West can no longer support Israeli occupation of Palestine

A political analyst said the world is waking up to the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and it is moving towards a kind of pressure point to where Israel will be soon forced to dismantle its occupation.
The comments came after Israeli forces attacked Palestinian demonstrators in the occupied West Bank and Gaza on the 37th anniversary of Land Day, injuring dozens of protesters. March 30 is commemorated every year because of a deadly incident on that day in 1976 in which Israeli troops killed six Palestinians during a protest against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands.

An interview with Harry Fear, activist and filmmaker, to further discuss the issue.

Q: Now thirty seven years again this is the anniversary of Land Day and again we saw more demonstrations and again more people injured.

Do you see a change in the horizon if you are looking compared to years prior to this as far as the attention perhaps that the situation is getting and also in general the overall perspective of the Palestinians, do you think that there is a change on the horizon or are we going to commemorating this day thirty seven more years?

Fear: Well I think there are two very clear trajectories, one is more optimistic and the other more cynical and pessimistic.

To start with the later I think that if we look what happened certainly in the West Bank, not Gaza where I am talking to you now but in the other bit of Palestine that is left, Israel has successfully and it was its objective and it managed to eat up more and more Palestinian land and resources and this is why I think Land Day is such an important day because it underscores the fact that this so-called Israel-Palestine conflict is basically about land theft and resource theft and this key term land, it’s been stolen. The point is that the Palestinian land has been stolen.

I mean the West Bank, Israel has now left a tiny faction percentage of Palestinian land untouched for Palestinians to live in but the vast majority of it is under Israeli occupying force domination and control.

If we look at Gaza, the situation is more optimistic and hopeful. It is basically a big fact on the ground, a big Palestinian fact on the ground and Israel has not been able to occupy Gaza now for years. There is a great deal of autonomy here even given the besiegement and the siege. So this is a positive trajectory.

At the same time the world is waking up to these illegal settlements in the West Bank and the International Criminal Court declaration about the illegality of the wall and the settlements and colonization in the West Bank for a few years ago now, all of these facts are moving towards a kind of pressure point to where I hope and believe that Israel will be soon I hope forced to dismantle its occupation, what have not may mean.

Q: Well but Harry Fear, you talked about as far as the various international organizations now making more aggressive statements but of course we know that the settlements were stated to be illegal initially even by the United Nations but that did not stop the Israelis from confiscating more and more land.

So what will it take to go beyond just this type of verbal reprimand and actually get the international community to put the pressure on Israel that it certainly most people would say deserves?

Fear: Well yes indeed. I mean that the precedence in law and what is said at the United Nations, what’s said at the Arab League every year and etc. is very clear that Israel has to stop occupying the so-called 1967 territories in East Jerusalem and just to correct myself, I was referring to the ICJ, the International Court of Justice advisory ruling which re-affirmed all of the illegality of this.

I think what really is going to change this is the fact as I said that the world is waking up to this, that sooner or later these Western states are no longer going to be able to get away with such a foreign policy supporting Israel because the domestic populations– in the UK, my native UK for example– they are just not going to tolerate such a barbaric foreign policy supporting the oppression of the Palestinians and the theft of their land anymore.