Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General Mustafa Barghouti said Saturday that Israel’s goal was to eliminate Palestine, “not to divide it and annihilate it part by part.”
This came during Barghouti’s speech at a symposium on the sidelines of a conference titled “Reimagining Palestine” hosted by Georgetown University in the Qatari capital, Doha.
At the symposium, Barghouti stressed that the decision regarding the political future of Palestine must be in the hands of the Palestinians themselves.
He stressed: “The Palestinian people must hold their elections democratically by themselves, and the Palestinians alone must decide the future of their country. It is not the task of Israel or any authority outside Palestine to decide who will lead them.”
Netanyahu is not honest
Regarding the negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas, Barghouti expressed his belief that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not sincere in the ceasefire negotiations with Hamas.
He added: “Israel is pushing the ceasefire negotiations into the abyss by presenting new conditions that it knows no Palestinian will accept.”
He stressed that the main goal of Netanyahu and Israel is to eliminate any possibility of a ceasefire and drag the entire region into war.
With the mediation of Egypt and Qatar and with the support of the United States, Israel and Hamas have been conducting indirect negotiations for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange for months, but they have failed due to Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing the occupation of the Netzarim corridor (separating the north of the Gaza Strip from its south), the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphia axis on the border with Egypt, while Hamas insists on a complete withdrawal of the Israeli army.
Hamas has repeatedly announced its readiness to implement the deal based on a proposal announced by US President Joe Biden in late May, and accuses Netanyahu of backing down and trying to impose new conditions and proposals to prolong the war and stay in power.
Since October 7, Israel, with American support, has been waging a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that has left more than 136,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, in a context of massive destruction and deadly famine.