Pro-Palestine Activists Rally Against Bennett’s Visit in U.S.

Date: 27 August 2021 - 21:45

News ID: ۹۳۶۷۸

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Palestinian rights advocates gathered on Thursday near the White House to denounce a visit by Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett to Washington.
Waving Palestinian flags and chanting against the occupation, the demonstrators called on President Joe Biden to uphold his campaign promise to advance human rights globally.
Biden was set to meet Bennett at 11:30 (15:30 GMT) but the bilateral talks were moved to Friday as the White House turned its attention to the situation in Kabul where two explosions killed and wounded people outside the airport.
“The U.S. is sending this message of moral authority, moral responsibility, but then they don’t do anything when the Israelis commit violence against Palestinians,” Yousef Abdelfattah, a 24-year-old protester, told Al Jazeera.
The activists invoked the Zionist regime’s efforts to forcibly displace Palestinian families from their homes in the Al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the blockade on Gaza, where Zionist troops have wounded dozens of protesters this week.
They urged Biden to end the “blank cheque” policy to the occupying regime.
Laura Albast, an activist with the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the groups that organized the protest, said Biden has failed to deliver on his promise of conducting a human rights-centered foreign policy.
“But we’re here to stay, and he will listen to us whether he likes it or not,” she said.
Bennett told the New York Times earlier this week that his cabinet will not proceed with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex large parts of the West Bank.
“This cabinet will neither annex nor form a Palestinian state, everyone gets that,” he said.
Albast, however, said de-facto annexation is continuing, even if it is not formally announced, noting the Zionist regime’s policies against Palestinians in East Al-Quds, which the regime annexed in 1980.
“The families in Sheikh Jarrah are still under threat of losing their homes, and houses in Silwan have already been demolished, including small businesses of Palestinians,” she told Al Jazeera.
The Biden administration regularly calls for “equal measures” of freedom for Zionists and Palestinians, but it has categorically rejected suggestions of restricting or conditioning the annual $3.8bn in military aid to the regime.
The president and his top aides have also avoided publicly criticizing the occupying regime.

Pro-Palestinian activists gather near the White House to protest the visit by Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett, August 26.