Israel-Palestine Talks Have No Positive Effect: Activist

This unsustainable, unjust apartheid ... [entity] of Israel known as the Jewish ... [entity] of Israel can be no more and it is only a matter of time for we find one state in that region and ultimately I look forward to all of the people being treated respectfully and well under the law. This is the only just solution. - Ken O'Keefe

(LONDON) - Press TV has conducted an interview with Ken O’Keefe, peace activist from Hawaii, about negotiations between the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Authority.

Press TV: How do you react to this and what exactly do you believe should change in this basis of talks with Israel?

O’Keefe: Well I do not believe that the talks should continue at all. I think everyone is very aware of the fact, who have been honest with themselves, that these peace talks are in fact nothing more than a delay tactic to allow Israel to continue its settlement activity, to increase its settlements in the occupied territories and there was never any chance that this was going to result in a just and peaceful settlement between [Israel] and the Palestinian nation itself.

The whole point of this again is to only further solidify the Zionist Jewish expansion into the West Bank and we know this to be true, so why should we want these talks to continue? They are façade, they are illusion and there is no intention for anything good to come from them.

Press TV: So Ken a lot of what you said, you know, I believe that the Palestinian Authority must understand as well. So why exactly does the PA keep entering these negotiations?

O’Keefe: Well again sadly we know that the PA is largely a security force for the Israeli occupation forces. Instead of Israel having to go and do their own work in the occupied territories, they have effectively brought security for the Jewish ... [entity] of Israel by the PA and the security forces of the PA are largely used to suppress legitimate dissent against the continuing crimes by the Zionist ... [entity] against the people in Palestine.

So unfortunately the leadership of Palestinians is very much lacking, very much like it is here in the United States or in the UK or around the world. To be frank, we find that the leaders are not representing the interest of the people and these so-called negotiations, peace talks have never had any real tangible positive effect. To the contrary, they have had a negative effect.

However I will say one thing and that is that I would take a very different position on the actual positive side of the settlement expansion. The two-state solution is for me the great disaster. It would result in two states - one tiny, fractured, militarily, economically, politically inferior Palestinian state, a fraction of its original self, next to a behemoth Jewish ... [entity] of Israel with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, politically having favor of the entire West, the media and everything and we are only one false flag attack away, just one false flag instigated by Israel from supposedly Palestinian sources that would justify the pummeling of this tiny little Palestinian state.

So this would be the natural result of a so-called two-state solution. So the settlements have made that virtually impossible and in this sense I see that it is actually very positive.

Press TV: And you see this as positive, so could you expand on that for us then what do believe then is the solution if not the two-state solution as you described in its many adverse effects? O’Keefe: Well the only just solution is a rather obvious one. Of course international law needs to be applied. The right of return is absolute. The Palestinian people who were pushed out of their lands in 1948 and their descendants have every right to return to Palestine.

And Palestine is a whole state. It is the state that was partitioned by the UN in 1947 and 48 and that partition was always unjust.

So we need to look at that. We need to look at a fair and equitable return for the Palestinian refugees and we need to see one state in which all people are treated equally under the law and that would include Jewish people, Muslims, Christians and others who will be able to live in that state if they have historic ties to that land and they live with the same rules, not an apartheid system in which there is one set of rules for one group of people - Jewish people – and another set of rules for everyone else.

That is never going to happen. This unsustainable, unjust apartheid ... [entity] of Israel known as the Jewish ... [entity] of Israel can be no more and it is only a matter of time for we find one state in that region and ultimately I look forward to all of the people being treated respectfully and well under the law. This is the only just solution.