On Tuesday, it was reported that a senior Iranian security official had warned that if Israel’s ceasefire talks with Hamas fell through then Iran would attack Israel. The attack would be in response to the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh who was visiting Iran at the time of his killing. However, Iran is expected to abstain from its retaliatory strikes on Israel as a way to allow ceasefire talks to continue, officials from Gaza, the US, Iran and Israel reportedly said.
Leila Hatoum, a Lebanese-based journalist, economist, and geopolitical analyst joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday to discuss the tension in the Middle East as well as the colonization of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land.
“Hamas did not attend the negotiations table in Doha,” Hatoum explained. “Because Hamas anticipated that the Israelis are going to come with new demands despite the fact that Hamas had agreed to the previous paper.”
“But you have to understand the main division between all of these states is not only ego, or fear that the Americans will create instability inside of these countries. Because if you stand against the Israelis in that case, the Americans at one point in time, you will start facing destabilization, riots, revolutions that are man-made, artificial revolutions,” the analyst explained.
Hamas had previously agreed to a US-presented ceasefire deal, yet Israel complicated negotiations by creating new demands as a way to sabotage the deal. The two parties have been negotiating on and off for months over the three-phase deal which would allow for the release of hostages held in each country.
The group has reportedly expressed that they no longer see the US as being able to bring about a deal that would solidify a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. And following the assassination of one of their leaders, as well as attacks on Iran in April, the US has continued to support Israel indefinitely.
“And at one point, you will reach basically an explosion or an assassination of the ruler. Like, what happened to the former Saudi king, King Faisal, may his soul rest in peace. He was assassinated shortly after rallying the world to cut off oil from the West because they were supporting the Israelis at one point in time. He did it in favor of the Palestinians,” she added.
A deadly settler rampage broke out in the Israeli-occupied West Bank late on Thursday, an American news source reported. The riot, which occurred in the village of Jit, resulted in the killing of one Palestinian and the serious injuries of others, Palestinian health officials said. Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued rare condemnations of the incident, with the prime minister issuing a call for settlers to stand down, US media said.
“Those who fight terrorism are the [Israeli Defense Forces] and the security forces, and no one else,” the Israeli prime minister said. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also condemned the attack and said the settlers did not “represent the values” of settler communities.
According to the report, at least 100 masked settlers entered the village, “ shot live ammunition at Palestinians, burned homes and cars and damaged water tankers.” Flames reportedly engulfed the village which residents said was left to defend itself without the help of the military for two hours.
“We do have information that the Israeli occupation forces escorted those settlers, like they did in other towns as well. It's a purge. It's a whole purge. The idea they used to poison wells in the past and they claimed otherwise, but there is proof of that,” Hatoum explained.
“They now, basically, this shows that they're polluting, basically, water sources. They try to kill anything that's living. They use live ammunition. Guess where they got it from? 90,000 Israeli illegal settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank were armed by Ben-Gvir, Itamar Ben-Gvir, personally," the analyst added.
While settler violence in Palestine is nothing new, it has reportedly spiked since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,200 Israeli settler attacks against Palesitnians which has resulted in possibly more than 120 deaths and 1,000 instances of property damage since the start of the conflict, a Doha-based news outlet reported.
“And those settlers in the West Bank, they came from New York, they came from all of the US, all of Europe, across the world. And those people believe, at one point or another, that this land is theirs. They should not coexist with the Palestinians. They need to drive them out and disperse them across the Arab countries,” Hatoum explained.
“The funny part, when you have a European white person coming and telling a native Semite Palestinian that, ‘you're not native over here. I belong to this land, not you.’ It makes either a joke or something that's out of the - it's a fictional story at one point or another. Then, some of them, they come to you and they tell you, God promised us this land.”
“Alright," the analyst said, pointing out the irony of settlement support. "Anybody who was kicked out of the United States basically 300 years ago can come now to the US, start shooting people and killing them and telling them, 'this is my land.'"