Israel wants to destroy Palestinian existence

An interview with Miko Peled, author of ‘The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine’, about Israeli forces destroying an entire village of Palestinian Bedouins in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank.
Israel wants to destroy Palestinian existence
Question: I want to start off with the larger picture here about these stories of annexations, demolitions etc. as a whole throughout the occupied territories. What exactly is the game plan here do you think?

Peled: Well I think this is part of a larger plan that began about 65, 66 years ago when the …[entity] of Israel was established and it ethnically cleansed Palestine from its indigenous population.

The destruction of villages, depriving people of land and home, depriving people from water, sealing wells, contaminating wells, killing livestock, this is all part of Israeli policies that have been taking place for decades. This happens within the boundaries of 1948 which is what is the …[entity] of Israel, where the …[entity] of Israel has existed. It happens in the West Bank, it happens in Gaza, it happens in the Negev Desert, it is part of a larger plan which Israel is executing very rapidly to destroy any Palestinian existence within historic Palestine what Israel considers to be the land of Israel.

Q: And you mentioned that this has been going on quite rapidly at least of recent. Why exactly have these efforts been intensified of recent do you think?

Peled: I think Israel is concerned because since Israel does not recognize what is called the two-state solution or the solution whereby there is a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Israel has really cancelled the West Bank. There is really no more West Bank. You know there are small parts of Palestinian autonomy but there is really no more West bank.

There is a reality today where half the population are Palestinians. Half the population under Israeli control, under the one-[entity] that Israel has created all over Palestine are not Jewish, they are Palestinians and so this is a great problem for Israel and as you know the Israeli …[regime] right now is a fanatic, extremist, militant …[regime] and they are very concerned about this demographic reality.

So I think they are panicking. They want the Palestinians to leave, they want the Palestinians to come to a point of such hopelessness that they have no choice but to leave. So when you deprive people of water as Israel has been doing for decades, Palestinians get about one-tenth of the water that the Israelis get, they are deprived of water, deprived of land, their homes are being destroyed, there is very little media attention in the West to any of this and so Israel wants to rapidly move along with this process so that it can create a state that gives preferential treatment to Jews on all of Palestine.

Q: And so where does this leave any prospects of peace then?

Peled: Well there is no prospects for peace in the acceptable framework which what used to be called or what is still referred to a as two-state solution. Those negotiations which Secretary [John] Kerry is trying to put together are farce, they are nonsense.

The only context in which there could be any kind of peace or peaceful resolution to the conflict is within a real democracy that would hopefully be created in place of the …[entity] of Israel. A democracy that recognizes the rights of Palestinians and Israelis as equals.

But this means great deal of pressure on the …[entity] of Israel and the fall of Zionism just like we saw the fall of apartheid in South Africa and the fall of the legalized racist system that used to exist in the United States.

It would take a great deal of effort and pressure from the outside world as well as pressure from the inside to bring that about but certainly in the more common sense of the world what is considered the peace talks, there is not going to be any progress to that at all because Israel is not interested.