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Israeli settlements directed towards ethnic cleansing: Pundit

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Joseph James, a radio host and political commentator, believes that Israel's plan to build some 300 settler units in the occupied West Bank is just a cold-blooded tactical maneuvering to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian lands and create more settlements for the Jews.

"This is simply part of the Israeli strategy, gradually ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people out of the territory, bulldozing their homes in the middle of the night without warning, and then moving Jews in to take their place," James told Press TV.

He added that before the partition in 1948, there was maybe half and half, but since then the Jews have taken over more territory, and "whatever they take territory, they never give it back."

"Even David Ben-Gurion in a letter to his son Amos in 1937 stated, ‘What we really want is not that the land - and we're talking about Palestine - remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and the unified land be Jewish,’" James said.

On Saturday, Israeli media reported that Tel Aviv had issued a decree for the construction of an initial 98 units near the settlement of Shilo, located between the cities of Nablus and Ramallah. They also added that some 200 more settler units would be built in the second stage of the project.

The order comes despite mounting international criticism about Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, a policy many blame for the stalled talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

James advised that "what needs to happen is that the international community do as Iceland did and start boycotting Israel. Because the Israelis always negotiate in bad faith. They engage in ethnic cleansing, while at the same time pretending before the world that they're victims of persecution."


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