Rula Jebreal: ‘America Is Operating as a Rogue State’ ... In What World Will a Gaza Occupation Not Have Backlash?

Reid: “I want to bring in Rula Jebreal, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Palestinian policy expert. We are stunned on this side of the camera. Rula, I can only imagine your reaction — what your reaction might be and also the people that you’re speaking with in the region. Please share that.”
JEBREAL: “Look, I’ve been talking, actually, while we’re speaking with people from Jordan, from Egypt, but also Palestinians. And, clearly, America is now, you know, expressing clearly that they want to occupy permanently, probably, Gaza. They want the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Both counts are internationally recognized crimes against humanity, war crimes. America is operating via the president of the United States as a rogue state at this point. I just want to remind everybody the region rejected that proposition. They rejected unanimously. Egypt and Jordan remember very well that even the hint of that led to the killing of leaders in the region. King Abdullah of Jordan, his grandfather, was killed because he was deemed as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. Another Egyptian president, you know, was killed because he was deemed complicit with Israel. These leaders remember very well those killings and also remember that, in the case of Jordan, 60% of Jordanians are actually Palestinians. They have millions of Palestinians. The country will be totally overrun, destabilized. And they are looking at President Trump, and they’re looking at these statements, and they are not only shocked, they are horrified because they understand that as of tonight, there’s a target on the United States’ back. This reminds the region of when Bush declared war in 2003, the Iraq war. That invasion led to mass radicalization, led to the arrival of ISIS, of al Qaeda. It’s stunning that Donald Trump was actually talking about that intervention, saying, ‘Yeah, it was very bad. We should never have done it,’ and then he’s saying, ‘Well, we will do this.’ And he’s talking about it as building resorts or whatever, Riviera he’s thinking. That Riviera will be built on mass graves of children. So I don’t know if he’s not thinking clearly, but what worries me also, Joy, that you have a defense minister that actually chanted in a bar, while drunk, ‘Kill all Muslims!’ You know, the Muslim world is a billion and a half people. You’re actually telling them, with words and deeds, that they’re going to implement an imperialistic colonial policy and kick out millions of Palestinians. In what world this will not have a backlash, immediate backlash?”