THE US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, speaking on Tuesday at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, said that the Palestinians’ right of return should not be raised in any future Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Asked whether the issue should be ‘off the table’ Haley replied, ‘I do agree with that, and I think we have to look at this in terms of what’s happening (with refugees) in Syria, what’s happening in Venezuela. So I absolutely think we have to look at the right of return.’
The Palestinians have, and are, insisting on their right to return to the homes that they were driven out of in 1948 and in 1967 when Israel occupied Jerusalem. Haley is speaking up following Trump moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem. Earlier this month, the American magazine Foreign Policy reported that Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, had been pushing to remove the refugee status of millions of Palestinians, meaning that they could no longer return.
These actions are a declaration of war against the Palestinian masses. At the same time as the fuse is being lit under Palestine, the US and the UK are considering another massive air and cruise missile attack on Syria.
Russia has already warned that the US and the UK are set to use the ‘White Helmets’ provocateurs to mount a fake chemical attack in Idlib, to give the imperialist powers their reason for another massive air attack to try to reopen the Syrian civil war.
Idlib is the one remaining part of Syria where the Al Nusrah Front terrorists are still in control, a control that the Syrian government is determined to end and with it conclude the civil war that has caused so much harm to the Syrian people. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that the Russian military is in talks with leaders of armed groups in rebel-held Idlib province to try to reach a peace settlement.
Meanwhile, the Russian navy has dispatched its biggest task force to the Mediterranean Sea – which includes 13 warships and two submarines, most of which carry Kalibr cruise missiles. An American naval force is already in position to launch its cruise missile attack on Syria.
The US and UK are considering an attempt to establish their own Idlib statelet from which to continue their wars in the Middle East against Syria, Iran and Palestine. US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, speaking at a Pentagon press conference, set the scene for a major provocation when he characterised Russia’s decision as to whether it is prepared to prevent Syria from using chemical weapons as ‘the heart of the issue’.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, has said that the Jabhat al-Nusra terror organisation, and groups affiliated to it, are holding over two million people in Idlib hostage and preventing them from leaving. He said that members of the ‘White Helmets’, with UK support, have transported two toxic gas containers to Idlib province – not to mention that there are eight containers of toxic gas already there, with the intent of using them against civilians in order to justify a new aggression by Washington, London and Paris against Syria.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told reporters that the American destroyer USS The Sullivans, armed with 56 cruise missiles, arrived in the Persian Gulf several days ago, while a US B-1B bomber carrying 24 air-to-surface AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles has been deployed at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar for this purpose.
In this critical situation, where the imperialists are deciding whether there is to be war or peace, working people in the US and UK must support the Syrian and Palestinian peoples.
They must adopt the Leninist slogan ‘the enemy is at home’ and meet any fresh imperialist war provocations with political strike actions to bring down the US and UK governments, to go forward to socialism, and the victory of the Palestinian and Syrian peoples.
