Dr Mustafa Barghouti: “What you see is probably a new intifada”
Former Palestine Deep Dive live show guest, Dr Mustafa Barghouti, speaks to Al Jazeera English on Monday May 10th 2021 when at least 20 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza, including 9 children. And over 300 Palestinians are reported to have been injured across the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israeli occupation forces.
Dr Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician and politician, currently serving as Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative. Watch our live show featuring him discussing COVID-19 and Palestine: Vaccine Apartheid? Occupation in the Time of COVID-19.
Presenter: How urgent is some sort of international leadership or initiative right now to prevent any further escalation in the situation or is it perhaps too late for that?
Mustafa Barghouti: No it’s not. It has been urgent for a long time. The problem is that we do not need those who come and equate us with the occupiers. We cannot accept any more of those who come and say “you are equally guilty” and equate between the occupier and the occupied, the oppressor and the oppressed. What we need is an international intervention which holds Israel accountable for its war crimes which Israel is conducting against the Palestinian people. We will need an intervention which threatens Israel with Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as long as it continues its occupation and a system of racial discrimination and apartheid that it is practicing against Palestinians including acts of ethnic cleansing as they are planning in Sheikh Jarrah by evicting people from their homes for the second time after they have been ethnically cleansed in 1948.
“I think what Palestinians have shown in Jerusalem is our ability to conduct peaceful, non-violent resistance. At the same time being able to defend ourselves when we are attacked.”
Presenter: And in the absence of those measures which you mention, then what then?
Mustafa Barghouti: Well in my opinion we have found our way, the way of resistance and the way of struggle. I think we are departing now from a long, long illusion called [the] Oslo Process. Where the hopes were in an agreement that allowed Israel to increase the number of settlers from 110,00 to 760,000 and allowed Israel to cut the West Bank into 224 small islands and ghettos and to make Gaza, besieged Gaza, as the largest open prison in the world. This has to change. And I think what Palestinians have shown in Jerusalem is our ability to conduct peaceful, non-violent resistance. At the same time being able to defend ourselves when we are attacked. We have had 600 injuries during the last two days at the hands of the Israeli army. Six people have lost their eyes. And of course you know that Israel is now attacking Gaza, there are 20 people killed. About 9 of them are children. But that will not stop from resisting. I think what we have found in the people of Jerusalem is something that reminds us of the struggle of Martin Luther King in the United States for justice and freedom.
“I think what we have found in the people of Jerusalem is something that reminds us of the struggle of Martin Luther King in the United States for justice and freedom.”
Presenter: Can I just ask you, Mr Barghouti, can I pick up on that point that you are making there because we were hearing from our correspondent in East Jerusalem, but also reports from Ramallah there and people taking part in protests in a number of different places, Ramallah, Gaza Nazareth. How then would you describe this momentum. What are we seeing emerging across Palestinian society now?
“What you see is probably a new intifada. A new popular uprising against injustice and against occupation and against persecution and oppression and against a system of apartheid, which is considered by international law as crimes, crimes against humanity.”
Mustafa Barghouti: What you see is probably a new intifada. A new popular uprising against injustice and against occupation and against persecution and oppression and against a system of apartheid, which is considered by international law as crimes, crimes against humanity. And it is an act of resistance against the annexation of East Jerusalem which is illegal under international law and which most of the countries of the world consider illegal.
