September 30, 2009
A third intifada coming, says Boyle
The Canadian Charger
The prospect for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians
is “dead as a doornail,” said Francis Boyle in an interview with the Canadian
Charger on September 25.
That is “because Obama sided with Binyamin Netanyahu,” at the UN meeting of the General Assembly.
Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois and was legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the peace negotiations that culminated in the Oslo agreement.
According to Boyle, former senator George Mitchell “is running a dog and pony show” in his scampering around the Middle East.
“Because of his accomplishments in Northern Ireland, I had given him the benefit of the doubt, but not with what happened at the UN. Now it is clear that Mitchell’s mission is just a public relations exercise to delude the Arab and Muslim world into believing that the Obama administration is going to do something while in fact they are pushing their agenda against Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”
“At the UN,” he said, “the entire world saw Obama personally get steamrollered by Netanyahu. Obama was humiliated in front of the entire world which saw him as a pusillanimous and feckless leader.”
The US continues to fund Israel to the tune of $4 billion a year but will not insist on peace measures such as a halt to settlement construction.
Boyle believes that the current situation will inevitably lead to a third intifada, which will “sweep aside the geriatric leadership of Fatah.”
As for Gaza, “most of their leaders have been killed by Israel.” And as for Israel, it “never wanted peace. It always wanted more land, a greater Israel.”
He found that Israel has “an attitude like the Nazis toward the Slavs. The Nazis,” he explained, “saw the lands of the Slavs as German lebensraum, just like Israel and Palestine.”
“Israel could have had peace with Syria,” according to Boyle, peace that Syria wanted, but “Rabin was killed to prevent it.” Yitzhak Rabin was the Israeli Prime Minster when the Labour government was in power at the time.
Even Rabin was not interested in real peace with the Palestinians, Boyle argued.
The only kind of Palestine Israel wants is a Bantustan with virtually no power, like an Indian reservation.
“Arafat agreed to a Bantustan at Oslo,” he noted, “but just for five years. Israel would like that as a permanent arrangement.”
“Arafat was the only one who could possibly make peace. He was poisoned by Israel with Bush’s approval. Everyone agrees to that,” he noted.
In considering the intifadas, Boyle describes the first one as a spontaneous uprising. The second he finds to have been “deliberately provoked by Israel to prevent peace.”
He thinks that a third one will be more violent. In the meantime, Israel is “starving 1.5 million Palestinians to death in Gaza.”
He finds the Canadian government to be giving “full support to Israel. It has almost as reprehensible a role as the US.”
Boyle believes that the activities of “the Zionist lobby” are responsible for Canada’s actions, in both the Liberal and Conservative parties.
Back in November, 2007, he gave the Bertrand Russell Peace Lecture at McMaster University. At that time, he said that he started the DBS movement—divestment, boycott, and sanctions against Israel.
