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China can play greater role in Palestinian cause: Activist

Friday, 22 January 2016 8:57 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 22 January 2016 8:57 AM ]

Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses members of the Arab League in the Egyptian capital Cairo on January 21, 2016. ©AFP

Press TV has interviewed Joe Catron, with the International Solidarity Movement from New York, on China’s call for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem (al-Quds) as its capital city.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: China is calling for an independent Palestinian state. Just how significant a role could China play in the establishment of a Palestinian state, if at all?

Catron: I think the answer simply boils down to how much pressure China is willing to apply to Israel. Israel has done everything in its power to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state or any other kind of exercise of Palestinian self-determination.

In the West Bank, it’s constructed over a hundred illegal settlements and transferred over a 100,000 illegal settlers to live as residents, making any kind of contiguous Palestinian state simply impossible.

At this point of history, it’s something that cannot happen. We’ve heard this call for a Palestinian state before from nearly every world power and unfortunately none of them seeing willing to do the work or apply the pressure that bringing it to fruition would necessarily entail.

Press TV: Now, with the current circumstances on the ground in the Palestinian territories, just how close are we to a third Intifada in the true sense of the term?

Catron: That’s always a very difficult question to answer. In recent months since the beginning of October of course we’ve seen the emergence of a new wave of Palestinian resistance whether you wish to call it a third Intifada or something else.

How long it continues and its ultimate significance is something of course that only the Palestinian people under occupation can decide. But the circumstances on the ground both in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in 1948 occupied Palestine are certainly conducive to a continuation of Palestinian resistance.

Many there are simply tired of waiting for the international community to reinforce its words such as this new call for Palestinian statehood with any kind of action, which until now we simply haven’t seen.

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