In two years of fighting, Israel couldn’t even come close to defeating Hamas and allied Resistance groups. All they could do is commit genocide, taking their frustration out on women and children and hospitals and starving people lined up for food. The basics of this deal—a prisoner swap, an end to the blockade of Gaza, Hamas stepping down in favor of a united Palestinian front backed by regional countries—could have been reached on October 8th, 2023. That would have saved Israel from the complete delegitimization it has suffered after two years of genocide.
Below is today’s Press TV interview.
-KB
Press TV: We’re now joined by Mustafa Ahmed, Director of Asia Center for Asian Studies, from Cairo. And we’re also joined by Kevin Barrett, from Saidia, Morocco. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. I’m sure you guys have been reading, as we all have been, on the very little details that we have about this very important ceasefire that has been announced by the Trump administration. I’m going to start from Morocco. Give us an update on what you think the ceasefire entails and if we are welcoming it or not.
Kevin Barrett: Yes, it’s good news, obviously, in terms of the possibilities for humanitarian improvement. That is, at least a slowdown of this Zionist genocide of Palestine that’s been ongoing since at least 1948, and has been in high gear for the past two years. It amounts to a victory for the Palestinian resistance.
And I said right after October 7th, 2023, that this is how it would end: The Israelis are going to be forced to essentially commit all kinds of horrendous war crimes because that’s their ideology that they operate under, and they’ll do that for a while. I didn’t think it would last longer than a few months.
It’s been two years. But at some point (I said in early October 2023) they will fail in the announced objectives of Netanyahu. Those objectives, as he laid out very clearly after the October 7th raid, were to completely annihilate Hamas and gain return of all of the Zionist captives. Well, he failed miserably. What the Israeli entity succeeded in doing was in destroying their own legitimacy by committing the world’s first ever live streamed genocide that the world has been watching with horror for two years.
And the world now knows what so-called Israel is really all about. Essentially, that fake nation signed its death warrant by choosing to attack Palestinian civilians and massacre them, massacre people in hospitals, massacre people lined up for aid, and just repeatedly top themselves with evil behavior that we could all see for two years. So now they’re finally being forced to stop. They realize if this continues, they will implode. Their legitimacy will completely disappear, and the whole world will cut them off, and that will be the end.
So they’ve been forced into this settlement, which they could have had, immediately after October 7th or a week after or any time during that period. This is the settlement that Hamas has been calling for from day one, which is full Israeli withdrawal, allowing aid into Gaza, unlimited aid, the reconstruction of Gaza, and a prisoner swap. This is what they’ve been asking for, and they finally got it after two years, because if things continued like this, the Zionist entity would completely implode.
Okay. Stay with me, Mr. Kevin Barrett. I want to go to Ahmed Mustafa in Cairo. Mr. Mustafa, you are in one of the countries where the ceasefire agreement (was negotiated). We saw many, many delegation visit Egypt in order to try and get that agreement going, even the previous ones. In your opinion, can the people and the countries who negotiated this drill guarantee the implementation, especially from the Israeli side? We know that everyone in the region are unanimous that the genocide must stop. Nobody wants war. The only ones who are going after escalation has been the Israelis. Do you think that the Arabs now have the appetite, especially after the attack on Doha, to enforce that this time around this deal stays in place?
Mustafa Ahmed: You mentioned that Doha, it was like the Ashdak already divided the back of the camel. This is like a legal term that we use in some legal issues and things like that. And maybe some of the people around the urban Islam club were not satisfied of what happened and the declarations in Doha, But the backstage talks were more important than the on-stage talks. Because in politics you know that there are two sides. Not everything should be said and this is the right thing. And afterwards, we found, we found, delegations for the first time to find, a high-caliber figure from Iran, Mr. Ali Larijani, to visit Riyadh and meet his excellency, Mohammed bin Salman, just to have some important talks together concerning the future of the regime and the future of the Arab and Islamic world. And later,we found the agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for a joint defense agreement for the first time. Therefore, also, the presidents, including Mr. Sisi and the others who met in Doha,chad a tacit agreement that we should put an end to this. And before going for the Native Nations, we should do something strong and something, you know, added to each other. And this is exactly what happened. And once they met Mr. Tran in the UNGA, they had specific points to talk about. And it is not a new plan because the people say it is a Trump plan. No, it was previously made by Biden, but Biden was weak enough before Netanyahu. And as you know, Netanyahu is like a professional politician in this regard and knows the key is how to impact AIPAC, impact the Zionists, influential entities and organizations in the United States, organizations in the United States, just to impact the political decision making. And this is exactly what’s taking place now because Netanyahu used the Epstein leaks, his sexual leaks, against Trump, just to put him under pressures. And on the other side, Medvedev, the head of the Security Council over there in Russia, said that if Netanyahu is having Epstein leaks, we have leaks worse than Epstein. Now, in a country like Egypt…And I think we have to thank all the mediators, including Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. And of course, Iran, because there was a tacit agreement and tacit coordination and orchestration with Iran in this regard, just to reach this agreement of the ceasefire and go on in the future of such stability of the region. We don’t try to forget that the economic situation and also the ethical cover of Israel was dropped after what happened to the members of the futile that are coming from the civilian countries who are trying to break the blockade or the siege of Gaza…
Okay. Mr. Kevin, what happens now? I mean, that’s the question that many of us have. What happens in the future? Are we going to, if the ceasefire stays—and and it’s a big if which many of us know—but if it stays what happens? Are we going to go back to welcoming Israel to the international world stage, which is what I am getting from how the mainstream media has been covering this: As if it’s all over now, the genocide has ended, we should all go back to loving Israel. Do you see that happening?
Kevin Barrett: Absolutely not. The world has been forced to witness the evil of this so-called state of Israel, and its inherently genocidal nature. And so after two years of witnessing this, I think the world has reached the point that the only way that it will tolerate anything less than the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, which I think is still the desirable and perhaps most likely possibility in the event that this whole ceasefire process and two-state solution associated with itwhich I think is still the desirable and perhaps most likely possibility in the event that this whole ceasefire process and two-state solution associated with it unravels.
But I do think that the situation has changed for those who advocate some kind of two-state solution. We had the so-called Abraham Accords that set the stage for this genocide. The problem with them was that they didn’t face the reality that all of these kinds of peace efforts have been based on the Camp David Accords and the peace process that essentially called for the Zionists to withdraw from every bit of territory that they occupied in 1967. And that was in return for a fully sovereign Palestinian state. And that was supposed to happen quickly, and it’s now been more than three decades.
So if they can get back on that track—and the only way that could happen would be if Donald Trump wants his Nobel Peace Prize so badly that he’s willing to go up against the hardline elements of the Zionist power configuration, not only in Occupied Palestine but in the United States as well. The Jewish mafia runs the United States. They kill whoever they want. They just killed Charlie Kirk. They killed the Kennedys. They blew up the Trade Center on 9/11. That mafia is in bed with the extremists in Occupied Palestine. Can Donald Trump stand up to those people? That remains to be seen.
