Israel must defend its citizens. It is government obligation to defend its citizens, so we lodged an operation to eradicate the threat on Israel and we try in “surgical” way to hit only terrorists, Ambassador of Israel to Azerbaijan Rafael Harpaz commented on “Pillar of Cloud” operation carried out in Gaza Strip on November 14, in his exclusive interview to APA.
The ambassador noted that every 15 seconds they have to run to shelter. We get a lot of understanding this time from international community for the situation. We are not fighting the Palestinian people, we are fighting the terroristic organization Hamas, which is the mail challenge. There are 3 major objectives: We need quite, not for 1 week or 1 month, but a long-term.
The diplomat said that humanitarian aid to Gaza Strip was carried trough the territory of Israel.
The Ambassador emphasized that Israel is trying to hit only the terrorists: “That's the difference between us and them. They deliberately target civilians elected, our goal is the same terrorists who hide behind civilians, contrary to international law. We regret any innocent Palestinians’ death and really try to do everything as neat as possible. But this is war.
The ambassador considers that the Iron Dome anti-missile system causes the decrease of Israel’s causalities. It is not easy for us but the same times we are making sure that humanitarian help go to Gaza. There is not lack of food, fuel and everything comes as usual. We use very impressive technological achievement – the Iron Dome anti-missile system. Only Israel uses it. The “Iron Dome” took down almost 300 out of 1000 rockets shot to Israel with almost 90% success. Just imagine what would we do if we did not have such system?! Huge damage, people are dying. This technology gives us more time to conduct this operation. We do not war, we want peace. But this is the environment that we live in. We left Gaza in 2005, we gave land and thought we get peace instead we got war. Hamas is a terrorist organization sponsored by Iran with ammunition coming mainly from Libya, Sudan and Iran.
It is truth, it is an option. The goal is that we don’t want any more attacks on Israel.
Ambassador of the state of Palestine to Azerbaijan Nesser Kareem considers that there two main purpose of this escalation in Gaza Strip. He said in his exclusive interview to APA that one of them is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to subvert our move to the UN in 29 of November to elevate the status of Palestine as an observer in UN. The second purpose, like a politician he wants to be reelected in January. This could help to show himself tough and strong. The death toll has reached to 110 up to now, at present the bombings are being continued. Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. 28 of the victims are children, 14 – women and 13 – old people. At the same time, the infrastructure, destructed in 2008, is being destructed again. We hope that the military operations will be stopped as soon as possible, because these military operations have impact on both innocent Palestinians and Israeli citizens.
The ambassador noted that before the military operations, the population in Gaza was in the blockade: “The UN, after studying the situation in Gaza Strip, made a report before 2-3 months. Gaza will be an uninhabited place over the next 10-15 years. The infrastructure has been destructed, there are many problems in Gaza Strip and it is difficult to live here.”
The ambassador said that President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas never supported those rockets being shot at Israel: “We think it is counterproductive, it does not well. But if we talk on current situation, the escalation actually came from Israeli side. There were some sort of understanding between the Israeli side and the Egyptian side which were negotiation on behalf of Hamas. And suddenly Israeli started by the assassination by military commander of Hamas and the situation escalated again.
The ambassador considers that prime minister of Israel Netanyahu is blinded and shackled by his ideology. Since he took office as prime-minister he wanted to change whole peace process, he has a counterpart- legitimate Palestinian leadership that was negotiating in good faith with previous Israeli government. Netanyahu became the prime-minister and wanted to change the terms of reference of these negotiations to restart them from ‘point zero’. Instead of investing in war he could invest in peace and negotiating with Palestinian leadership. Unfortunately, since he came into power he just was putting sticks in the wheal of moving forward the peace process.
The ambassador recalled that so it was not matter of Hamas, it is the matter of Israel like superpower. If Netanyahu negotiated in good faith with Mr. Abbas he would find him a partner and we would achieve peace by now. You can not keep relying on your military superiority. You need to reach accommodation with Palestinians. The Palestinians could be Israelis bridge to the rest of Arab world, to the rest of Islamic world and coexistence is the only way. But unfortunately we see that Netanyahu’s policy is opposite.
Recall that, the Israeli Army started “Pillar of Cloud” operation on November 14.
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