[News] Palestine - Khalid Amayreh interviewed by Silvia Cattori

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Khalid Amayreh interviewed by Silvia Cattori

http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/03/10/khalid-amayreh-interviewed-by-silvia-cattori/

Khalid Amayreh  is a journalist who lives in Hebron, a city brutalized
and bloodied daily by armed Jewish settlers who are driving the
authentic inhabitants by force. He is what might be called a true
Palestinian; a man of integrity who was never seduced by financial
rewards and prestige; a man standing who has remained with his
martyred people in order to witness every day the atrocities he
suffers at the hands of the Israeli army, but also, and this is the
most painful, at the hands of the authorities of Ramallah. He himself
has been imprisoned, savagely beaten without knowing why, by this
Palestinian police to the training of which Bernard Kouchner is so
pleased to have participated.

His articles, to which he devotes all his energies and time, by love
for his country that Israel has turned into a nightmare, reflect daily
the torture, the arrests, the abductions, the humiliations, the
massacres that the Israeli army imposes constantly to his destitute
people, abandoned by the world. He calls a spade a spade when he
documents the racist remarks of the Jewish religious and political
leaders advocating the mass murder of Palestinians. He compares the
Israeli military to the Nazis when they behave as such. He describes
the Israeli anti-Muslim racism, which resembles in many respects the
“anti-Jewish propaganda of Nazi Germany in the 1930s”. He challenges
the colonization presented as a "return to their original homeland”.
He deserves our full consideration. It is appalling that witnesses of
his calibre are ignored by the mainstream media. He responds here to
the questions of Silvia Cattori.

________________________________

Silvia Cattori: You have written countless articles explaining in
detail what is happening in Palestine. When you see that the crimes of
Israel, you are documenting in your articles ­ which are translated in
many languages, and well reported in the Arab medias and in the new
medias ­ remain largely ignored in the mainstream western medias,
aren’t you sometimes discouraged?

Khalid Amayreh: No, not at all, the evilness of the Israeli regime
instils in us a greater determination to keep up the struggle. With
every murderous crime committed by the Zionists, whom I often call the
“Nazis of our time”, we acquire new evidence that the evil regime’s
end is inevitable. Evil can’t be sustained for ever. Eventually it
will destroy itself along with the evil doers. This often happens due
to purely internal factors, but it could be also as a result of a
combination of internal and external factors. The fact that Israel is
trying to censor the messages and punish the messengers (e.g.
international observers and human rights activists operating in
occupied Palestine) shows that Israel has much to hide from the eyes
of the world. Nonetheless, Israel is fighting a losing battle as many
Israelis are finding out that Zionist criminality can’t be sustained
for ever. In a world where everything can be denied, there are forces
undeniable. And on earth, where nothing is sure, we have our
certainties. As an oppressed people our certainty is to be free. True,
our freedom is not around the corner, but, nonetheless it is a
certainty.

Silvia Cattori: Deceit is everywhere. While large international
solidarity associations with the Palestinian cause immediately publish
all the writings of Israeli militants and journalists like Michel
Warschawski, Uri Avnery, Amira Hass, or Gideon Levy, few of your
articles pass the censorship. This shows well that the discourse in
the solidarity movement is biased, truncated at will; of course they
condemn the occupation but they do not question the legitimacy of
Israel, the dispossession of Palestine in 48, etc. Better to be
Israeli Jewish to report on Israel Palestine?

Khalid Amayreh: Your observations are unfortunately correct. However,
it is always better to view the half-full part of the proverbial
glass. That these people don’t publish my articles is unfortunate,
however, the fact that they have brought themselves to realizing that
Israel is committing crimes and violating the basic human rights of
the Palestinian people is a laudable act in itself.

What is more important is that a revolutionary act can’t occur outside
its natural historical and political milieu. We just can’t expect
people who were breast-fed with the holocaust religion all their life
to suddenly convert to anti-Zionism. In France, as in the United
States and much of the West, turning one’s back completely to Israel
and Zionism means losing a certain part of one’s identity. Hence, many
people are just not ready to undergo the desired transformation. My
personal impression is that the final transformation will ultimately
occur as the universal resistance to Zionism becomes deeper and
irreversible as the futility of the so-called peace process become
clearer, which is happening now.

Silvia Cattori: The murder of a Hamas military executive, Mahmoud
al-Mabhouh, has been largely commented. Never has been Israel’s image
so degraded. But should we not see that no Western State condemns the
Israeli policy of targeted killings of Palestinians fighters? Doesn’t
this demonstrate that Western politicians do not want to see the ugly
and brutal policy of the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman [1]

Khalid Amayreh: You see, international politics is very much like a
house of ill-repute. Principles, including so-called moral principles,
mean nothing as opposed to statecraft. In western countries, leaders
and politicians would go to a great extent asserting the ideals of
freedom, human rights and democracy. However, when these principles
collide with expediency or pass through a real test (e.g. Hamas’s
election victory in 2006), they are let down in the name of realism
and pragmatism.

The same thing applies to Israeli behaviour. Israel has always been a
criminal entity. And the West went along with that. Hence, it would be
naïve to expect the West to undergo a sudden awakening of its
conscience just because Israel has murdered a Palestinian leader.
Israel has always committed such crimes, and the West has always lived
with this. So there is absolutely nothing extraordinary here.

Silvia Cattori: When Benjamin Netanyahu reiterates that Israel will
never withdraw from East Jerusalem, nor return to 1967 borders, nor
allow Palestinian refugees to return to what is now Israel, which
means do you have to voice your anger?

Khalid Amayreh: I tend to believe him, which really convinces me of
the futility of seeking peace with Israel. Unfortunately, it is too
late for peace with Israel. Now it is either open-ended conflict, or a
single democratic state in all of mandatory Palestine from the River
Jordan to the Mediterranean where all inhabitants are viewed as
citizens, irrespective of religion and ethnicity. Needless to say, the
later concept is anathema for Israel, since it would lead to the loss
of Israel’s Jewish identity.

Silvia Cattori: After calling to dismember Iraq, after destroying
Lebanon and Palestine, Israeli regime wants now to attack Iran and
encourage his allies to enter in his war propaganda. President Nicolas
Sarkozy’s government is openly the most eager to support Israel
against Iran. But is it really Iran that threatens the Middle East?

Khalid Amayreh: No, Iran in no way represents a threat to the Middle
East. Iran is still very much a Third World country that lacks the
ability (and the inclination) to pose such a threat. Besides, Iran,
unlike Israel, has not waged wars of aggression in modern times.

In my opinion, the driving motive behind the Israeli-western hysteria
against Iran is to ensure that Israel remains the sole, undisputed,
and unchallenged superpower in the Middle East as it is now. Hence,
the largely phobic talk about the possible destruction of Israel by
Iran is more than rubbish. It really insults people’s intelligence and
should never be entertained by serious peoples.

Israel possesses hundreds of nuclear heads and bombs, along with their
delivery systems, which means that it would be utterly foolish to
threaten Israel. Some would claim that the Iranian leadership can be
“foolish” but this is nonsense. A country that has been able to
navigate itself through the treacherous terrains of international
politics can’t really be foolish.

In the final analysis, we are talking about a potential challenge to
Israeli supremacy in the region, not existence, a condition that has
persisted since the aftermath of the Second World War. This is what
irks Israel and the West.

As to Sarkozy, he obviously lacks the rectitude of an honest leader.
He is very much a European copy of George Bush, but lacking the
enormity of means that were at the latter’s disposal.

Silvia Cattori: How France ­ totally aligned with Israel as it is from
2007 ­ could it help the Palestinians people to regain their rights?
Did it not already lose all its credit and influence in the region? As
for the strategy of Obama for the Middle East has it not already
failed?

Khalid Amayreh: No, France is not really qualified to carry out a
truly constructive role in helping the Palestinians regain their
rights. France, especially under the present government, is too
reluctant, too inconsistent, too unprincipled and too much seduced by
Zionist romanticism.

Indeed, France has repeatedly demonstrated that its heart and mind
belong to Israel, not to Justice. Moreover, the scandalous French
stand on the genocidal Israeli onslaught against the people of the
Gaza Strip a year ago was really a classical example of political
whoredom. What else can be said of a major international power that
once taught the world the meaning of liberty that stood idle,
passively watching Nazi-Israel rain death on the heads of Gaza’s
helpless children and women while mendaciously claiming to be doing
this in self-defence?

Silvia Cattori: Have you not been shocked by the call to recognize a
“Palestinian State without borders”, made by Bernard Kouchner  on the
day (21 February) of the arrival of the President of the Palestinian
Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Paris? If France wants to recognise a
Palestinian State, why should it be without defining its borders?

Khalid Amayreh: Yes, I have. And I think many other Palestinians have
the same feeling. The reason for that is very clear. The French
proposal for recognizing a Palestinian state without borders should be
viewed as a mere euphemism for the liquidation of the Palestinian
cause.

Besides, any temporary arrangements would have be more or less vague
arrangements in order to be accepted by both sides. And from our
experience with the Oslo Accords, vague arrangements are always
interpreted by the powerful side, in this case Israel, in a way that
serves the Israeli designs, while the other party, the Palestinians,
is left indulging in day-dreaming.

Didn’t Shimon Peres, the hero of the Qana massacre [Besides, who would
or could guarantee that Israel wouldn’t treat the “temporary borders”
as “permanent borders”? The United States? France? The United Kindom?
Germany (we probably shouldn’t even mention Germany, given her
pornographic embrace of Israeli Nazism!)? Well, these powers can’t
even get Israel to stop demolishing an Arab home in East Jerusalem,
let alone force Israel to withdraw from Palestinian land.

Silvia Cattori: The day after his call, in an article co-authored with
Miguel Angel Moratinos [2]

Khalid Amayreh: I think this plan is no plan at all. It is rather a
process of deception very much like the defunct Oslo process. Besides,
it is always ludicrous and vacuous to claim that a viable Palestinian
state can be built while the Palestinian people are still languishing
under a cruel foreign military occupation that controls every aspect
of their lives.

I sincerely believe that Mr. Fayyad is acting very much like Alice in
Wonderland. He is a man who was parachuted from North America to
Palestine thanks to a decision by President Bush. I dare say he is not
really acquainted with the Nazi-like nature of the Israeli regime.
Moreover, he naively thinks that the building of institutions,
probably along with international recognition, could create a certain
mechanism, or a momentum, that would eventually make the proverbial
viable Palestinian state an achievable task.

To this, we Palestinians, who have been through it all, from creation
to destruction, say a big “No”. We have learned, the hard way, that
the creation of a state before liberation is a dangerous and stupid
act of gambling. This has been proven in a clarion way through the
Oslo process, which gave us annexation instead of liberation and
apartheid instead of statehood.

Besides, who would guarantee that Israel wouldn’t move its tanks to
crush all the institutions Mr. Fayyad would like to build in
cooperation with people like Kouchner, [3] especially if Palestinians
continued to be affronted with the durability of the “temporary
borders” being proposed now?

Silvia Cattori: Salam Fayyad is a politician that Sarkozy and Kouchner
would like to seat in power definitely. Luisa Morgantini, the leader
of the solidarity movement in Italy, considers Salam Fayyad as a
militant, a friend of the Palestinian cause. Who is Fayyad really for
the Palestinians? What did he to improve the daily life of his people?
Have you seen less check points, less jobless under his regime? Is it
true that the economic situation improved in the West Bank what does
it mean for the Palestinians on the ground? Do you believe that Fayyad
could be the right person to solve the Palestinian cause?

Khalid Amayreh: In my opinion, Fayyad is a man who is effectively
striving to carry out the Netanyahu concept of “economic peace”
whereby Palestinians, or a majority of them, would accept trading off
their national aspirations for jobs and money. In other words, he
wants to us to settle for a deformed “state”, one without dignity,
without freedom, without authority, without anything, for a
little-whore of a state that would be perpetually subject and
subservient to Israel. As to Jerusalem, the right of the refugees, the
numerous Jewish colonies that continue to expand throughout our land,
this is none of his concerns. His ultimate concerns is to achieve
“economic prosperity” but at the expense of our legitimate and
inalienable rights, including the right to freedom from Israeli
Nazism.

If Fayyad’s vision were to succeed, God forbid, we would be condemned
to many decades of serfdom and subjugation by Jewish colonialism, all
in the name of peace.

Silvia Cattori: The Palestinian people and their cause can only suffer
from the split between Fatah and Hamas. In 2008 you said that “it is
imperative that member-States of the European Union (EU) either
collectively or individually should initiate a meaningful dialogue
with Hamas as soon as possible. Needless to say, such a dialogue would
be expedient to all parties involved as well as to the cause of peace
and stability in the Middle East." [4]

Khalid Amayreh: I am not really optimistic about true reconciliation
between Fatah and Hamas. The reason for that is that Fatah, indeed the
entire Palestinian Authority, lacks the will to act independently,
given the fact that they both are almost completely dependent for
their financial survival on western and pro-western Arab donors.

Indeed, the “raison d’être” of the Palestinian Authority (PA) now, at
least from the American and Israeli view point, is to combat Hamas or
at least inhibit its growth.

This is not a matter of a transient political strategy. It is much
more than that. Israel, which continues to control the overall
American policy in the Middle East, believes that the inclusion of
Hamas into the main body of Palestinian politics would more or less
raise the ceiling of Palestinian aspirations and expectations. This,
not the issue of terror, is the main reason of Israel’s vehement
hostility to Hamas.

Moreover, Israel hopes that a strong Hamas would ensure that Fatah
wouldn’t make serious concessions to Israel with regard to cardinal
final-status issues such Jerusalem and the refugees.

This is why it is likely that the dichotomy between the Palestinian
Authority and Hamas will continue for sometime unless the Palestinian
Authority delivers itself from the shackles of subservience to the
United States and European Union, which considers Hamas a terrorist
organization.

Silvia Cattori: An intelligence officer of the Palestinian Authority,
Fahmi Shabana al-Tamimi [5]

Khalid Amayreh: No, he hasn’t been heard and is unlikely to be heard.
The reason is clear. For the Palestinian Authority to truly and
sincerely fight corruption, it would have to demolish the entire
Palestinian Authority apparatus because corruption, in its various
forms, is the other side of the Palestinian Authority regime. In fact,
there is an umbilical relationship between the Palestinian Authority
and corruption. This might sound as an exaggeration to many,
especially in the west. But this is taken for granted here. In short,
corruption infests every aspect of the Palestinian Authority so much
so that only a thorough and complete overhaul of the Palestinian
Authority would stem the plague of corruption.

Silvia Cattori: When Mahmoud Abbas asks Hamas legitimate authorities
(in Gaza) to recognize Israel as a precondition to forming a
government of national unity, does it sound normal?

Khalid Amayreh: No, it doesn’t. And he hasn’t the courage to say so
openly before a Palestinian audience. Besides, he and his Palestinian
Authority had recognized Israel a long time ago, and look what they
have got in return?

Silvia Cattori: The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized
Israel. But is it its honour? What is the usefulness of the PLO? Has
it still reason to be? Do you consider its representatives abroad as
legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people? Mahmoud Abbas
does he not use the PLO to divide the Palestinians?

Khalid Amayreh: The PLO used to be a true representative of the
Palestinian people. But this was when the PLO still retained it
national chastity. Now, in my opinion, the PLO lost much if not all of
its national honour, if only by indulging in manifestly treasonous
acts such as the so-called security coordination with Israel. Some
Palestinians are already calling the PA, the daughter of the PLO, a
Palestinian “judenrat”.

Silvia Cattori: Your representatives outside do not seem to be
concerned with the abuses of the Palestinian Authorities. Leila
Shahid, Palestinian representative in Brussels continues to refer to
Oslo, to negotiations, and other nonsense. By the way, this PLO
representative is considered, for instance in France, the legitimate
Palestinians’ voice by activists like Dominique Vidal and Michel
Warschawsky, with whom Leila Shahid held conference for years in
France. Did Palestinians expect them to resign in 2006 when Abbas and
his Fatah movement had lost the power?

Khalid Amayreh: This is really tragic, because these people are
supposed to defend the honour of the Palestinian people, not blindly
support and defend policies that corrode this honour in the service of
Israel.

My impression is that these people are following the old adage “when
money appears, heads bow.” I am sorry that some of our people have
reached this level of depravity.

Silvia Cattori: When the Palestinian representative in UNESCO Elias
Sambar, or members of the Palestinian Authority, stigmatize Iran ­ one
of the few countries in the region which denounces Israel without
concessions ­ or blame the Palestinian Muslim resistance to be “Shiia”
[6]

Khalid Amayreh: I don’t think so. My impression is that they indulge
in this stupid ranting in order to receive a certificate of good
conduct from the U.S. and Israel. Otherwise, one might ask what
interest do Palestinians have in alienating millions of Shiite Muslims
around the world by calling Hamas “Shia’a”?

Besides, didn’t Fatah and the PLO repeatedly beg Hezbollah leader
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to include Fatah prisoners in any
prisoner-exchange deal with Israel; hence the hypocrisy on their part.

Silvia Cattori: Another grim reality: the Fatah collaboration with the
enemy. Under these conditions when the Palestinians hear Abbas or
Fayyad talk about the “liberation of Palestine”, can they believe
them?

Khalid Amayreh: Yes, I know that too well. This is really beyond
chutzpah [insolence]; it is pornographic hypocrisy bordering on mental
sickness.

Silvia Cattori: You wrote that the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) “is functioning very much like a hanger-on vis-à-vis
the American backed Palestinian Authority.” [6]

Khalid Amayreh: The PFLP is not what it used to be. Its effective
alliance with an American-backed Fatah has more or less undermined its
erstwhile reputation. For example, the PFLP has not adopted an
uncompromising stance vis-à-vis the issue of security coordination
with Israel. I remember that two years ago, one PLO security commander
declared that “the Palestinian Authority and Israel have one common
enemy, that is Hamas,” and the PFLP kept silent in the face of this
national apostasy.

Moreover, the PFLP was virtually silent and made no reactions to the
serious attacks by the Palestinian Authority on freedom of speech,
human rights and civil liberties in the West Bank. To many
Palestinian, this stand was unforgivable. More to the point, there is
a widespread impression in occupied Palestine that the PFLP leadership
has on many occasions allowed the Palestinian Authority leadership to
utilize the PLO, of which PFLP is a founding member, in the showdown
with Hamas.

None the less, most Palestinians, including this writer, still view
with respect and admiration Ahmed Sadat, the imprisoned chief of the
PFLP. We hope that he will be free from Zionist jails soon. [7]

Silvia Cattori: The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a place forbidden to many
Palestinians. New restrictions are forbidding Muslims to go on the
site of Haram Al-Sharif. After all the punishments they suffered from
the Israeli occupiers, is it not the cruellest humiliation for the
Palestinian?

Khalid Amayreh: Yes, it also shows that Israel denies non-Jews freedom
of religion. How else can one relate to these draconian measures when
people from Paris to Los Angeles can access the Aqsa Mosque while
Palestinian Muslims and Christian who live only a few hundreds meters
away are denied the right to visit and pray at their respective holy
places? Even the most fascist states in history didn’t embark on such
measures.

Silvia Cattori: Gaza remains under siege despite protests from many
Muslims and non Muslims in the world. Can the Palestinians of Gaza
continue to survive without outside help?

Khalid Amayreh: The Palestinians have no choice but to survive. The
Palestinians have survived in spite of history because they constantly
and feverishly clung to that choice, if you can call it a choice. The
other alternative was ultimate demise and national obliteration.

None the less, there is no doubt that the enduring Gaza nightmare
represents a stigma of shame at the forefront of the international
community as well as upon humanity’s conscience as a whole.

It is more than lamentable that while an entire people is being raped,
humiliated, starved, and tormented, the nations of the world are just
looking on passively as if this slow-motion holocaust were taking
place on a different planet or in a different galaxy. I really can’t
find the right word to describe the gigantic crime of apathy toward
Gaza. Now, I understand that why many people were silent when the
Nazis were doing what they were doing Europe in the course of the
Second World War.

Silvia Cattori

________________________________

[1] Benjamin Netanyahu, born in 1949, is the current prime minister
and head of the extreme right-wing Likud party. He was the first to
ever be voted prime minister via direct elections in 1996, and later
served as foreign minister and finance minister under Ariel Sharon.

Avigdor Lieberman, born on 1958 in Kishinev, Moldavia, is the current
foreign minister and leader of the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu
party, which after the 2009 general elections has become Israel’s
third largest party. Lieberman immigrated to Israel in 1978. Shortly
after arriving in the country, he enlisted in the Israel Defence
Forces and served in the Artillery Corps.

[2] Qana is a village in Southern Lebanon where many Lebanese
civilians, who had taken refuge in a UN compound to escape the
fighting, were killed by the Israeli artillery on April 18, 1996.

[3] An article in the daily Le Monde on February 22, 2010, “À quand
l’État palestinien ?”, by Bernard Kouchner French Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spanish Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Cooperation.

[4] See: “Europe should speak to Hamas now”, by Khalid Amayreh, November 2008.

[5] See: “Hedonism in Ramallah”, by Khalid Amayreh, 18 February 2010.

[6] See: “The Shi’a Threat in Palestine: between phobias and
propaganda”, by Jean-François Legrain, 1st October 2009.

[7] See: “What is wrong with PFLP? ”, by Khalid Amayreh, 16 October 2008.





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