WHAT is your view on Trump’s pronouncements on Gaza? How do these reflect on the US’s relationship with Israel and its role in the Middle East?

These declarations by Trump show a barbaric mentality; bringing to the Gaza issue a “cowboy” attitude from the American experience: removing the native people because the white man has decided it. 

We need to be clear that this has not really been a war against Hamas for reasons of security but a strategic war, planned in advance, with the goal of displacing and erasing the Palestinian population. Now Trump has said: I will fulfil this for you. 

It isn’t only Trump — the war of extermination that has destroyed Gaza was conducted with bombs provided by the Biden administration, with non-stop shipments from the US of all means of killing and destruction, and on the basis of United States policy. 

Look at the timing of the ceasefire. When you had a new president who thinks that the real interest of the United States is to stop the war, the war was stopped. It took one week.

So once the interests of the United States are on the table, Israel will obey. When the Biden administration was encouraging Israel to launch this war of extermination, it took place. If Israel was committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, it was because the United States administration wants it and agrees to it. The United States, from the very beginning, was part of this war, part of leading this war, part of committing these war crimes. 

The reality is that Israel serves and obeys the most profound imperialistic interests and projects of the US in the Middle East. 

They used to say that in order to have any a political solution in the Middle East, you have to pass through the Palestinian issue. But the Americans were lying when they talked about a two-state solution. That solution was always for sometime in the future, never for now. Now what is sought is that instead of the Palestinian people being able to remove the occupation, the occupation will remove the Palestinian people. 

But the American project is not a Palestinian project, nor even a Middle Eastern project. It’s a global project, part of its war against China. Some years ago, the USA was even wanting to reduce its presence in the Middle East, to concentrate on east Asia and countering China. So Israel would be its arm, to rearrange the region into the “new Middle East” for the benefit of America. Of course the US has continued to be involved in destroying and destabilising states in the region — Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan; building up the terrorist forces in Syria — and the US army is still in occupation in Syria. 

Syria is now occupied by three armies — the army of Turkey which is a Nato member; the Israeli army, in the Golan and the newly occupied territories; and the US army occupying the oilfields. Unless the new leadership in Syria and the Syrian patriotic forces fight and struggle in order to get rid of these occupations, Syria cannot be free.

But already in 2023, the US was coming under pressure from the new relations of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with the Brics, with China and Russia. And if we remember that only a month before October 7, Biden was speaking about his project of an American channel (the IMEC Corridor) to rival China’s Silk Road (Belt and Road), passing goods from India, through the Middle East and the Mediterranean to Europe.

It’s in the interest of the United States to “clean” the area from obstacles. One of these obstacles is Hezbollah, another obstacle is Hamas. 

So the US’s interests are converging with the outlook of the Israeli fascist and settler government, who have no way to think about the Palestinian issue except through annexation, building settlements, wars of extermination and pushing the Palestinian people out of their land.

Is Trump’s proposal viable? 

Trump’s announcement leads to real danger and international instability. A world that accepts demolishing the Palestinian people’s national rights is a world that will be under the feet of one such as Trump. It is our duty all over the world to reject this and stand up for human values, for humanity and civilisation. 

These ideas from Trump cannot be fulfilled even if the Arab kingdoms and republics implement them. They are rejecting that, not because they back the Palestinians, but mainly because the Trump proposals pose a threat to their own existence and national security on the one hand, and because the Palestinians will fight for their land, and will not leave. 

The real question is how to end the war and end the occupation. We need to establish a Palestinian state free of provocative settlements and settlers. That is the only way for stability and peace in the area and in the world. 

What is behind the intensifying Israeli violence in West Bank? Can you comment on politics in Israel and the work of Hadash?

The Israeli government is inspired by a historical project to drive out the Palestinians, not just from Gaza but especially from the West Bank, what they call Judea and Samaria; including the religious right who want to re-enact their ancient stories. So their principal policy is to attack and try to erase the Palestinian people. These attacks are being carried out not for security but to meet ideological needs, and to try to force the Palestinians to give up their national demands and to evict the Palestinians from Palestine. 

But the problem in Israel is not only in the government. For example the zionist opposition — Gantz, Lapid, Lieberman and so on — have all congratulated Trump for his plan. These attitudes are not just rightist ideas; they are intrinsic to these zionist forces in Israel.

Well before October 7, there was deepening discrimination against the Palestinian population inside Israel, and deepening violence against Palestinians in the Palestinian territories. And the Israeli government felt that democracy had started to be a challenge for the Jewish state; so inside Israel they began to attack the democratic rules, the courts and so on, pushing aside even Israeli law, let alone international law. That’s why I think that we can say today that the Jewish state has managed to swallow the democratic state. 

Hadash (DFPE), in reality and in its political concept, is the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality in which Arabs and Jews in Israel lead a common struggle towards just peace , democracy and deep equality among its citizens in civilian and national rights. 

Through Hadash, we are working to build coalitions, of forces that fight against fascism inside Israel and against the war of extermination against the Palestinian people, of forces that disagree with the occupation, and disagree with attacks on Palestinian rights. 

In protecting the collective, national and civilian rights of the Palestinian Arab population inside Israel, we work through the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, we try to unite the Arab political groups, on the basis of a united struggle programme, and we work to involve also the groups of mainly Jewish people that are for democracy, peace and equality. 

So after the ceasefire and agreement for exchange of prisoners was declared, we organised a meeting to bring together the forces that oppose the war. The police try to ban our meetings and demonstrations, and put pressure on owners of halls to prevent us from holding big meetings. But we managed to hold the meeting in Kafr Yasif, where Hadash has the leadership of the local municipality. As well as Hadash and the Israeli Communist Party, it was attended by Balad/Tajammu (another Arab political party in Israel), the partnership representing dozens of smaller peace organisations, and by young Jewish activist groups who are refusing military service. All these groups were involved and took part in the discussions. 

Where do we go from here?

Those who had dreams that this war would push the Palestinian issue aside, out of history, will be frustrated. Not only in Israel — the United States and Britain, Germany, also France. We accuse them all. And it is a war that was also backed silently by the Arab regimes. But The Palestinian issue now, maybe more than ever, is on the table, the international table. Now nobody can say “I don’t see.”

And they failed. Failed not because the Palestinians have a great victory, but because Israel could not achieve its objectives. And that’s why we are coming to a new era now, a new stage in the conflict. It will not be easy.

To oppose the plans of Trump and Netanyahu we need unity. For the Arab world, there should be a real Arab summit with a clear decision to reject this plan, and to reject normalisation with Israel unless there is a political solution — ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state. 

That is, an independent Palestinian state on June 4 (1967) borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital, withdrawal of the Israeli settlements and occupying forces, and solving the question of the Palestinian refugees according to the United Nations resolutions. 

Some intellectuals, including Palestinians, say that it’s impossible to establish a Palestinian state because of the settlements. I say that it’s impossible to solve the problem of the settlements without establishing a Palestinian state.

For Palestinians now, I believe it’s a historical responsibility at this moment for all the Palestinian groups and areas, to unite, to find a way to rebuild the only institution that can unify the Palestinian forces, which is the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). It should be expanded to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and so on, and reformed. This is the only answer. I think everybody who tries to put obstacles in front of that is serving the Israeli occupation and the American project.