 Hello and welcome to NewsCleek. Today we have with us Prof. Ajaz Ahmad. We're going to discuss the US positions in Syria as well as what's happening in Israel and Palestine. Ajaz, we've been following the Syrian issue for quite some time and you have been with us earlier also on that. How do you see the things now developing? Because it seems that the United States has now made some noises about pulling out of Syria. Trump has given statements. Again, they have sort of gone back on it. But how do you see the United States involvement in Syria now? And particularly with Turkey coming against the US SDA for good alliance? Ravi, my instinct would be to ignore Trump's tweet. He gets up in the morning, he has a thought, he puts it on the tweet. Then his hand does tell him that he's talking nonsense so he shuts off. So that I would by and large simply ignore my senses that we are actually at a very, very dangerous moment where the US and the new appointments have bolted at this time and the other. We don't know what the game plan now would be because the most extreme team has been put in place. The real problem is Turkey. Within NATO, this kind of confrontation is their real problem. Now, the fact of the matter is that a very perfectly reasonable solution is at hand. That is to say the government of Syria has won the war against ISIS. The Kurds have certainly established an enclave, which is internally very well organized as a sort of a media state. But whatever that means, I also think that Kurds are not crazy, insane people. In any negotiations, they would be quite willing to accept that they can have maximum autonomy of the kind that the Kurds already have in Iraq without being an independent state. So these problems can be resolved in internal problems within Syria very easy. Turkey could accept it in Syria as it did in Iraq. Partly because it is trying to improve its relations with Russia and behind the scenes agenda. As long as Kurds don't want an independent state, they would accept this position, that autonomous region, but that's it. Or at least rationally they should. So it's perfectly possible. So a rational solution is at hand. The problem is that with the United States and Erdogan having completely irrational positions and overplaying their hands, we don't know. Because Erdogan has fantasies of capturing territory in Syria and even in Iraq. Turkey could accept a sort of autonomous state and do business with it exactly the way it did in Iraq. I mean it made an enormous amount of money on the oil coming from Kurdistan. Of course Iraqi businessman did it, Iraqi state did it, quite possibly Erdogan and his son did it, made that money. So they have been having that kind of business, they could have it in Syria. The problem with the United States is that the policy of trapping the Russians in Syria, which they have failed to do all these years, still remains. Now with Bolton and all of these people in place, we don't know where that is going. And to reverse whatever Iran has gained and possibly tighten the screws around Iran, that fantasy still continues. That is where I think the danger lies. And this is coupled with the fact that they are sitting on Syria's oil east of Euphrates. And that's really the US army which is backing that part of the Kurdish advance. That's certainly, then the Petrodollar world and the Weppendollar Petrodollar Alliance comes in there. But in the larger strategic sense, Americans are feeling very belligerent because they are caught. It's a belligerent coming from people who used to be called the crazies in America in the 1970s, who wanted to go and destroy the Soviet Union and China and so on, who later on got to be called new conservatives, who are the crazies. And those people are now back fully in power in a president who simply they can control in a way that actually no other president in modern American history has been just sitting there. And now he's cornered. He's very much cornered. So we have a very dangerous situation where you have in America really no presidents. You know, this of course brings me to the next question. What does the American, what you call the new conservatives, of which John Bolton is a key example? What is their end game? Are they looking for a war against Iran? Are they looking for a war against Russia? Or do they think that everybody will back off if they wheel the big stick and make the big noise? When they invaded 2003, 15 years ago, these people were saying Baghdad, Damascus, Riyadh, Tehran, this is going to be the root. They used to say while others go here, there and the other real men go to Tehran. So Tehran has been that place that the whole objective of all of this destruction of the Middle East, so to speak, one of the major objectives has been Iran. The problem for them is that in these 15 years, Iranian position has become much stronger. From being a local important part, but a local part, it has become part of a great strategic alliance in the world, which is China, Russia, Iran. It's not moving according to geo-strategic understanding of where the position of the United States could be. What the realities are? In all these years, in which there has been so much destruction in Syria, no significant element from either the armed forces or the bourgeoisie, any organ of the state or the class has defected to the Americans. Coming to the other issue, which is also of course very much an issue in Syria, is Israel. Now Israel seems at the moment to want to take out Hezbollah and believes that not having a, shall we say, a proxy Syrian state or a state in which the Syrian government is very weak means that their ability to control Hezbollah, attack Hezbollah or confront Hezbollah is much more weakened. Do you see Israel also taking on Hezbollah as a part of this larger war which the United States seems to want, at least in this, in Syria? I actually look at all this very, very differently. Israel is going through a very great state crisis in which Netanyahu has been implicated in so many of the corruption cases and so on that his government is actually being, he is very weak at the moment and you don't know where all of that is going to go, even if the government survives, it has been undermined a great deal by all of this, one after the other after the other and so on. So that is one, you know, the great danger is that in order to deflect attention from what is going on that he might be behind bars soon, you know, typically these people tend to invade some country in order to, you know, get the patriotic sentiment going. But more than that, what they have got is, with Kushner and all of these people, they have a historic chance of completing their colonization of Palestine. The Crown Prince has already said that Israel has a right to its own lands. Now, what its own lands are, of course, is the big question. For many years now, there is an implicit alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But in the last three or four years, virtually month by month, it has become more intensified and closer. So you think that Hezbollah is not going to be their first priority? First priority is trying to do this? They are their first priority and they won't do it alone. If you don't touch Iran, if Iran can remain what it is, Hezbollah will upgrade Israel. But let's look at it this way. The U.S. taking on Iran, Israel taking on Palestinians, which of course they would do with the tacit support of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. But if the U.S. takes on Iran, then Hezbollah gets drawn into this mix anyway. Taking on Iran might be the end of the U.S. empire. I mean, it's not as simple as that. They can't. That's why I'm saying that they are caught. The only thing that I'm truly worried about in all this, in the longer perspective, one is worried about everything, is this very rapid annexation of Palestine. So that you see as the immediate and major threat in the area. It's going very fast and all the, certainly all factions of the American power structure seem to have accepted it. And Europe is a conflict. We'll make some noises, but accept it. And interestingly, this is also the point that the Palestinians actually Arab Palestinian population, including the Palestinians within Israel borders, outnumbered the Jewish population today. So this is the other threat that they have, the demographically occupation with internal Palestinians already there means that they are outnumbered today as a, and clearly they have to be an apartheid state. Yes, what they will make is an apartheid state, but they will not have a Palestinian majority. They will hand over Gaza to Egypt. I mean, that's what their plan seems to do. To occupy an annex as much of the West Bank as they're getting want to. Which is the greater Jerusalem, which is 25 to 30% of West Bank. Then hand over the rest to Jordan. As you know, Ajaz, it's not Jerusalem, but greater Jerusalem, which is 25 to 30% of the West Bank. In the long term, historically speaking, that is what the real danger is. You know, there is a bar in, say in Kurdistan, how it shifts here back and forth is of course very significant in which you'll see. But that's where I think the real danger is. So what do you think that the Russians, Iranians, Syrians can do except battle this out defensively for the long run? That's the problem. There's nothing they can do about Palestine. Nothing they can really do about Palestine. And the Arab world, unless there is significant change, Saudi Arabia being the key one, there is no likelihood of any resistance there either. So at the moment the real crux of the issue is that the Palestinian statehood is the main threat at the moment. Or is it the greatest danger at the moment? I mean, I don't know what you mean by Palestinian statehood. That was never in the past. The very possibility of some kind of autonomous existence for the Palestinians in the West Bank, which sustains that claim. Israelis think that this is the time to annex as much of the Palestinian lands, the remaining Palestinian lands as possible, to extend the settler colonial state into as much of the rest of Palestine as possible. That seems to be the real crux of this. Virtually the most dangerous part of the coming of Trump to power is actually pushing, which makes the connection with Israel for the Trump presidency much more intense than it has been in the past. The problem is that the victory in Syria is absolutely spectacular and at great cost, but it is there. The change in the balance of power in the world is actually moving very fast against the Americans. We are really seeing a strategic shift. The factors of all of this geopolitics are such that the resistance in Palestine cannot have decisive backing from this new strategic alliance.