‘Close, aggressive surveillance’: UK Special Forces back in Northern Ireland
RT | March 9, 2015
British Special Forces soldiers are once again operating in Northern Ireland, allegedly, to counter violent Republican groups including the Real IRA, according to intelligence sources.
Quoted in the Daily Star newspaper, they said up to 60 members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) are in the region.
One source told the paper that heightened dissident activity and the increased terror threat were linked to the approaching 100-year anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising – a period of Irish history which remains highly emotive.
Another described the unit’s role as “close, aggressive surveillance.”
The SRR replaced an earlier unit known as 14 Intelligence Company. Its creation in 2005 saw the specialist close surveillance role developed during the Troubles expanded for the War on Terror.
The same year it was reported the SRR had been involved in the counter-terrorist operation which eventually led to the gunning down in Stockwell tube station of Jean Charles De Menezes, an innocent Brazilian worker.
The regiment, the only British Special Forces unit to recruit women and estimated to be composed of between 500 and 600 personnel, has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In August 2014, the SRR was reported to be hunting Islamic State militants, including Jihadi John, later identified as West Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.
Its forerunner – known colloquially as “14 Int” – was limited to operating in Northern Ireland.
Recently, there have been a number of damaging revelations and legal cases about covert British operations during the period of the Troubles.
In 2013, a BBC documentary uncovered claims that a secret army unit called the MRF was hunting and killing IRA members, and in the course of doing so may also have killed a number of innocent civilians.
Alongside their combat role, the hand-picked members of the MRF also carried out surveillance. In some cases while disguised as meths-drinking vagrants, at other times while pretending to be garbage collectors.
In February this year, the case of the Hooded Men made headlines again when human rights lawyer Amal Clooney – who is the spouse of actor George Clooney and has represented WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange – joined the legal team of 11 individuals who claim to have suffered torture while in the custody of British security forces.
Of over 300 people rounded up in June 1971, twelve were selected for further interrogation. They were then subjected to stress positions, hooding, white noise and food, drink and sleep deprivation.
These methods were known as the Five Techniques and would later form the practical basis for the treatment of captives by the United States military and intelligence services during the War on Terror. They have become synonymous with the process known as extraordinary rendition.
In 1976, the men took their case to the European Court of Human Rights and won. The ruling was later overturned and it was subsequently ruled that while they had been subject to inhumane and degrading treatment, it did not constitute torture.
Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight
By AHMAD BARQAWI | CounterPunch | March 9, 2015
Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.
But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?
Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.
The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.
So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.
In an interview with the western media misinformation collective that is the BBC, ABC and the Sunday Times in February 2011; the late Muammar Gaddafi told his condescending interviewers; “have you seen the Al Qaeda operatives? Have you heard all these Jihadi broadcasts? It is Al Qaeda that is controlling the cities of Al Baida and Darnah, former Guantanamo inmates and extremists unleashed by America to terrorize the Libyan people…”. Darnah is now the main stronghold for ISIS in Libya.
In a bizarre coincidence (or some sort of cosmic irony); the date on which ISIS chose to release its video of the beheading of Egyptian captives, thereby officially declaring its presence in the war-torn country with three oil fields under its control, (appropriately) marked the 4th anniversary of the start of the so-called Libyan revolution on February 15th, 2011; a more apt “tribute” to commemorate the Western instigated regime-change debacle in Libya could not have been made.
But even long before ISIS became the buzzword, the acrid nature of a “revolutionary” Libya showed in full, sickening splendor almost instantly right after the old regime fell, everything the late Gaddafi was falsely accused of doing was literally perfected to a chilling degree by the so-called rebels; massacres, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, car-bombings, mass arrests, torture, theft of oil and national resources… the whole lot. In 2013; two British pro-Palestine activists, on their way to Gaza with an aid convoy, got to experience first-hand the rotten fruits of the Libyan chapter of the so-called Arab Spring when they were abducted by a motely crew of Libyan revolutionaries-turned-warlords in the city of Benghazi and gang raped in front of their father.
Proponents of Humanitarian Interventions must be patting themselves on the back these days; now that Libya has completed its democratic makeover from a country with the highest standard of living in Africa under Gaddafi’s rule into a textbook definition of a failed state; a godless wasteland of religious fanaticism, internal bloodletting and wholesale head-chopping, in fact Libya became so “democratic” that there are now two parliaments and two (warring) governments; each with its own (criminal) army and supported with money and caches of weapons from competing foreign powers, not to mention the myriad of secessionist movements and militias which the illegal coup against Gaddafi has spawned all over the country while free health care, education and electricity, which the Libyans took for granted under Gaddafi’s regime, are all now but relics of the past; that’s the “Odyssey Dawn” the Libyans were promised; a sanitized version of Iraq sans the public outrage, neatly re-packaged in a “responsibility to protect” caveat and delivered via aerial bombing campaigns where even the West’s overzealous Gulf Co-conspirators Club (GCC), driven by nothing beyond petty personal vendettas against Gaddafi, got to test the lethality of its rusted, American-made military aircrafts alongside NATO on the people of Tripoli and Sirte.
This is what Gaddafi had predicted right from the get-go and then some; the ephemeral euphoria of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions was just too potent and too exhilarating for us to read the fine print; was it a conspiracy or a true revolutionary spirit gone awry? It doesn’t really matter now that ISIS has become the true legacy of Tahrir Square; “they will turn Libya into another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Iraq… your women won’t be allowed out, they will transform Libya into an Islamic Emirate and America will bomb the country under the pretext of fighting terrorism”, the late Libyan leader had said in a televised speech on February 22nd, 2011, and more prophetic words were never spoken.
America’s “clean war” Libyan prototype proved to be such a success that it was replicated with a wanton abandon in Syria; Paul Bremer’s “Blackwater” death squads of old, which reigned terror all over Iraq, are back… with an Islamic twist; bearded, clad in black and explosives from head to toe and mounting convoys of Toyota Land Cruiser trucks with an ever-expanding, seemingly borderless Islamic Caliphate (that somehow leaves the Zionist regime unencumbered in its occupation of Palestine) set in their sights.
Everyday the Arab World is awakened to a new-videotaped atrocity; steeped in gore and maniacal terror courtesy of ISIS (or IS or ISIL), and countless of other “youtubeless”, albeit more heinous crimes courtesy of America’s very own ever-grinding, one-sided drone warfare; the entire region seesaws between machete beheadings and hellfire missile incinerations. Death from above… as well as below; the War on Terror rears its ugly head once again; to bring in line those nasty terrorists that the West itself funded and sponsored in the name of democracy to destabilize “unsavory” regimes; an unrelenting Groundhog Day that starts with the Responsibility to Protect and ends with the War on Terror, with thousands of innocent lives, typically chalked up to collateral damage, crushed in the process.
This is exactly what Gaddafi foresaw; a Libya mired in utter chaos, civil conflict and western diktats; a breeding ground for Jihadi fundamentalism and extremists… too bad we just laughed his warnings off to an Israeli-made parody tune.
Ahmad Barqawi, freelance columnist and writer.
Norway holds massive drills near Russia border
Press TV – March 9, 2015
Norway has started massive military exercises, involving 5,000 servicemen, in the northern parts of the country near the border with Russia, the largest such drills in nearly 50 years.
The country’s military launched drills dubbed “Joint Viking” on Monday in the northern regions of Lakselv and Alta in the Finnmark County, which border Russia’s Murmansk region.
The exercises will include the Norwegian army, navy, air force and civil defense troops (Heimevernet).
Aleksander Jankov, a spokesman for the Norwegian Armed Forces, said 400 military vehicles and all types of weapons will be used in the drills, which are the largest to take place in the region since 1967.
According to Norwegian media, the massive exercise is to show that Norway has the ability to defend Finnmark.
Prior to the kickoff army spokesman Vegar Gystad said, “If we’re to have a credible defense that can defend the entire country, we also have to train in the entire country.”
The war games come amid tensions between the West and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
Norway, a member of the Western military alliance NATO, suspended all military cooperation with Russia after the Black Sea Peninsula Crimea voted to break away from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation in March, 2014.
Meanwhile, NATO plans to expand its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine and has held numerous war games over the past year. In 2014, NATO forces held some 200 military exercises, with the alliance’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg having promised that such drills would continue.
In addition, the defense ministers of NATO’s 28 member states agreed on February 5 to establish six new command and control posts in the Eastern European nations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned NATO’s exercises and military buildup toward its borders.
Government deems security risks too low to ‘exempt defense from austerity,’ says think tank
RT | March 9, 2015
The government believes strategic threats posed to Britain are not serious enough to merit insulating military spending from budget cuts, according to a report by a top defense think-tank.
The paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) centers on the economics of defense under austerity.
It concludes: “The government is not yet convinced that strategic security risks are high enough to justify an exemption for defense from austerity.”
The findings jar with recent statements by politicians and leading generals on the dangers faced by the UK.
In February, the top British officer in NATO – General Sir Adrian Bradshaw – referred to Russia as an “obvious existential threat to our whole being,” while Prime Minister David Cameron has called the rise of the Islamic State a “mortal threat.”
The investigation also indicates Britain is unlikely to meet the symbolic spending of 2 percent of GDP on defense, expected by NATO in coming years, and that thousands of soldiers could be cut irrespective of who wins the general election this year.
It warns that up to 30,000 service personnel could be axed. Given the Royal Navy may be largely exempt from redundancies, to ensure it can crew Britain’s aircraft carriers, the army could be forced to handle 80 percent of the intended reductions.
The report comes at a difficult time for David Cameron who this week faces a rebellion by a number of Tory MP’s over defense cuts.
Last week Bob Stewart, an army colonel turned Tory MP, argued defense is in a “parlous state” and that service chiefs should resign over cuts. He suggested he might step down himself, either as an MP or from the influential Defence Select Committee.
UK allies are also worried. General Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the US Army, recently told the Telegraph he was “very concerned” at the cuts being made to the UK’s armed forces.
He criticized Chancellor George Osborne’s refusal to confirm whether the UK will meet NATO member states’ spending target of 2 percent of respective national GDP.
“What has changed, though, is the level of capability. In the past we would have a British Army division working alongside an American army division,” he added. Cuts mean the US Army now expects Britain to provide only half its previous commitment.
Supreme Court spurns two Guantanamo appeals
RT | March 9, 2015
The US Supreme Court declined to hear two Guantanamo Bay appeals cases on Monday, upholding the decision of lower courts to reject a damages claim by a wrongfully detained Syrian, and block the release of alleged torture photographs of a Saudi national.
In the case of Janko v. Gates (14-650), the Supreme Court let stand a January 2014 ruling by the DC Circuit Court that rejected a claim by a Syrian national for damages after being wrongfully held in Guantanamo Bay for seven years.
US forces in Afghanistan captured Abd al-Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko, a Syrian Kurd, at a Taliban prison in 2002, and held him as an “enemy combatant” at Guantanamo for years. He was released in 2009 after a federal court judge ruled his continued detention “defied common sense.”
Even though al-Janko had a formal federal adjudication that his detention had been unlawful, the DC Circuit Court rejected his claim for damages in January 2014, relying on a precedent in the 2012 Al-Zahrani v. Rodriguez case that “enemy combatants” could not sue the US government.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, wrote at the time that such a ruling might mean that Congress could “foreclose federal jurisdiction” even on meritorious claims, and that this would have “obvious salience far beyond Guantanamo and the specific context of counterterrorism litigation.”
In the second case, Center for Constitutional Rights v. CIA (14-658), a human rights group was suing the government for release of documents pertaining to the “enhanced interrogation” of Saudi national Mohammed al-Qahtani.
Also known as “Detainee 063,” al-Qahtani was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and held at Guantanamo Bay ever since. Documents describing his interrogations as torture were leaked to the press in 2006. All charges against him have been dismissed, but he remains imprisoned.
A federal court in New York had ruled in September 2014 that releasing the photos and videos of al-Qahtani’s interrogations would “harm national security,” because the images were “uniquely susceptible to use by anti-American extremists as propaganda to incite violence against United States interests domestically and abroad.”
Following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal, evidence of al-Qahtani’s treatment will remain secret from the public.
Cops across the U.S. are being disciplined, not for brutality, but for not writing enough tickets
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | March 9, 2015
As more and more officers across the country expose quota systems within their departments the mission of the American police officer is becoming quite clear; revenue generator.
As there is no money in solving murders or preventing rapes, police departments in America have focused their duties on traffic citations and the drug war. Both of these venues are highly profitable for departments.
City and state governments have become so addicted to these revenue streams that we are now seeing full-on military raids on people in fruitless attempts to find drugs and money. Along with the drug raids, we are seeing police officers forced to collect a certain amount of revenue through traffic enforcement, or risk losing their jobs.
Over the weekend, 4 more state troopers from Tennessee exposed their department for enforcing a quota system. There would be many more according to the troopers, but their fellow cops are afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation.
Last week, six cops in Whittier, CA filed a lawsuit against the city after they were retaliated against for refusing to act as revenue collectors by following ticket and arrest quotas.
Last month, a former Bellefontaine Neighbors cop, ten-year veteran of the force, officer Joe St. Clair was ordered to carry out a policy that he says required cops to issue a certain number of traffic tickets, and even traffic arrests. If the cops failed to do it, they could be fired.
“I believe the chief put an illegal mandate on his officers. I think it’s unfair to the community,” St. Clair told KMOV.
Also, in November of last year. The Free Thought Project reported the story of police in Normal, IL. Several cops from the Normal police department sued the city claiming that the department’s policy forced them to make arrests without probable cause.
These are just a few of the many revenue collection schemes implemented in this “land of the free.”
Earlier this month, the Free Thought Project was leaked video that shows a Newaygo County Sheriff’s deputy admitting that their department breaks federal and state laws.
This cop admitted, on camera, that he routinely breaks federal and state law. He wasn’t blowing the whistle either. He was proposing a grant allocation to the Board of Commissioners and using the fact that he enforces quotas as a sales pitch!
When local news departments caught wind of our story, they interviewed the sheriff, who predictably denied the existence of quotas and assured the public that the deputy in the video has faced proper disciplinary action. However, if that deputy wasn’t immediately fired and arrested for breaking the law, then there was nothing “proper” about it.
The skewed reality here is that you can mandate that officers enforce illegal ticket quotas, and nothing happens to you. Only when officers refuse to take part in these illegal quota systems, do they become the ones who face any discipline.
In America, police can murder unarmed people while being videotaped and face little to no consequences. However, if they point out corruption within their departments, they not only face being fired, but their lives are threatened too.
Mandating that officers issue citations and make arrests is nothing close to “protecting and serving.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Requiring a minimum number of citations forces conflict and potentially hostile interactions.
It truly forces police officers to create criminals out of otherwise innocent people in order to generate revenue, or they face losing their jobs.
Despite police departments across the country denying the existence of quota systems, the Free Though Project continues to expose them.
If you are a police officer or know one who wants to expose department corruption, send us an email at contact@thefreethoughtproject.com. Shining light on the darkness is the only way to prevent this corrupt leviathan from reaching unstoppable proportions.
Know the Enemy
By Jon Taylor | Dissident Voice | March 8, 2015
A terrorist is someone
who opposes the dictates of imperialism;
an extremist is someone who defends
his country against foreign invasion.
A radical is someone
who takes democracy seriously;
an anarchist is someone who gets beaten
and arrested at a street rally.
An Islamofascist is someone
who gets the goat of a Christofascist;
An anti-Semite is someone who condemns
the genocide of the Palestinian people.
A political fanatic is someone
who challenges the mainstream consensus;
a traitor is someone who refuses to fight
in wars of criminal aggression.
Danish companies warned about settlement investments
By Henriette Johansen | MEMO | March 9, 2015
A new report from the investigative journalism team at DanWatch gives more disturbing evidence of Danish businesses helping to keep the wheels of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine turning.
Danish investment funds invest 689 million Danish Krone (around £67 million) in companies with activities in illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank, it claims. These funds, therefore, contribute to the maintenance of the apparatus of the Israeli occupation, including the Separation (“Apartheid”) Wall and the settlements.
In addition, say DanWatch, more than 1 billion krone is invested by Danish pension funds in companies either building or operating military checkpoints, the Wall or settlements. Such investments have been exposed in a previous DanWatch report. See, for example. Businesses such as G4S and ISS have reduced their activities in the occupied territories following global publicity about their support for the occupation, but have no plans to end it altogether. Investment in companies profiting from the occupation is illegal under Danish law.
The investment funds named by DanWatch are: Danske Invest, Nykredit Invest, Bank Invest, Nordea Invest, Sydinvest, Jyske Invest, Sparinvest and SEB Invest, all of which are subject to the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Indeed, the UN, EU and the Danish government have warned companies repeatedly against investing in the Israeli occupation. The settlements, Separation Wall and checkpoints in the West Bank breach international law as they violate the human rights of the Palestinian people.
Despite this, the new report identifies huge Danish investment in companies that deliver surveillance equipment to checkpoints, cement and building materials to the maintenance of the Separation Wall and bulldozers to the Israeli army. They risk accusations of complicity in human rights violations in the occupied territories.
The DanWatch report reveals the contradictions inherent in investments by the companies mentioned therein. All, for example, claim that they stick to the UN guidelines upon which they base their “ethical investments”. Bank Invest, Jyske Invest and Sydinvest support Cemex, which owns a supplier of cement to Israeli settlements, checkpoints and the Wall. Cemex is blacklisted by Nordea Invest, which has holdings in the Israeli Hapoalim Bank which, in turn, provides loans to construction projects in settlements and is, as a result, blacklisted by Danske Invest.
According to DanWatch all of the funds, bar one, have investments in the US firm Caterpillar. This supplies the D9 bulldozers used by the Israeli army for its devastating and sometimes lethal house demolitions. According to Human Rights Watch, it was these bulldozers that were used in 2010 to destroy buildings while civilians were still inside.
The investments continue despite Danish government appeals for companies to avoid engaging with business involved in, or benefiting from, the Israeli settlements. “The government,” said Trade and Development Minister Mogens Jensen last September, “has on several occasions reminded the public that Danish citizens and businesses should not participate in activity and business that can benefit the Israeli settlements. I will say this yet again.”
Interestingly, Copenhagen Municipality has a total of 2.21 million Dkr invested in seven companies which contribute to the construction or operation of checkpoints, the Wall or settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The coverage given to illegal investment in Israeli settlements has had the effect of Ahava beauty products being taken off the shelves by Danish retailers. A number of supermarkets sell fruit bought from Israeli exporter Mehadrin, which has produce grown in Israel and in the settlements. The Coop supermarket chain now insists on Israeli exporters signing a formal agreement that they will only supply produce from the exporter’s sources in Israel, not the settlements.
Another example of a settlement-based company affected by a boycott is Sodastream, which has had to move production to Israel this year following negative publicity in 2014. A number of Danish companies still stock Sodastream products.
Woman, teenage girl, kidnapped at Al-Aqsa Mosque
IMEMC & Agencies | March 9, 2015
The Israeli police kidnapped, Sunday, a Palestinian woman and a teenage girl while leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, and took them to a police station in the Old City.
Eyewitnesses said the police kidnapped Saja ar-Razem, 16, as she was leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque through the al-Majles Gate (The Council Gate), and took her to the al-Qashla police station.
In addition, soldiers kidnapped a woman, identified as ‘Abeer ‘Odah, after stopping her as she was leaving the mosque, and after forcing her to wait for a long time after confiscating her ID card.
Sheikh ‘Omar al-Kiswani of the Al-Aqsa Mosque said he tried to talk the Police into releasing the woman, but they refused and took her to the police station for interrogation.
Earlier Sunday, dozens of Israeli fanatics stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque yards, and conducted provocative acts against the local Muslim worshipers, while several fanatics also stormed it in the afternoon hours.
Israel not to cede occupied land to Palestinians: Netanyahu
Press TV – March 9, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Tel Aviv will not give away any occupied land to Palestinians, rejecting the idea of Palestinian statehood.
In a Sunday statement released by his right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu said that a speech he gave in 2009, endorsing a Palestinian statehood as a solution to decades of conflict, was now “irrelevant.”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that [in light of] the situation that has arisen in the Middle East, any evacuated territory would fall into the hands of Islamic extremism and terror organizations supported by Iran. Therefore, there will be no concessions or withdrawals; they are simply irrelevant,” the statement read.
Later on Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said in response that the prime minister made no comment to that effect.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has made clear for years that given the current conditions in the Middle East, any territory that is given will be seized by radical Islam just like what happened [in] Gaza and in southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office said.
However, Netanyahu has repeatedly said he would not run the risk of handing over land that might fall into the hands of the resistance movement.
Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu was using regional strifes as an excuse, saying, “Today Netanyahu revealed his true face.”
“Since 1993, he worked hard for the destruction of the option of peace and the option of a two-state solution,” the Palestinian chief negotiator added.
In the past few months, the Palestinian national unity government has been pushing for a UN resolution that determines the borders of the future Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines. Israel has expressed outcries over the motion. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says there will be no negotiations over land with Israel as Palestinians will not give up even an inch of their land.
In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip but withdrew from the enclave in 2005. Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds and the Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of East al-Quds.
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