CrossFireArabia
Analysts believe that Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government is trying to impose its strategy of Judaizing the entire West Bank and expelling the Palestinians from there. This is in conjunction with the extermination war – made with US support – it is waging against civilians in the Gaza Strip. Others however, say what the West Bank is experiencing is nothing but a side show that can be stopped if Hamas exits the scene.
The Israeli occupation forces have moved into the northern West Bank areas, Wednesday morning, killing more than 10 people and injuring 20 others which many consider a systematic policy to deal with the West Bank as one of the arenas of the current war.
Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti says what is currently happening is a systematic extermination of Palestinians in the West Bank, which he said, is completely occupied by Israel.
In Al Jazeera’s “Gaza… What’s Next?” program Barghouti pointed out the occupation’s strategy has become crystal clear as Benjamin Netanyahu and his fascist government are trying to transfer the war in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and started bombing Palestinians there – especially in the camps – with planes and drones.
He added what the occupation is doing against the Palestinians in the West Bank camps coincides with the killings carried out by the settlers to expand the Jewish settlements in a dangerous and diverse manner, including the pastoral colonial outposts by deploying settlers with sheep to control the largest possible area of land.
Barghouti believes Israel is trying to eradicate the resistance, uproot the Palestinians, Judaize the state, and displace the residents of Gaza and the West Bank together in a war that is fully supported by the United States.
West Bank differs from Gaza
In contrast, Kenneth Katzman, a senior researcher at the Soufan Institute for Strategic Studies and International Security, says Washington is trying to resolve the crisis in Gaza in a way that differs from the way it is handling the West Bank, “which is experiencing a state of turmoil accompanying the war in Gaza and can be contained if the fighting stops.”
Katzman said that the West Bank has a legitimate authority that cooperates with Israel, and that the current violence there is mainly caused by the war in Gaza, “which the Joe Biden administration is trying to exclude from the electoral race and from the American foreign policy that is based on establishing peace in the Middle East.”
The problem, however, as he said, is that the Biden administration “fully agrees with Netanyahu on the need to eradicate Hamas completely, so that the current war will be the last and new faces will take over the rule of the Strip.”
But Barghouti responds to this argument by saying that the Palestinian Authority does not control anything in the West Bank, as evidenced by the fact that all Israeli army operations are carried out in Area A, which is supposed to be subject to it under the Oslo Accords.
Barghouti said that the United States and Israel want practical authority in Gaza and do not accept any national government, as evidenced by the fact that they did not accept democracy when Hamas came to power in 2006 and caused the fall of the national government that included all Palestinian components.
While Barghouti says that the Oslo Accords are dead because Israel has not implemented a single letter of it, Katzman says that the agreement is enforceable if Hamas is eliminated and the Authority becomes the sole representative of the Palestinians.
He added that “President Mahmoud Abbas does not resort to violence and therefore he can create a state of calm, although he is not ideal and has refused to hold elections for 20 years, in addition to being surrounded by suspicions of corruption.”
But Barghouti responded that the late President Yasser Arafat, who signed the Oslo Accords, “did not take anything and they poisoned him when he refused to give up Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Washington, which talks about Abbas’s corruption, does not talk about Netanyahu’s corruption, who continues the war to escape from prison,” according to JO24.
