“Their messages and actions are very clear,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera from Ramallah. “Their goal in the West Bank is annexation of the whole of the West Bank” and settlement building “to destroy any potential for a Palestinian state”.
“In reality, this Israeli regime is using settler violence and settler terrorist groups to repeat what happened in 1948 when terrorist Israeli Zionist groups forced 70 percent of the Palestinian population to be evicted from their land,” Barghouti added.
Meanwhile, Bargouthi said the Israeli regime’s recent decision to transfer civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police signals a move toward “a system of fascism”.
“We’ve already moved from occupation, which is illegal by the way, to apartheid, and (now) they are moving from apartheid to something worse,” Bargouthi told Al Jazeera.
“With the new laws (the Israeli regime) is imposing, the Israelis who live in the occupied territories illegally are subject to Israeli law, but Palestinians are subject to military law.”
He said giving West Bank security oversight to Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has openly said Palestinians should leave the West Bank, is an attempt to portray the territory’s Indigenous Palestinian population “as illegal… as if they were immigrants from another place”.
“We’ve moved from occupation and apartheid to a system of fascism,” said Barghouti.