WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Former Zionist prime minister Ehud Barak has said he feels no guilt over the killing of Palestinians during the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000.
Speaking in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, Barak - who was the prime minister of the occupying regime between 1999 and 2001 - said as far as the Palestinians who were killed, “I have no guilt.”
The second Intifada – commonly referred to by Palestinians as Al-Aqsa Intifada – began in September 2000, after then-Zionist opposition leader Ariel Sharon stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Al-Quds with heavily armed Zionist troops.
It sparked widespread outrage among Palestinians, who had just marked the anniversary of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, triggering protests which were met with the regime’s police brutality.
Palestinians in the occupied territories took to the streets to condemn the police brutality and voice solidarity with the people facing violence in Al-Quds and the Gaza Strip. The regime’s troops shot dead 13 unarmed Palestinians in the wake of the demonstrations.
Some reports say about 3,000 Palestinians were killed over the course of the Second Intifada that ended in February 2005, but the Palestinian Center for Human Rights put the death toll at 4,973.
In 2019, Barak apologized for the 2000 killing of Palestinians under his premiership, but the Palestinian community in the occupied lands rejected his apology as too little, too late.
Contrasting those remarks, he said on Friday that he felt no guilt, claiming that the situation in 2000 was akin to a “zoo” while “riots” took place throughout the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians are seeking to establish an independent state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip within the 1967 boundaries, with East Al-Quds as its capital.
However, the occupying regime’s aggressive settlement expansion and annexation plans have dealt a serious blow to any solution.