 Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today we have with us Raja Shahadeh, well-known writer, human rights activist, has been in the forefront of the struggle at one point of time on the issue of Palestinian rights. Raja, good to have you with us. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Raja, of course everybody is discussing with Jerusalem status having been sort of taken off the table as Trump puts it. Does it mean that the Oslo peace accord is finally buried and there is really now the need to rethink what's going to happen in Palestine? Well, let me first start by saying that Jerusalem has been lost to Israel for many years now because immediately after the 1967 war Israel did what it didn't do for the rest of the West Bank, which is to annex Jerusalem. And the annexation of Jerusalem happened very carefully so that they never used the word annexation. They were very worried about the reaction of the world and they did all kinds of tricks, legal tricks, which they're very good at, to effectively annex, totally annex, legally annex, without using the word annexation at any point. And then they began to extend their sovereignty and presence to enlarge Jerusalem, not only to the East Jerusalem, which was part of the West Bank. They went beyond what was East Jerusalem far beyond it and created a huge metropolis. Those are the settlements originally outside Jerusalem, but to the east of East Jerusalem. And going even up to Bethlehem. And to Jericho. Jericho. So huge expansion, what you talked about with the settlements which have gone up to Bethlehem. The settlements were increased so that East Jerusalem was squeezed between West Jerusalem and the settlements east of East Jerusalem. And then they gave a very hard time as they still do to the inhabitants, Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem. And then slowly they began to sever all ties between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were very, always very strong because it was part of the West Bank. And then after the Oslo, they did not allow people from the West Bank to visit Jerusalem or to come to use the institutions in Jerusalem, the hospitals, the various institutions, cultural institutions and so on. And so the process has been going on for a long time and has become total in the sense that Jerusalem became part of Israel to all intents and purposes. And even though a quarter of the population of Jerusalem is Palestinian, they were without rights essentially because they were not citizens of Israel. So they didn't have any participation in the municipality of Jerusalem or in the political life of Israel. Then in December 6, after urging the United States to move its embassy, the United States decided to do so. Now the question is why did they need to do this and raise all this interest around the world in the issue, which had been dormant in a sense. And I believe it's because it was in the interest of Netanyahu who wanted another victory to extend his rule. And Trump to please his evangelist, evangelical population who had supported him in his elections. You were saying that this is probably not so much Jerusalem but Netanyahu? Yeah, so the question as to why now when effectively the city has been incorporated into Israel and this is only a formality so to speak. It has to do with political considerations of Trump and Netanyahu. But as expected perhaps it aroused interest all over the Arab world and people felt that Jerusalem is an important symbol even beyond Palestine. And so they rallied behind it and so on. But perhaps the positive aspect of this is that it showed or proved rather that America, the United States is not a fair arbiter and should not be the sponsor of this peace process. Now all of us in Palestine and anybody following the problem realize that peace process is a sham. The United States was never a neutral empire as it were. Never a neutral. And there's so much evidence of this. But to violate so openly something that is in the agreement, in the Oslo agreement, which was that Jerusalem should be left to be determined in the final status negotiations and to go so openly against UN resolutions on Jerusalem. And all international law. Made it absolutely clear beyond doubt to everybody that the Oslo agreement is finished. Now Netanyahu had started off from the very beginning attacking the Oslo agreement and wanting it to be done away with. He never liked it and he demonstrated against it and he voted against it in the Knesset in the Israeli parliament. And so when Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, which is not a state yet but Palestine, said that the Oslo is dead, Netanyahu said he's done us a service. So this is to the liking of Netanyahu. However, the problem we have is okay if it's dead and we know it's dead and the peace process is dead, what next? The problem is that the Palestinian leadership is not providing alternatives, viable alternatives. They're providing rhetoric and things that they think people like to hear but it's not a viable alternative and that's the case that we are in now. A viable alternative would be really say, officially saying we pull out of the Oslo agreement, we go to United Nations and file a case against the International Court of Justice. What would you think the Palestinian Authority should do? Well, for example, going into the International Court of Justice is a very good idea and I was on the commission which was preparing for the case. Excellent preparation was done by everybody including El Haq who prepared files and good evidence and so on. And yet there's so much pressure on the court not to even investigate, do a proper investigation because that's the first stage. It has been so overwhelming that nothing has happened and the pressure is also on the Palestinian Authority not to submit the case. So although they keep saying we want to use this option, in fact it's not being used because there's so much political pressure not to use it. If they do not want to lead the struggle of the Palestinian people on the ground, the only option they would have is actually the International Court of Justice. There is really nothing else that the Palestinian Authority can do. International criminal court. They can file cases in the International Criminal Court because Palestine is now some local standard in the United Nations. So as Palestine they can file these cases? They can submit for the court a case but it hasn't happened. And of course the most important thing is nonviolent struggle which can bring some results. And the rhetoric of the Palestinian Authority is yes we want to do this, we want to wage that battle but in fact they're not doing it. Because it would be giving up essentially the government and whatever little they're able to get in terms of taxes from Israel? Well, it's political pressure, it's the fact that the head of the Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is not the person who really believes that you win anything by struggle. He is really a nonviolent person but he doesn't have any key, any means of getting there. So he's been too lame and with Israel it doesn't work to be lame so we're not getting anywhere. What else can happen in terms of international pressures, international movements and something like the BDS campaign, the Boycott, Dispens, Sanctions campaign? Definitely, the international community can do a lot and in a sense our hope is with the international community. But that's not to say that local groups are not doing anything, local initiatives to do nonviolent activity is all over the place. But it's not coalescing into a strong enough common movement as happened in the first Intifada for example. Now the fact is that the Palestinian Authority has made important changes in the economic situation of the Palestinians. So now there are about 120,000 workers working in Israel and so many people have taken loans from banks. Before the Oslo, nobody could get loans from banks because there were no banks in India so people could afford to go on strike. Now they say if we go on strike, for example, we will not be able to pay back the loans and we'll lose our car and we'll lose our house and we'll lose furniture even that is bought on borrowed money. So the situation has changed to create as though every way to make struggle more difficult to take place and that was deliberate by the way. But at the same time ultimately the youth will not continue under such conditions and at some point we don't know when and how but struggles are going to break out. But what about Israel itself? What about the Jewish population? That seems to have shifted even further to the right and it seems that even the voices that could say certain things about human rights are being slowly silenced. You know in a way we haven't succeeded in our struggle against Israel but in another way we have succeeded in helping Israel self destruct because Israel now had started with some good things. They had rule of law for the Jewish community in Israel. They had socialism up to a point. Some social welfare which was very important. They had good laws, good judiciary and now all of these have been hit hard so they make ridiculous laws in order to excuse the unexcusable. They have to violate international law totally in order to excuse the unexcusable. They build settlements on land that is recognized even by their system as private land and nothing can be done about it. They violate the decisions of their own high court of justice when it says you have to remove the settlement or you have to do certain things to do with the army and so on. They violate their own rules and that is very dangerous for the state because what enabled Israel to carry on with the settlement project was that they had some sort of organization that allowed it to happen without corruption, that enabled it to happen, laws that were observed, regulations that were observed and so on. And then of course the issue of Jerusalem itself is making the struggle even more so religious and the religious in Israel is going to ultimately destroy Israel because the orthodox are getting more powerful, more in numbers and they have created problems which will only increase and will bring about such contradictions in the Israeli society that it cannot survive. I think that's happening more so than ever. It's becoming more and more nakedly a pariah state and an open apartheid state. That seems to be the picture and as well as what you are saying corruption of different kinds which also includes Netanyahu. And also a very important aspect of this is that they had great dependence on the Jews outside the diaspora who were always, not always but certainly after the 1967 war, after the success in the 1967 war, they became great supporters of Israel both in terms of money, in terms of propaganda, in terms of public relations and so on. And now they are beginning to be more alienated from Israel. In fact, many are ashamed of Israel, ashamed of, and many do not want to have anything to do with Israel. So they are losing that big support they have with the diaspora and that also is an important element for them. Any last words for the future? I think and continue to believe that the conflict in Palestine is central to the conflicts in the region. It's become more complicated than just Palestine but I think the example of Palestine and how international law has not been helpful in resolving issues and how it's violated and how military and religious things are spreading and being successful because Israel is successful are passing the wrong messages all over the region. The other thing that I also believe very strongly in is that the right of return is so central to the whole issue and central because the lack of the recognition by Israel of Palestinian rights of the refugees enables Israel to say they came to a land that was free of people and that is so central to the whole problem until they accept that Palestinians were there and Palestinians are a nation and they have the right to self-determination, nothing can change and yet after all these years of working on this and trying to speak to the international public and the local public, we haven't made great progress yet and that's very unfortunate. Thank you Rajab for being with us. Hope that we will be able to contact you, speak with you even when you are not in India. Thank you.