‘Israeli regime captive to settler lobby’

Israeli settlement expansions on Palestinian territory and settlers' violence towards Palestinians have for long been the source of much controversy and a major roadblock to the peace process in the Middle East. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has recently taken to task the Israeli Prime Minister over his support for illegal settlers, saying that Benjamin Netanyahu not only refrains from prosecuting Jewish terrorist groups who carry out inhuman acts against Palestinians, but also encourages them. Journalist and political commentator from Seattle, Richard Silverstein, has shared with us his opinion on this issue. 

Silverstein believes that the Tel Aviv regime should take the blame for all the crimes committed by Zionist armed forces and illegal settlers in Palestine.

“The Israeli policies and the occupation are ... fueling the conflict” in the occupied territories of Palestine, he noted. “The Palestinians are suffering terribly under the settler regime."

According to Silverstein, “The settlers are controlling all Israeli policies towards Palestine and foreign policy; so, the Likud government is basically captive to the settler lobby and the settlers really run the show in Israel.”

The Israeli regime is “a settler state,” he noted, adding, “The ideology favors Jewish supremacy and favors suppressing Palestinian rights and there is no daylight between Netanyahu and the Likud and the settlers there.”

He went on to say that Israel should be held accountable for what it’s done to the Palestinians over the past decades. “I would like to see the Palestinians bring their cause to the International Criminal Court and I would like to see those who support human rights to pressure the International Criminal Court to take up this issue.”

Elsewhere, he criticized the Palestinian Authority for being “relatively ineffectual” in advancing the cause of Palestine in the world.

He also said, “I am not very hopeful that the Palestinian Authority is the one that can advance the Palestinian cause. If they wanted to, they would bring their statehood to the United Nations and they would demand that the United Nations recognize them fully as a nation-state.”

Over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem al-Quds. With the green light from the Israeli authorities, settlers regularly attack Palestinian villages and set fire to their mosques, olive groves and other properties in the West Bank.

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