 Hello, and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. This week saw Israel continuing its brutal violence on Palestinian protesters, as well as a major twist in the North Korean peace process. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkai as the founder and chief, founder of NewsClick. Hello, Prabir. So, the protests have been going on in Palestine for nearly a month and a half. And at some level, the protests on the 14th and 15th marked its peak. And while they were part of a larger cycle, they were also protesting against the shift of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Now, this is such an obviously provocative move because of the situation that has been going on for the past couple of years. So, what exactly is the United States strategy regarding this shift of the embassy? What are they trying to indicate? Well, let's be, let's look at it differently. But the United States strategy till now was to be, in some sense, a negotiator, a broker if you will, honest broker between the Palestinians and the, and Israel. This is what supposedly started the Cam David agreements, the agreements that they had with, under the U.S. ages, they had with PLO. Now, if you shift the embassy, which is what President Trump has done, then question of being an honest broker in the peace process does not arise. Now, we all know that U.S. was never an honest broker in the peace process. But there was a facade of that and also the PLO at the time under Arafat felt with the fall of Soviet Union that he had no alternative but to go to the global hegemon and under his ages, under its ages, reach some kind of an accord. Now, even that facade is actually being given up. Now, why is it so? What does President Trump and people around him believe? It's clear that we have two kinds of, shall we say, Zionists in this, in this process. In the United States, one of the Zionists who are essentially close to Israel and believe that Israel has the right to Palestinian lands because somehow they have to, A, expired for all the cruelties, oppression that the Jewish population was subjected to. That is one part of it. The second part of it is that they also being ethnic Jewish. They also have that sentimental attachment to Israel. They go to Israel, they stay over there. Some of them are dual citizens and they also serve in the US government in different capacities. We also have an evangelical set of people and these are the evangelical Zionists who are really a crazy lot. They believe that the Jews have to return to Israel, the holy land, and then their couple lips will take place and everything will be okay. Of course, those who are pure Christians will go to heaven. The Jews, the Hindus, the Muslims will all descend to hell. And it's also interesting that some of the people are the one who blessed the Jerusalem shift, the embassy opening. They were there, the two pastors who sort of gave various predictions. Of course, without saying this part of it. So you have this alliance between the extreme right-wing evangelical sections in the United States and you have the Zionists who are more straightforward Zionists, if you will, and who also believe that it's a part of the US imperial project to support Israel so that they can control the oil, they can control West Asia and so on. By doing this, what Trump is signaling that now we will settle the issue, you have to submit and you have to submit to whatever we give you. And whatever you get is if you don't accept that, we will threaten you even further. And this is what I would say the Trump's threat model. Go on threatening changing the status quo and hoping that at some point of time, the people will be cowed down and accept whatever you say. I don't see any other explanation for the so-called Trump model of so-called peace that he's trying to achieve in Israel and West Bank. I think there are two other issues which I think are very important in this context. Trump is openly saying that international law does not bind the United States because 1967 war changed what the United Nations had earlier demarcated as Palestinian territory and Israel Jewish territory. Now in this process, already changes have taken place because of the 1949 war. And the Jewish population, the Zionist population, grabbed a much larger part of what was at the time Palestine. And also, as you know, throughout 700,000, 750,000 Palestinians out of their homeland, that's how they got the so-called artificial majority, otherwise they were not a majority even there within their borders. So that is one part of it. But the 1967 war is Jerusalem was occupied and West Bank was occupied. It has continued under occupation ever since. If national law is very clear that changing the demography of occupied territories is illegal. It's also said, it's also United Nations Security Council in 1967. Itself had said that this occupation has to be withdrawn. And then there is a resolution to the effect which still has not been rescinded, which says Israel should withdraw from its pre-1967 borders. So both ways, international law and United Security Council resolution, which is in fact also international law in the sense, both do not accept at East Jerusalem and therefore what Trump calls Jerusalem can become the capital. That means you take over East Jerusalem, integrate it into Jerusalem. And one must also understand it's not Jerusalem or East Jerusalem they're integrating. They're integrating a whole bunch of settlements which will make in fact contiguity between the West Bank South and North impossible. So it's really also a part of it is fragmenting the West Bank. And just like Gaza has been detached essentially from West Bank, West Bank will now be detached in that sense into two pockets in which in the name of so-called East Jerusalem, you will also integrate a huge part maybe 10, 15, 20% of the occupied territories officially as Jerusalem. These are not part of Jerusalem. They're not a part of the metropolitan boundaries of Jerusalem or the city boundaries of Jerusalem in 1967. So this is one part of it, clearly illegal under national law under Security Council resolutions. And the fact that nobody in the world except a handful of countries which are probably we can say with relative confidence of puppets of the United States, they are the only ones who have gone and welcomed the opening of the Jerusalem Embassy. It's on the same day that this is happening. You have shootings on the border in which Israelis kill Palestinians, people who are protesting at the fence, unarmed with really marching in thousands under conditions which I would consider is something which is unbelievable in today's context, that you've brutalized the Gaza population in this way. But at the same time this is happening. You also have chants in the embassy opening from a set of Zionist extremists saying kill them all. So this is also happening side by side. And the Israeli forces, the sniper firing that's taken place, it's clear the policy was really issued to kill. And it was not that they were in any danger, that there was a threat to the border, none of these, that it was a protest march. The most they have been able to talk about in terms of violence is they flew burning kites above the fence. And that is supposedly the reason for shooting to kill. And the last part I would like to say, you know, this claim that the Gaza protesters came to near-defense, we must also remember what Nazi Germany did in its prisoner prison camps, death camps, prisoner of war camps, various camps that they had. In that, they had what would be called a policy of post-inflect. And in that, anybody who approached the fence had to be shot, was instructed they had to shoot and they had to shoot to kill. This is called the death strip. And quite often the SS guards would kill the people because it did in some sense enjoy this killing. So it's also very similar to the video we've seen where as the sniper fires and brings down some of the people that there is cheering among the ranks of the Israeli soldiers. This is dehumanizing to an extent that they are not really able to remember. They have now internalized the philosophy of Nazi Germany vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The Palestinians as far as Zionist population today or is a large part of Israel population today, the Jewish population seems to believe Palestinians are really un-peep. So would you say there is any future for the peace process at all right now? Any scope for negotiations? I think the peace process has been dead for quite some time with opening the embassy in Jerusalem and with the kind of protest that we have seen and now the shootings that Israel has been conducting, massacres they've conducted around the fence. I think the peace process can be officially pronounced to be buried. I really think that unless the geo-strategic balance shifts, we are not going to see a change in Israeli policy. Also what is important is that Israel's needs to dominate the region is also because I think they have the back of their minds that the only long-term solution because they're already a minority in occupied West Bank is considered a part of greater Israel, then what would happen is that they have to run an apartheid state forever. And because that's that according to them they'd be unsustainable. Therefore the need to say, okay, Egypt, you take over Gaza, it becomes your headache. Jordan, you take over a little bit of West Bank which still might be outside the settlements. Settlements have already taken over about 45% of the territory of West Bank and the Jerusalem it's even more. So with that they will try and say now the issue's over there is no Palestine. From greater Palestine, what's called the historical Palestine to two states, Israel and Palestine to no Palestine needs the consent of the nearby states to be able to absorb all of it. And as was the argument for a long time, what's the problem? They're Arabs, let them go to Arab lands. We are only asking for one part of it. The denial that they're Palestinians, the denial of the identity of the Palestinian nationhood. That's really what is the issue. And therefore, unless this geo-strategic balance changes I don't see there is any possibility of a peace process restarting. Not with this leadership, not with the United States and not with the current geo-strategic balance in the region. So moving on to another peace process. So a couple of days ago, North Korea basically put a halt to the process that has been going on for the past month. After John Bolton made a very provocative comment that the Libyan model would be implemented in the North Korea too. Now Donald Trump has officially in some senses gone a bit back from that comment, of course. But this comment comes at a very strange time when relations seem to be on the verge of improving. So was that an accidental mistake? Was it a part of a strategy? What is the process happening here? I think that the peace process did not really start with the United States in any sense. Not even with North Korea starting a peace process. It started with the South Korean president taking the initiative. Because the South Koreans are very clear that if United States decides to quote unquote take out the North Korean leadership it would mean actually military strike and it could very easily escalate to a nuclear strike. Given that, that South Korea would then be also, shall we say, a partly radioactive desert. So given that, South Korea has a much greater interest in the peace process, the greatest stake after North Korea. Nobody else had that stake over there. Though it will affect China, it will affect Russia. We're all contiguous boundaries with North Korea. It will also affect Japan because Japan is not that far away from the Koreas. So I think the South Koreans in this case took the initiative and that finessed effectively the Trump administration who then had to get out of the bandwagon. Now Trump administration getting on the bandwagon. At a time they pulled out of the nuclear deal. The credibility of any agreement and United States either willingness or ability to honor it is a very serious question. What happened was Trump then wanted or was forced to agree to this peace process. He either had to take credit for it claiming that it was his forthright stand of saber rattling that forced the North Koreans to come come to the peace process. Or he had to say that we know the peace process is something that we are going to discuss. But unconditional denuclearization is in some sense what the Trump administration really believes in. I think the Bolton statement that the Libyan model would be followed. And in this case, he was really talking about the 2003 model. Trump initially thought he was talking about the nine 2011 killing of Gaddafi model. And he said, no, no, that's not what we really meant. But nevertheless, the 2003 denuclearization model, I still think it remains the bedrock of US policy. Though they don't want to articulate this right now that crudely as Bolton did. I think we almost also understand this. It was not the Bolton statement alone that's the issue. It had been made clear that the peace process means North Korea would stop a certain set of activities that did they even took down the commission virtually at the test site that they have for nuclear weapons. It was a quid pro quo. The understanding was the military exercises with live ammunition with strategic bombers would stop. This is something which also was violated at the same time. Now, why would the US and the South Korean forces do this military exercises at this time? Which would be a clear provocation for the North Koreans is not clear to me at this moment. More important was the fact that strategic bombers, B-52 strategic bombers, which as you know are nuclear capable bombers, were also part of this exercise. This could only happen if the United States completely misread the situation that the peace process was because North Korea was succumbing. And I think it's very clear that's not likely to happen. North Korea is a nuclear, not only a nuclear capable state. I think it has reached the stage of deterrence in which it's uncertain whether they can hit the United States mainland or not. And will the United States take that position of risking a hit of this kind? Would it take the risk of going to war against China and Russians clear warning that they will not tolerate that? Will they go against South Korea's vital interest that there should be no war in North Korea or in the Korean Peninsula? I think these are all open questions. I think we must also understand that there has been a qualitative shift in the Koreas. Kim, who was vilified, the fat boy, and so on. This is Trump's abuses which were hurled at him, has seen the demonization of North Korean leadership in the global media. So it is true for South Korea as well, but they're not allowed to read North Korean papers, North Korean websites, and so on. This has changed significantly. And the fact that two presidents, President Moon and President Kim, have met, has bolstered both their images to the extent that President Kim is today quite popular in South Korea. So I think the peace process, as for the Koreas, I'm concerned, is very difficult to reverse. Can the United States wreck it? Yes, we saw that with the military exercises. It's also said that this introduction of B-52 bombers was a military decision. The civilian leadership is not aware of. As you know, South Korean military is really commanded by the United States, officially. So these are the open questions we have. But yes, they have dialed back some of that. They stopped the B-52 strategic bombers. Trump has dissociated from the Libyan model, but he's talked about the Gaddafi model. So we don't really know what is the intention of the United States. The question is, have the two Koreas managed to finish the United States? And is it that with the support of China and Russia, is there a long-term move towards peace in the region? And therefore, demilitarization, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but more important, really curbing US presence and influence in the region. Thank you, Praveen. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching us.