Press TV has conducted an interview with Khalid Amayreh, a Palestinian journalist in al-Khalil, to further talk about the mistreatment of Palestinian children by Israeli forces. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Khalid Amayreh, you heard our guest there in London [Richard Millet]. What do you think?
Amayreh: Actually, although the UN report indicts Israel, but in my opinion, it is an understatement. It remains an understatement because the Israeli treatment of Palestinian children is too ugly and too notorious to be described in decent language.
It goes beyond the pale of decency and common sense. In order to actually obtain solid evidence, we need a genuine investigation into what Israel has been doing. But the fact that thousands of Palestinian children have been killed and maimed both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip shows that Israel is guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Palestinian kids are killed, are murdered knowingly and deliberately by the Israeli armed forces and if the Israeli troops succeed in concealing evidence, indicting evidence, they just escape with impunity. This is what is happening with most cases of abuse against Palestinian kids by the Israeli occupation army.
Press TV: Khalid Amayreh, our guest n London talks about Hamas and the rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip. Another detail behind this report was that disproportionate use of air strikes coming from Israel in which it concentrated on densely packed population in the Gaza Strip.
I mean, we saw that unfold in 2008 of how Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip. So they do have a point there. We do not need any facts; we saw that on the TV screens, didn’t we?
Amayreh: Actually, Hamas is a red herring for Israel just as Fatah and other Palestinian resistance have been red herring for the Israelis. There is no cemetery in this conflict.
We are talking about a powerful state which also has the United States at her beck and call, ganging up on helpless people who want freedom from this Nazi-like regime. Hamas has no choice but to establish a kind of deterrence vis-à-vis Israel which uses the state of art of American technology of death to target innocent Palestinians, helpless Palestinians. All you have to do is just to look at the casualties.
You know, for every five hundred or for every Israeli child killed inadvertently by Hamas or other Palestinian organizations, there are at least five hundred or a thousand Palestinian kids killed knowingly and deliberately by the Israeli army. One raid by an F-16 warplane can kill dozens of people, but thousands and thousands of Palestinian rockets launched by Hamas killed or injured only a dozen Israelis, or maybe 10 or 15 or 12.
So these rockets are psychological in nature. They are almost innocuous; they cannot be compared to the notorious and evil Israeli machine of death which kills Palestinians in the thousands.
Press TV: When Richard Millet talks about two Israelis being killed, I am not too sure if it was intentional or not, that we have seven thousand Palestinian children languishing in jails.
Their reports that Israeli soldiers are using Palestinian children to look into buildings, into bags that are maybe filled explosives, does it justify the case of Israel doing this on the Palestinian children? If you can explain to our guest in London.
Amayreh: Well, actually, I can say that the issue here is much deeper than just targeting Palestinian children. Israel is occupying our people; Israel is practicing racism against our people and I can say that the occupation is an act of rape. So the people under occupation have inherent, intrinsic and legitimate right to resist their occupier.
You cannot tell a woman you have no right to resist your attacker. I mean, nobody would buy this talk but Israel is trying to actually tell the international community that the Palestinians are the villains and Israel which has been occupying our land for 67 years and killing our people is the underdog. Israel is not the underdog; Israel is the criminal aggressor and it should be treated as such by the rest of the world.
Press TV: That is not what I understood from you, Khalid Amayreh. Richard Millet is saying that you want Israel to disappear. Is that what you meant? I do not think that is the statement that I comprehended for any of the statements that you made.
Amayreh: I am not sure I heard the question correctly but Israel is practicing hegemony against its neighbors. Israel is trying to actually subjugate everybody. Israel is the only country in the world that does not say openly where her borders lie.
So Israel actually has killed the possibility of the two-state solution. A country that builds settlements on occupied territories, a country that transfers hundreds of thousands of settlers to live on land that belongs to another people, does this country want peace?
Press TV: Let me ask you this: what do you think is stopping Israel and the Palestinians of coming to the table? Or maybe I should rephrase that question. Do you the US has helped or has hindered or hurt chances especially under the Obama administration for Israel and Palestine to come to the negotiating table?
Amayreh: Well, the Palestinian state is a police state without a state and the PA or the PLO recognized Israel in 1993 but instead of reciprocating the Palestinian recognition, Israel refused to recognize a Palestinian state.
Instead, Israel indulged an intensive building of settlement expansion in the West Bank so much so that there is no room left for a viable and territorial contiguous Palestinian state. Israel has killed irreversibly, has decapitated the possibility of ..
PressTV - Israel deliberately murders Palestinian children: Khalid Amayreh
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Official statistics from the Ministry of Information in Ramallah have revealed that 1,518 Palestinian children were killed by Israel's occupation forces from the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 up to April 2013. That's the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel
every 3 days for almost 13 years. The ministry added that the number of children injured by the Israelis since the start of the Second Intifada against Israel's occupation has now reached 6,000.
"The International Day for the Protection of Children is on June 1," said a spokesman, "but Palestinian children are still subject to attacks by the Israelis and Jewish settlers on an almost daily basis."
Noting that 2012 saw an unprecedented rise in the number of children arrested by Israeli forces, the report pointed out that 9,000 Palestinians under 18 years old have been arrested since the end of September 2000. Almost half of the Palestinian population is under 18. Almost two hundred and fifty Palestinian minors are being held in prison by Israel; 47 of them are children under 16 years of age.
One Palestinian child has been killed by Israel every 3 days for the past 13 years
