Arab States Need to Sever Ties With Israel – Barghouti

• CrossFireArabia
• August 14, 2024

Secretary-general of the Palestinian Nåtional Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti called on Arab governments that have relations with Israel to sever their ties with the occupation and withdraw their ambassadors. He described the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli settlers as a very dangerous development.

The Islamic Endowments Dept in occupied Jerusalem said, Tuesday, more than 2,958 settlers and extremists stormed the blessed mosque since Tuesday morning, including two ministers and a member of the Knesset.

Endowments sources confirmed Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Talking to Al Jazeera’s “Gaza What’s Next” program Barghouti said that the Israeli occupation aims to impose temporal and spatial division in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, so that it becomes a place for Jewish prayer as well, as it did before in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, taking advantage of the state of war in Gaza and the brutality practiced by its army against the Palestinians in the occupied holy city.

He added the Israeli occupation aims to create a new reality whose content is the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque. He pointed out the temporal and spatial division Ben Gvir is trying to impose on the ground was rejected by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Camp David talks and led to their collapse.

Barghouti  wondered about the role of countries and governments that have relations with the Israeli occupation in confronting what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government members are doing, most notably Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

He said if Arab governments want to impose real pressure on the occupation, they are required to cancel all normalization agreements with Tel Aviv and impose a comprehensive boycott on Israel, and expel their ambassadors and withdraw Arab ambassadors from Israel.

He pointed out this is the simplest of things because the Palestinians are not demanding the Arabs send armies to fight Israel. The Arab peoples are also required to take action and pressure their governments.

Barghouti believes deterring Netanyahu and his government requires immediate action from Arab and Islamic countries alike.

Unified Palestinian leadership

On the Palestinian level, what is required – according to Barghouti – is the formation of a unified leadership in a joint national struggle program and the immediate implementation of what was agreed upon in the Beijing meeting, including the formation of a national consensus government and creation of a unified leadership framework.

Barghouti argues there is an Israeli conspiracy not only to Judaize Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also to achieve absolute Israeli hegemony militarily, politically and economically over the Arab world.

For his part, former US State Department official William Lawrence agrees with the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Initiative that the Arab countries that have established relations with Israel are required to withdraw their ambassadors from Israel, noting the idea of ​​normalizing relations with it was a bad one.

Lawrence admitted – in his interview with the program “Gaza… What’s Next?” – that the United States is making statements but is not taking any actual measures to deter Israel.

Barghouti and the former American official agreed that Netanyahu wants to undermine negotiations with the Palestinian resistance and because he does not want to reach an agreement to stop the war on Gaza, he finds excuses every time.

It is noteworthy that the “New York Times” newspaper quoted Israeli documents as saying that Netanyahu secretly added new conditions to Israel’s demands in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza and the prisoner exchange deal according to Jo24.