Historian  Ilan Pappé on Israel-Hamas conflict, ‘What we see now on the ground is going to be worse.’ - video Dailymotion

CGTN Europe

Historian Ilan Pappé, Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at University of Exeter talks with CGTN Europe on whether a peaceful process is possible when a conflict goes from cold to hot.

Transcript

00:00 Now, Ilan Pape is a professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine

00:04 Studies at the University of Exeter, and he joins me now live.

00:08 Ilan, thanks very much indeed for joining us.

00:11 Let's have a look at where we are now.

00:12 A lot of people tracking this story and are familiar with what happens in this part of

00:17 the world for many years are seeing a direction of travel.

00:21 That direction of travel is now intensifying with Israeli airstrikes and the Palestinians

00:28 facing another humanitarian crisis.

00:32 Is this direction of travel leading us anywhere good?

00:34 No, I'm afraid it doesn't.

00:38 It leads us to more destruction, more dispossession and uprooting of Palestinians, a huge humanitarian

00:49 crisis and no end to the violence, I would say, even on both sides in terms of reaching

01:00 some sort of an understanding that would prevent the next cycle of violence.

01:05 So I'm afraid what we see now on the ground is just going to be worse.

01:11 And unless there will be an effective international intervention or regional intervention, this

01:18 could deteriorate even beyond the borders of Israel and Gaza into the northern borders

01:24 between Israel and Lebanon.

01:26 There was a time in Israeli politics when there was quite a loud voice in favor of peace

01:31 talks, in favor of various different geographical solutions towards Israelis and Palestinians

01:37 living together.

01:39 Where is that politics now and where is public opinion on that issue now?

01:44 Well, I think the Israeli political system as a whole has shifted fundamentally to the

01:51 right at the beginning of this century.

01:54 And voices that could be defined as liberal Zionist or left Zionist began to shrunk.

02:02 And by now, in 2023, I don't think they really exist in any meaningful way within the Israeli

02:09 political system.

02:12 The whole idea of compromise based on a two-state solution had been thrown out of the Israeli

02:20 political discourse.

02:21 It did not appear even as an item in the Israeli – in the last four or five electoral campaigns

02:29 in Israel.

02:30 So I think what you have now is an Israeli society that is determined to use force and

02:37 imposition by force in order to control as much of historical Palestine as they can and

02:45 contain the Palestinians within areas like Area A in the West Bank and under siege in

02:51 Gaza.

02:52 And the Palestinians are now – at least some of them – are now rebelling against

02:55 it.

02:56 The imbalance of power, of course, doesn't bode well for the Palestinians.

03:01 And once more, if – it's not going to remain an Israeli-Palestinian issue.

03:06 It's too – the area around it is too volatile for it to be contained just within the borders

03:12 of Israel and Palestine.

03:13 Ilan Pappé, thanks very much indeed for talking to us this evening.

Historian Ilan Pappé on Israel-Hamas conflict, ‘What we see now on the ground is going to be worse.’

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