UK’s Palestinian ambassador calls for mass non-violent protest against Israel

TPalestinian people should launch widespread non-violent protests against Israeli occupation in a bid to force a return to long-collapsed peace talks, the Palestinian ambassador to London said Independent.

In an unusual break with protocol, Husam Zomlot, ambassador of the newly recognized and unrecognized Palestinian state, calls such action vital.

speaking onProblem World “We have to find a way to make this mass, because when you involve the whole society, you actually have the moral high ground and you can actually exhaust your occupier,” he says on the podcast. [of its energy].”

His intervention comes at a time when support for Israel has fallen among US republicans and Israeli settlers have launched a campaign of violence in the West Bank, while anti-Semitic attacks have rocked London and other parts of the UK.

While the police are examining whether marches can be held due to the national terrorism level being raised to serious levels in Britain, the issue of protest is also being discussed in the United Kingdom.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Zomlot, who is based at the Palestinian embassy in Hammersmith, west London, describes growing up in a Gaza refugee camp and moving to the UK as an adult.

Reflecting on decades of Israeli and Palestinian efforts to reach a peace agreement, the ambassador acknowledges that the Palestinian leadership made major mistakes in the early 1990s, when they formally agreed to end violence against Israeli targets under Yasser Arafat, then head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“You call this violence. International law has a different meaning.” [interpretation]“They call it resistance, and in 1973 there was a UN general assembly resolution that gave the Palestinian people the right to armed resistance, which is very clearly defined in international law as targeting the occupation army.”

Mr Zomlot claims Arafat’s parent organisation, the Palestine National Liberation Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Fatah, agreed to end armed resistance as part of the Oslo peace process that began in the early 1990s, but this revealed “another Israeli ruse”.

The Palestinians did not seek and did not obtain recognition of a state or its borders as a result of recognizing Israel’s rights.

Referring to the current political situation, he adds: “The real question is: Does Israel consider its presence in the occupied territories? [Gaza and the West Bank] temporary or permanent?

The hardline militant Islamic Resistance Hamas opposes peace with Israel and has used terrorist attacks to deliberately sabotage hopes for normalization over the past three decades. Zomlot calls the violence “distracting” and adds: “There will always be spoilers.”

Hamas is experiencing a leadership change and remains the single most popular party, although support for its extremist ideology fluctuates no more than 40 percent among Palestinians, though often lower.

Mr. Zomlot identifies with Fatah, which is changing its leadership through internal elections that will determine the future of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited authority over most Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israeli and international human rights groups have condemned Israel’s occupation of the West Bank since 1967 as “apartheid.”

A number of towns and territories administered by the Palestinian Authority, where Palestinians have no rights under Israeli law, are located in an environment of increasing Israeli sovereignty, where Jewish Israelis are governed under Israeli law.

Recently, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed the most racially explicit law on capital punishment on earth, mandating the execution of Palestinians who kill an Israeli in an “act of terrorism.”

Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, provoked Israel’s deadly offensive in Gaza, in which 80,000 people were killed.

Two years of continuous bombing of Gaza, combined with ongoing Jewish settler violence in the West Bank, left many on all sides of the conflict wondering whether Palestinian violence would become more widespread. Will Fatah return to war?

“We have to make sure we find a way that is not war,” Mr. Zomlot says. “But this needs to be combined with an international campaign like the one in South Africa, to extract oxygen from the settlements, from the occupation… We cannot do this alone.

“Fetih is aware that the first thing we need to do is the unity of our people and ensuring that our people remain in our lands.

“The effective method now is non-violent resistance, but we need to redefine resistance. This is important. Resistance is not just armed resistance.”

Until recently, efforts by pro-Palestinian groups to rally support for campaigns to boycott Israel, disinvest in Israeli companies, and impose sanctions on the government were met with criticism that they were antisemitic.

But Zomlot said Problem World There were signs that Israel’s standing in the United States was deteriorating.

Sixty percent of Americans have an “unfavorable” view of Israel, according to a recent Pew poll; This is a seven percent increase in one year.

“Suddenly the world discovered that Israel was the root of all the problems in the Middle East and around the world, and Israel had to comply,” he claims.

“This conversation has never happened before, and it’s happening here in Britain. It’s happening in Europe, and it’s certainly happening now in the US for the first time.”

“We see that not only Democrats but also Republicans are having serious discussions about US-Israel relations.”

Asked if this was due to the invasion of Iran, he replies: “Yes, he brought it back up, then brought it back to Iraq and everything that was going on. What interest does the United States have in this? What is the purpose of this?”

Hardline Israelis under Netanyahu’s government promote the idea that the country faces profound existential dangers from groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and regimes such as the Iranian ayatollahs, and that the country’s security can only be guaranteed through force.

Mr Zomlot rejects this idea: “They can’t punch their way to safety.

“Respect the people around you and you will see different and better security. Think of your security as coming from the insecurity of others. It doesn’t work. Think of your security as coming from all the failed states around you. It doesn’t work. This will produce groups for you that are much more radical than the existing groups.”

“Think that threatening to tear societies apart will bring you peace. Think again. The only way peace will come is for you and everyone else to thrive.”