Dr. Mustafa Barghouti: no one has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people except themselves, and we reject any imposed guardianship over our people. The current expansion of the Israeli occupation is a danger to the entire region.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, said that the Palestinian people will not accept the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and from Palestine and will not accept the continuation of Israel’s occupation of its land. The Palestinians will also not accept for Gaza to fall under the control of any external entity or the violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self determination. Barghouti has stressed that Netanyahu’s intention to take over the Gaza Strip and impose Israeli military and security control for an undefined period of time means the Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip from within, in addition to the siege that has been imposed from the outside for 17 years. The purpose of the discourse about mediation and placing the Gaza Strip under the control of a foreign entity is to give legitimacy to the Israeli occupation and to relieve it from its humanitarian responsibilities towards the occupied.
Barghouti has stressed that what is needed is not the expansion of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to also include the Gaza Strip, a process the Israeli government has begun with the vicious massacres, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. The only solution is to end the occupation that is the cause of all the tragedies and hardships in the region and to create the opportunity for the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self determination either by the creation of a free independent Palestinian state, or by replacing the racist Israeli apartheid regime with one democratic state with equal rights for everyone.
Barghouti added that the true intention of the Israeli leaders who are committing genocide and war crimes is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and their annexation as is evident from the map Netanyahu presented at the United Nations in front of the entire world. This map included the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the occupied Golan Heights in the so-called Israeli territory.
Barghouti has warned that after Israel’s failure to ethnically cleanse Gaza, because of the steadfastness and resilience of the Palestinian people and Egypt’s rejection of the displacement and exile of Palestinians, Israel is attempting to ethnically cleanse Gaza gradually.
Barghouti has stressed that holding free democratic elections is a right that Palestinians will not give up and requires the participation of all the Palestinian people