‘Terrorist regime forces shoot to kill Palestinians’

Richard Silverstein, journalist and political commentator from Seattle, to discuss the recent escalation of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Silverstein says the Israeli regime must be held accountable for the “extremist position” against Palestinian worshipers by restricting their access to the al-Mosque Aqsa compound in East al-Qud (Jerusalem).

“The only answer they have is force; and more force,” the analyst said, referring to the way Tel Aviv handles the events taking place in the occupied territories.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has updated its fatality figure of the recent Israeli attacks, saying 29 Palestinians, including nine children, have been killed and hundreds injured since the Tel Aviv regime began a harsh crackdown in early October on the Palestinians enraged by the settler violence and a plan by Israel to change the status quo of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Of that figure, 11 have been killed in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

“There is an explicit change in the rules of engagement by the Israeli military,” the analyst stated, adding that witnesses in Gaza have said that Israeli forces used to fire warning shots at Palestinian protesters and “scatter them that way, but now they have stopped doing that and they have aimed for the parts of the body that will bring an immediate kill, like the head.”
Expressing his dissatisfaction over the sluggish response by the international community toward the Palestinian issue, the analyst said it seems that the world would not wake up to the Israeli atrocities unless genocide in a Rwandan scale happens in the occupied territories.

The Israeli regime continues to restrict the entrance of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Nearly 90 percent of Palestinians believe that Israel is going to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque and replace it with a temple, according to a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

The Tel Aviv regime has tried to change the demographic makeup of al-Quds over the past decades by constructing illegal settlements, destroying historical sites and expelling the local Palestinian population.