ANALYST STRIKES AT BIDEN’S DISMISSAL OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE “THAT’S NOT a MISTAKE THAT’S a DELIBERATE POLICY”
April 15, 2024”WORDS ARE CHEAP”
In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst, Mouin Rabbani, says increasingly critical statements from President Biden and other Western leaders will not affect Israeli policy in Gaza as long as there are NO CONSEQUENCES for continued violations of human rights and the rules of war.
“A mistake is when you take a wrong turn at a traffic light or when a surgeon removes the wrong kidney. But when over half a year you kill tens of thousands of people, that’s not a mistake. That’s a deliberate policy.”
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English Script:
Amy Goodman: Can you talk about what President Biden is saying? What’s happening on the ground in Gaza and why what the U.S. does matters, not to mention Britain saying they’re continuing arms sales?
Mouin Rabbani: Well, President Biden referred to Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as a mistake. I mean, a mistake is when you take a wrong turn at a traffic light or perhaps when a surgeon removes the wrong kidney. But when over the course of six months, half a year, you kill tens of thousands of people with perhaps additional tens of thousands buried under the rubble and decomposing, that’s not a mistake. That’s a deliberate policy. And that’s why Israel has been hauled in front of the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide. I think the second issue here is that words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen. In Israel over the decades has learned that it can safely ignore a statement, whether by U.S. or European decision makers that are essentially playing to the gallery. Because what really matters is not what these people say, but what they do. And when the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, indicate that there is not going to be any consequences, that Israel will continue to be allowed to act with impunity, that there will be no consequences for Israel’s actions, then Israel’s leaders, whether Netanyahu or any of his predecessors, know that they can safely ignore statements such as the ones we’ve been hearing.
Juan González: Mouin Rabbani, I wanted to ask you, the U.N. Security Council is going to make a formal decision on Palestine’s bid for full U.N. membership this month, but the U.S. will likely veto this if it is approved. And the U.S. is saying that Palestine needs to negotiate statehood with Israel before it is granted statehood by the U.N. Your response to this is obviously when Israel was admitted into the U.N. The Palestinians were not asked to first negotiate Israel statehood.
Mouin Rabbani: Well, I think the US, despite several statements over the years to the contrary, has had a consistent position against Palestinian self-determination, against Palestinian statehood. It has recently voted against several resolutions in the UN General Assembly reaffirming the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and essentially what the US government is saying is that it will not support Palestinian statehood unless Israel does so. And Israel’s position is crystal clear on this matter. It rejects Palestinian statehood. So in other words, the US is subcontracting its position on Palestinian statehood to Israel and adopting it as its own.
Juan González: I also wanted to ask you about Prime Minister Netanyahu claiming that the date is set for the for the attack on Rafah, but at the same time, Palestinians are being allowed to return to Khan Yunis after Israel basically destroyed that city. Your response to that?
Mouin Rabbani: I think that’s a situation that is a little unclear because both the United States and the Europeans have come out against an Israeli ground operation in Rafah.
Netanyahu has claimed a date for that operation has already been set. His defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has said that no such date has been set. Netanyahu has also been saying that if Israel does not enter Rafah, it will not be able to win this war. And this may be a maneuver by Netanyahu to essentially claim that it is because of the United States and it is because of the Europeans and their opposition to an operation in Rafah that Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has failed. And then also to use these differences with the US for domestic political reasons.
Amy Goodman: Mouin Rabbani, can you talk about what’s going on in Cairo right now, the negotiations between Hamas and Israel? Can you talk about the prisoners and the hostages? I know that’s being debated. I mean, I think in the West Bank, it’s something like 8000 people have been taken prisoner, many of them children, since October 7th.
And you have something like 130 hostages, Israeli and other foreign nationals taken by Hamas and other groups on October 7th. And then the whole issue of a ceasefire and letting aid in.
Mouin Rabbani: Yes, there are a number of issues that are being negotiated. One of them is an exchange of captives. Another is, and for that, formulas are being discussed about how many captives, how many Palestinian captives Israel will release in exchange for the Palestinians releasing the Israeli and other captives in the Gaza Strip. A second concerns a ceasefire, whether it will be temporary or permanent. And Hamas and Palestinians are, of course, insisting that a temporary pause in fighting during which there is an exchange of captives and then this genocidal assault resumes, it doesn’t really make sense. A third issue is an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the fourth and apparently the most important sticking point is whether or not Palestinians who have been displaced primarily from the northern Gaza Strip, many of whom are now in the Rafah region, will be allowed to return to whatever is left of their former homes. And in fact, it is on this issue that, according to reports, Israel is proving the most obstinate. It has stated that it would allow women and children, but not military aged men to return to the northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are insisting that such return be unrestricted and there is apparently now a proposal where Israel would withdraw from this barrier that it established to bisect the Gaza Strip and that it would be manned by Egyptian forces to ensure that no armed men would go from the southern to the northern Gaza Strip. Whether this is something that will be accepted by both parties remains to be seen. But it’s interesting that of all these issues we’ve been hearing about, it is actually Israeli opposition to the return of displaced refugees to the northern Gaza Strip that is proving to be the main sticking point.
Amy Goodman: What’s Israel’s goal in all of this?
Mouin Rabbani: I believe it’s to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation. Of course, Israel entered this war hoping and intending to eradicate and eliminate Hamas as a government that is an armed force and thought it could do so within a matter of weeks, if not a few months. That has proven to be an abject failure, but I think there is a wider objective here that it had an almost insatiable lust for revenge after October 7th. It wanted to make an example out of the Gaza Strip in order to deter Palestinians or any of its surrounding adversaries from ever considering an attack on Israel like this again. And I think it also has a long standing issue with the presence of so many Palestinians, particularly Palestinian refugees, from 1948, on its border. This is a policy that goes back to the 1950s and has seen in this crisis and more importantly, in the unconditional Western support that has received since October 7th to resolve its Gaza problem, if you will, to either displace the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip or to make it unfit for human habitation.
