the same oppressor and therefore there is an unprecedented sense of unity among us. That's number one. Number two, what happened in 1948? The militias, the Jewish militias ability to evict our people from their homes at gunpoint should never be repeated again and this was the message from Sheikh Jarrah. They were appruded themselves in 1948, 47 and they refused to face the same faith again and with them the entire people of Palestine and with them millions of freedom loving people worldwide. This is very inspiring and many of us believe that actually this is the final push we should go all the way. Enough is enough. Enough is enough. This is the word I'm hearing everywhere. This is the word I feel enough, enough of subjugation, enough of suffering, enough of disposition, enough of racism, enough of this maltreatment of our people, enough of sheer disregard of our basic rights, of the denial, whole cell denial of our rights, right to move, right to honor property, right to vote. All our rights are deprived and you so, even Palestinians inside Israel have rebelled, have been in the streets because every Palestinian is affected by this mindset, the Israeli mindset of supremacy, of wanting to control the entire area of Palestine from the river to the sea, of wanting to have a Jewish absolute supremacist control. We are done with that. We are done with that and today every single Palestinian, every one of us, every woman, every man, every young, every child wants to go all the way until we read ourself of this illness called colonization, settler colonialism, this illness which is apartheid as was described very recently by the international human rights watch organization, very well respected, even by the Israeli human rights organization Bezzalim that Israel now is a full-fledged apartheid. We must go all the way to read ourselves of this ethnic cleansing campaign that has been relentless, it started, it started in 1947 and 1948 and it has been ongoing, it never stopped the day. I was born in a refugee camp to the very south of Gaza and Rafah because my parents were forced to leave what we are saying now, this shall never be repeated again. We must ask colonization. I just call on the new name arguably and some people would say, obviously Israel would deny a apartheid, it's someone say it's Mahmoud Abbas that's stopping the vote, Gimli cancelled. The elections, you know we're looking at pictures coming out from the occupied territories and from Gaza, very big difference. In Israel we see Israeli Jews hiding in properly facilitated shelters. The Palestinian Authority got more time, four times more than the Marshall Plan came to Western Europe after World War II. Where's all the money? Why is it the Palestinian Authority? Hasn't got helmets and flag jackets for its population in Gaza and in the West Bank or basic shelters for civilians. If you're going to fire rockets you better defend your own population, isn't there's a complete failure of the Palestinian Authority? Well the Palestinian Authority is not in control of Gaza as you know very well and I didn't like the way you frame this question Marshall Plan and no no no this is wrong you got your numbers wrong. The money we got has gotten into infrastructure, major infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads that Israel usually destroys and the world comes back and cries at Israel and shelters Israel but never with action and consequences. So Israel does it again and again and again. We built electricity plant in Gaza and the first thing Israeli army does bombarding the electricity generator. We built an airport in Gaza, they destroyed it etc etc. So no but it's not in vain because you know the Israeli occupation has never taken care of our people, negligence and the sphere of education and the sphere of health but today because we have one of the most educated nation on earth, one of the most educated youth on earth you know our electricity is near zero, it is zero you know our per capita PhD is among the highest in the world if not the highest actually and that's that that investment in our human capital is what have allowed us to do what we have done over the years but particularly now what happened in Sheikh Jarrah how proud I am, how proud we are of our youth today speaking all languages, conveying our message to the world, steadfasting in their homes, educating all of us, inspiring all of us. So no it hasn't gone in vain my friend this is a long journey. Well I mean the youth are using the youth are using rocks, the youth are using rocks and if you're supposed to believe if you're supposed to believe human rights watch and it's apartheid I think Nelson Mandela and his military wing of the ANC had more than rocks to fight the apartheid regime of South Africa. I mean maybe you think I was talking Israeli talking points on as regards where all the money is the implied corruption of the Palestinian Authority you are on the BBC the Israeli counterpart you debated with she hasn't she's been unable to come on this program what's it like defending Palestine during this conflict in the past few days? It's the honor of my life nothing makes me feel a sense of satisfaction more than trying my best to speak on behalf of our people people that have been struggling for a hundred years, people who have been fought not only by Israel but actually by complacent international media, international system superpowers starting from the UK Britain that has issued the Belford Declaration a hundred than three years ago promising our land to another people without even consulting us that colonial colonial arrogance and the ending with the US that supports Israel in every sphere keeps booting Israel above the low making Israel enjoy an absolute culture of impunity and that's why Israel continue doing it if you want to do it. Okay but I mean if I was to if I was to fake is it were if I was to fake is it were being a British broadcasting corporation reporter I used to work there I'd say it's Hamas they're sending the rockets that's why we're seeing the pictures of dead children right now this is just retaliation against military people in Gaza how do you how do you respond to that daily as you do the TV studios? We were telling him as I just did now on sky news before I came to you that they have got to stop this reductionist approach they always start from Palestinian reactions than rather than Israeli action which always starts the fire like happened in Jerusalem the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah the storming over Al-Aqsa Mosque right in the in the height of the holiest month of Ramadan and later it'll cover the holiest night they they keep that aside they leave it aside why do you think they pick because because much of the narrative has been fed by the Israeli machine unfortunately and the international media is either complacent or complicit you choose the word and then they always import this narrative and they bring it our way and we are challenging this we are saying stop using terms like two side is them they know the two sides what two sides there is only one side there is one government in full control of the entire area of the entire people under occupation that government happened to have the strongest army in the region and nuclear power etc etc so stop saying two sides and please stop saying confrontations and all that confrontation between between what he says clash they're just clashes and clashes and what have you and all this logic about a conflict between Hamas and Israel is a way to just say that this is a security issue this is the Israeli narrative that Israeli security is being threatened this is not about the mothers this is not about the families that have been evicted three four times in their lives by this system of control called Israel by this freakish colonial subtler ethnically cleansing system it's about it's a it's a it's a fight between Hamas and Israel I mean it's a fight has the Palestinians got enough weapons because you have no eye and dome obviously against the Israeli F 35s and F 15 war play aircraft I mean as they prepare a possible land invasion of Gaza let alone what they're doing in in Jerusalem do they have enough weapons the Palestinians okay we will never ever we don't need weapons as in as in military weapons my friend and no matter how much we try to do so we will not match Israel I mean Israel is is a state inside an army you are fighting the U.S. all the way in the military sense so no our main weapon is the morality of our cause is the high moral ground our our main weapon is our people who are willing to stand in the streets peacefully and do demonstrate in masses like they did only the last few days in every single city in every single village in every single town not only in the occupied territories but inside the 1948 areas in such remembers a remembrance of the or a resemblance of the first anti-Fada so this is a moment of defiance and I believe a nation with such righteous demands and with such clear legal aspirations with ought to actually achieve its goals so I don't think we should go the the the route of competing in in army we should compete in making sure that this army is dismantled via own our own insistence as a nation via peaceful popular international means well that that hasn't happened for decades and the current escalation of conflict Joe Biden obviously said this is Hamas condemning Hamas for the rockets Dominic Rab here in Britain I'm not sure whether he summoned you to the to the foreign office for what you're saying right now because Dominic Rab says this is Hamas indiscriminately killing Israelis what's your message to the British government Boris Johnson's government well the message has been very clear that violence must be condemned right across the board and we are second to so you condemn Hamas we are second to our Western governments quick to condemn anything that has to do with Israel and not condemning the loss of lives in Palestine as if Palestinians do not matter but isn't it true isn't it true that the Palestinian authority is more against Hamas than it is against Netanyahu and is now very unified political class I don't know what to tell you really and you're ought to go back to Palestine now and see the sense of unity you're ought to listen back to what President Abbas said in his speech giving full support to our people in Gaza and Jerusalem and everywhere you're ought to listen to Hamas leaders and spokespeople you know all over saying that there has never been such a sense of togetherness and unity so let's let's encourage this my friend I'm not trying to divide in rule obviously but just finally then will you all together die you know that there has been officials from Israel talking about wiping out the Palestinians now they have the F-35s Biden maybe sending another nine million dollars worth of weapons Britain hundreds of millions of weapons from Britain are you going to be wiped out well they've tried to wipe us out 74 years ago already in 1948 the plan was that we're going to just vanish but we didn't we are a very well-rooted society we are ancient nation you know we produced almost every prophet from prophet Abraham Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and so forth we our nation is very well known for its ability to withstand its ability to survive the resilience the brilliance the renewal all the time the Israel is not the first invasion Israel is not the first colonizer and besiege we have had many of those and in the end it's we who remain and it's them who leave well Edmobarak Ambassador thank you and after the break I'll be speaking to a Jerusalem post correspondent to hear the Israeli side of the argument welcome back and the first half we heard from the Palestinian ambassador to the UK who Sam Zomlaw to accused Israel of apartheid and war crimes joining me for an Israeli perspective is Jerusalem post-correspondent and author Yona Jeremy Bob thanks so much Yona for coming on just to give me some personal recollections of what kind of thing has been going on this week from your perspective well first of all myself and my family we have a safe room that we've had to run into a number of times over the course of the week so that could be in the middle of the night and we grab our kids out of their beds and run off into the safe rooms we've got 90 seconds to get there and as long as we get to the safe from most of the most of the time it should be okay obviously there's also a different perspective which is the geopolitical perspective big questions being asked in the EU suddenly the international community UN Security Council members Russia and China I mean what do you make with the fact that people are saying how is it okay if the Hamas army officials militant officials are amid civilians how is it okay to airy Bombard an area where there are civilians well I have to turn the question over how is it okay for Hamas to fire rockets amidst civilians they had a manual which is really intelligence grabbed in 2014 which explained how they were systematically purposely planting all of their command centers their rockets everything ran civilians it was a new level until then there had been some groups that sometimes did something like that but they were doing it systematically so look Israel is ready to make peace or has come close to making peace with the Palestinians in the West Bank the Palestinian Authority multiple times in 2000 2007 2008 there was arguments about a couple percentage points of the West Bank you know would you withdraw 90% 95% the Trump plan was 70% but those negotiations to try to reach a resolution Hamas and his baller and Lebanon are not interested in the resolution so when there's no negotiation the only thing you can do is try to deter somebody like Hamas to not fire rockets at you but wait I mean I'm not even going to go back of how Israel funded the creation of Hamas using US taxpayer money arguably the point is how does it deter further attacks to further basically make an entire generation of Palestinian children more militant in their hatred for the state of Israel because they're seeing what the missiles are doing to their families I don't think fighting is a resolution I think there's going to have to be a diplomatic solution at some point but wait for that to happen you'd have to see Hamas adopt the international plan of allowing the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza take over the crossings take over certain aspects of handling international funds and combine their security forces in a way that even if nobody has said except Israel's existence you know forever but accept the Oslo Accords sort of as the formula that people have talked about in a couple of times almost happen and Hamas hasn't been ready to do that because they want to ignore Israel because it's obviously having settlers occupy further land but in any event why would they do that given Hamas is the democratically elected government of Gaza and obviously firmly opposed to the Palestinian Authority's canceling of elections and basically polls show that 52 percent maybe more favor the armed struggle now against Israel look first of all I'm not going to see that anybody is completely clean here okay I think Israel has definitely made mistakes also but the question is is there a party on the other side in the West Bank to talk to yes there is is there really a party to talk to Gaza I don't know until now we haven't gotten to that point so what does Israel do then if there's nobody really to talk to to get to an agreement a per you know or a 10 year ceasefire something like that what failed children no okay so look um Israel is on the cutting edge in terms of warnings it calls buildings it drops flyers it even does a special cutting edge roof knocking mechanism where they'll drop a rocket it doesn't explode to make a loud noise it doesn't kill anyone to scare people to leave that's what Israel does the United States a number of European countries their military lawyers have complemented and copied Israeli tactics in other places when it comes to trying to get civilians out so what you have is on one hand Israel tries to warn Palestinians civilians is it perfect absolutely not the effectiveness of that is told in the story of the casualty figures over this week the huge disproportionality of number of civilians killed in Gaza versus Jerusalem surely I mean I am dome I mean I remember the lies are you well lies told during Gulf War one about patriot missiles from rathian what what's happened to I and dome it's useless relatively useless that's why these Israelis are dying um so iron dome I definitely wouldn't call it useless but Hamas has succeeded in penetrating it more now than it did in 2014 it's basically a large amount of rockets don't make it into Israel from what do make it into Israel near a you know an actual urban area about 85 to 90 percent get shot down but if you can shoot a hundred or 130 rockets in minutes at a particular city then five or 10 percent getting through is going to be a larger number and that's what led to more casualties already this time in only a few days on the civilian side than had in all of 2014 so I think iron dome is effective but it's not her medic and the same way that the Israeli defense forces has improved its capabilities in locating some of Hamas's top officials some of some of which have been killed over the course of the week Hamas improved its capabilities it's treating rockets to kill Israeli civilians much more effectively I mean this all happened a few days after human rights watch issued a report saying Israel commits crimes against humanity of apartheid and I think we both know Nelson Mandela justified the armed struggle and the killing of civilians against the apartheid regime of South Africa back by Britain what do you make of that human rights watch report you you're basically a white South African boa talking to me right now well the Ethiopian Israelis the Moroccan Israelis and you know the half or more Israelis who aren't you know white would certainly differ with you on that but put that on the side the human rights watch a report specifically says this is not South Africa and it doesn't need to be South Africa to try to accuse of apartheid in some sort of legal sense now I don't agree with them on that what I do want to say is that I think and I work as a journalist both with several human rights groups Bicellum Yehsten human rights watch I work you know with with the IDF and I talked to both sides and I think there is a place for human rights NGOs to encourage both sides to be a little bit more careful to think harder when they're using force about how they use force the apartheid allegation itself I think is nonsense and the reason it's nonsense is all you need to look is Mansour Abbas he's the head of the Ram party and he's probably going to help establish the next government which will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister because it's possible in Israel because there is really Arab Supreme Court justices there is really Arab Knesset members there is really Arabs in most areas of you know senior officials now is everything perfect in Israel absolutely not you can see that from from the rioting the civil war yet no I wouldn't I wouldn't call the civil war and I think you'll see then in the coming days that'll come under control faster than the situation between Israel and Hamas but so I wouldn't I wouldn't see no country is perfect you know England the United States Israel none of them are perfect Britain is not in violation of more than is it 100 UN resolutions that learn you in security council resolutions Britain is not in violation of resolutions in international law like Israel you got to bear Britain in Israel surely there are organizations within the UN which are fair-minded to Israel you know there are parts of the UN which are not fair-minded to Israel there've been more UN resolutions against Israel in some cases than against North Korea than against Iran and if you ask European countries and most democracies who's more democratic who treats their minorities better they would all they will admit that Israel is a democracy Israel does treat its minorities better would they have a critique of Israel absolutely and I don't I don't say that Israel is perfect I do think that you have to look again at the overall context that when you're in a situation where we're in the fourth war with Gaza in 12 years that creates an additional level of friction that maybe you don't have to worry about in England but there are look there's a lot going on in the United States right now that's been a lot rougher I mean obviously black lives matter is something that we do cover on this show but 50% of the population of Gaza children and warplanes of the Israeli Air Force are dropping bombs on it when you say protecting minorities I mean over 50% of Israelis have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus 1% of Palestinians as the occupying power just on that basis only it falls short so so let me let's also distinguish again we have the Israeli Arab part is really Arab citizens in Israel of which there's close to 2 million and we have the Palestinians all right Israeli Arabs in Israel are being vaccinated in higher rates than most of the world all right that is another proof that Israel is not a racist country is not in a part that country it's citizens whether they're Jewish or Arab or being vaccinated in much higher rates than basically the whole world okay now the Palestinians have also gotten vaccinations on a personal level would I like to see Israel to have moved a little bit faster probably but what I want to quote Anthony Blinken secretary of state in the United States who was interviewed recently I believe by an English journalist and they asked him how come you haven't moved faster to share your vaccines with other countries and he said look every country is going to vaccinate its own citizens first and then start to work on other people when you add into that the complications and the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian authority it's not so simple but Israel has offered vaccinations to the Palestinians all of the 100,000 or so Palestinians that work in Israel have been vaccinated there have been additional vaccinations beyond that and I think there will be even more going into the future there's so many dimensions to this there's the ICC which we could do all program on you've written a book arrayed on the red sea the Israeli capture of the Karina I mean missiles are targeting the demon a nuclear weapons factory in the negaev desert this week I don't know using the using the context of your book that you co-authored what is the danger to the wider Middle East from any strike on the Dhamona nuclear weapons factory so I mean specifically Dhamona is where I have to say according to foreign sources because we're under the Israeli sensor here that's where the nuclear program is and if rockets were to get through you know it could cause all kinds of nuclear waste and problematic situations I think people think it's very unlikely the understanding is iron dome defense is very very strong around Dhamona but look it's it's it's it's it's there's a larger picture here and you know when we talk about my book we talk about Iran and Iran is even though when you were talking about Hamas there's also Islamic she had and they are an Iranian proxy and Hamas even though they're not a straight Iranian proxy right they're Sunni Iran is Shiite they sometimes quietly and something very publicly are working together a lot of the rockets are coming from Iran or the rocket shooters have been trained in Iran or the money for it goes from Iran so go all the way back to the Karina in 2001 that was the first time Iran tried to bring 50 tons of rockets and other weapons smuggled into Gaza when they could have hit the Israeli homefront with no iron dome to defend it and now here we are 20 years later and it's still going on in Hamas is much stronger in terms of the rockets so this is a problem and we come back to what you said we need a diplomatic solution right now I think Israel wants to return a deterrent level with Hamas so that they won't shoot rockets at our civilians and so that Israel won't have to bomb is a Hamas militants who are purposely putting themselves next to Gaza and civilians and then we need to get back to a diplomatic solution you know that's my personal view. Yona Jairi Robb thank you and that's it for the show we'll be back on Monday when we speak to the co-creator of the Oxford AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine 47 years of the day India now in the headlines for numbers of deaths detonated its first nuclear weapon. See you then.