US ready to approve Israel's 'colonial policies'

LONDON

The U.S. is getting ready to approve Israel’s “colonial policies” by disregarding Palestinian rights, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said Friday.

“Two days ago, the Palestinian people commemorated the 71st anniversary of the Naqba – the Catastrophe – and while their disposition continues, one can not but reflect on this long journey of a nation that refuse to die or disappear and continues to strive for its rightful place in history and geography among all the nations of the world,” he told the Chatham House think tank in London.

“Throughout those decades, Israeli policies aimed to displace and replace the Palestinian people and ensured confinement of the Palestinians and expansion of the Israeli settlers with as objective of deposition of maximum land with minimum Palestinians,” he said.

The former Minister of Information and government spokesperson was referring to Palestinian figures that show more than 650,000 settlers currently live on 164 Jewish-only settlements built illegally throughout the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Those territories were occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Palestinians have laid claim on the territories for a future state, alongside Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” drew criticism from Malki who said it offered Palestinians “no independence, no sovereignty, no freedom and no justice.”

The deal was engineered by Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor, Jared Kusher, who said recently the proposal “will lead to both sides being much better off".

No one outside the U.S. administration has seen the plan that Washington said could be disclosed sometime next month.

“One way or other, they are the ones who are delusional, not us,” Malki added.

“This can not be the future of Palestine,” Malki said.

“We are in the final phases of this master plan that Israel is no longer even trying to hide and which can only be qualified as colonialism under the disguise of occupation,” he said.

Israel applied over the years a system reminiscent of “apartheid” of “discrimination, domination and segregation” and it found its “ultimate definition” in Israeli state law, said the former European Peace Prize recipient.

He emphasized his point by highlighting an op-ed by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman in the Wall Street Journal where they said Trump’s decision to recognize the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights fulfills a UN Security Council Resolution. It “shows to what extend they have exposed the narrative of Israeli extreme right wing,” Malki said.

“They are trying to bend the law to accommodate violations instead of ending violations to uphold the law.”

Palestine is grateful to the international community for standing up on the Jerusalem move by the Trump administration, he said. “But when it comes to taking the lead of the peace efforts, the world left the steering wheel in the hands of a reckless driver … with a view that we should wait until he, this reckless driver goes over a cliff, or runs over the Palestinian people to do something about it.,” he added.