US playing a game by objecting to illegal Israeli outposts: Activist

The US is able to take any measures if they actually wanted to stop Israel’s settlement expansion, but it is all “a game,” an activist said Monday, following recent US opposition to the Israeli regime’s decision to “legalize” settler outposts in the occupied West Bank.

Toronto-based political commentator Firas al-Najim, who is also the manager of Canadian Defenders of Human Rights, told Press TV that while the US is pretending to care about human rights, they are not serious about opposing illegal Israeli settlement expansion.

On Sunday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet announced a decision to legalize nine illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank and turn them into new settlements.

The decision was approved despite objections by the Joe Biden administration. Earlier this month Secretary of State Tony Blinken, while in the Middle East, asked Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a temporary “pause” in actions causing tensions between the two sides, including Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

“If the US wanted to really punish or stop the Israelis from doing major crimes they could, and they have the power to do that, … but the US is playing games as usual,” Najim said.

Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet

This episode looks at the exacerbation in the violence committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians and how much of what we are seeing has to do with the right-wing Israeli government in place and how much it has to do with simply being the occupied entity that it is.

He added that the US might do certain things to “make it look like they care about human rights, because they are ashamed at certain times in front of the world, … they want to have something manipulated to be able to present to the world to say we did support the Palestinians, … but this is all a game.”

The US has always supported and protected the Israeli regime and made sure that it is progressing and growing with all their crimes, he said.

And this, he said, is because of the Israeli strong lobby in the US, Canada and in the West in general.

“They all are working together, … and Israel is that base that they have planted there, that evil cancerous base, but they are surrounded by the Axis of Resistance,” he added.

Najim further added that due to the world and international bodies’ inaction Palestinians reserve the right to protect themselves and deal with the Israeli regime in their own way.

“Since the world, the United Nations and all these bodies that we trust to do their job are not truly punishing the Israeli regime, the Palestinians are going to have to deal with [Israel] with their own hands, and they deserve weapons. They deserve to protect themselves. And this is the right of any nation,” he concluded.

Israel's far-right cabinet 'legalizes' nine settler outposts amid Palestinians' outrage

The Israeli regime

Approximately three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which has been occupied by the Israeli regime since 1967, when it waged a Western-backed war against Palestinians. Ever since the occupation, Tel Aviv has built hundreds of illegal settlements across the territory, which have come to house hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.

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