STEPHEN LENDMAN | Caravan Daily
LIKE the US and other Western states, apartheid Israel is a fantasy democracy, never the real thing.
Today it’s presided over by the most extremist regime in its history, Netanyahu an unapologetic hate-mongering racist, a fascist despot masquerading as a man of the people.
Israel controls the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem, annexation if occurs to formalize what de facto exists.
The US/Israeli-created Palestinian Authority (PA) is a puppet regime, acting as the Jewish state’s enforcer against its own people.
Refusal by Hamas to go along with the dirty system is why Gazans are suffocating under an illegal blockade, a state of war without declaring it, Israeli cross-border attacks occurring at its discretion – terrorizing its two million residents, including by naked aggression. The world community consistently fails to act against Jewish state high crimes.
Netanyahu combines the worst of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bush/Cheney, Obama and Trump, a Ziofascist ideologue, a neocon hardliner, a war criminal multiple times over.
He’s unaccountable for years of the highest of high crimes, facing indictment for bribery, breach of trust and fraud post-election.
On Saturday, he said the following:
“A Palestinian state will endanger our existence (sic), and I withstood huge pressure over the past eight years (sic). No prime minister has withstood such pressure (sic). We must control our destiny,” adding:
“Will we move ahead to the next stage? Yes. I will extend sovereignty but I don’t distinguish between the settlement blocs and the isolated ones, because each settlement is Israeli and I will not hand it over to Palestinian sovereignty.”
“I will not divide Jerusalem. I will not evacuate any community. and I will make sure we control the territory west of Jordan…I promised and it will happen at the soonest opportunity.”
An Israeli Channel 13 report quoted unnamed sources close to Netanyahu, saying he’s “more ready than ever” to annex and extend Israeli law to the settlements. It’s virtually this way now.
Longstanding Israeli plans call for controlling all valued Judea and Samaria land, confining Palestinians to isolated cantons on worthless scrubland.
Netanyahu’s above remarks affirmed what’s been well known for years. Over half a century of settlement construction on stolen Palestinian land continues, shrinking territory where its people can live once seized never to be returned.
Settlers are governed by Israeli civil law, Occupied Palestinians by military law, controlling virtually all aspects of their lives, denying them fundamental rights afforded only to Jews, largely to privileged ones exclusively, others exploited by neoliberal harshness, how the US and other Western countries are governed.
Asked about Trump’s no-deal/deal of the century, Netanyahu said he told DLT “there can’t be the removal of even one settlement, and our continued control of all the territory to the west of the Jordan” river.
If Trump’s no-peace/peace plan goes another way, he’ll reject it, he stressed. Asked if he expects Trump to recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank,” he said, “(w)ait until next term.”
“All the settlements, without exception, those that are in blocs and those that aren’t, need to remain under Israeli sovereignty. This will happen,” he stressed.
The US and Israel reject Palestinian self-determination while pretending otherwise – wanting Palestinians kept in perpetual bondage under occupation harshness – denied their fundamental rights.
Uncaring about their lives, welfare, and futures, both countries treat them like subhumans, abusing and exploiting them ruthlessly, stealing their land and resources.
Obama once said Palestinians “must make peace with Israel before gaining statehood,” ignoring total Jewish state control over their lives, wanting them terrorized into submission, offering nothing but perpetual control under a ruthless occupier.
Trump’s disdain for ordinary people everywhere is indisputable. He’s more contemptuous of Palestinian rights than any of his predecessors.
He illegally recognized Israeli control over Syria’s Golan and Jerusalem, moving the US embassy to the UN-recognized international city.
He slashed essential to life humanitarian aid to long-suffering Palestinians in deference to Netanyahu regime harshness.
In early 2018, he cut over $300 million in UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid, providing vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees.
Months later, he cut another $200 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The Trump and Netanyahu regimes are complicit in waging slow-motion genocide against defenseless Palestinians, falsely blaming US/Israeli high crimes on Hamas.
Trump and Netanyahu want Palestinians further controlled by agreeing to a no-peace/peace deal no responsible leadership would touch – as well as going along with the Trump regime’s illegal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital.
Both figures are mortal enemies of the Palestinian people, Trump surely to recognize Israeli annexation of West Bank land if Netanyahu goes this far, perhaps inciting the third intifada at the same time.
Netanyahu, his predecessors, and the US are contemptuous of the right of Palestinians to self-determination – a sovereign state within pre-June 1967 borders the only acceptable form.
Enactment of Israel’s Nation-State Law, illegitimately legitimizing apartheid rule, enshrining Jewish supremacy over equal rights for Arab citizens, dispelled any hope for Palestinians to achieve their fundamental rights without fighting for them – notably statehood.
Apartheid is the law of the land. Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls it a high crime against humanity.
Apartheid is racism on steroids, institutionalized in Israel, illegally codified in its Basic Law, defying international law, declaring the country to be the exclusive “nation-state of the Jewish people (and their) historic homeland…they have an exclusive right to…”
Netanyahu called enactment of the apartheid law “a defining moment.” It affirms that Israel will always consider Palestinians to be subhumans, not entitled to rights afforded Jews.
