Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal has criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for attempting ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Prince Turki called the Israeli leader ‘completely crazy’ to plan driving out Palestinians from their land.
“That would be rewarding the terrorism of Netanyahu,” he said.
“The perpetrator of genocide wants to justify driving out the people of Palestine. It’s not only genocide but also ethnic cleansing. Is this acceptable?
“The fact that it happened in Syria and Ukraine does not mean that it is right for it to happen in Palestine,” Prince Turki said.
Netanyahu is proposing even more hardship and difficulty on people, regardless of who they are. “He is totally a cuckoo person who only thinks of his own position. He does not want to be put on trial and go to jail, should he leave office.”
He added that the Netanyahu government must ask itself if the Palestinians themselves want to leave their land.
“Let Netanyahu allow you to survey the people. Send people into Gaza to ask its people what they want to do and then follow through with what they want to do,” he said.
Startled by his language, Amanpour said: “I have interviewed you many times but I have never heard you speak like this. You are a long-term diplomat, why have you taken this step tonight?”
“It is not just tonight,” he said. “If you have been listening to my statements and if you have read my articles, you would see me saying similar things in the past.
“I am up to here with what I hear from not just Netanyahu, but those who support him, when he is applauded as a hero in the United States and described as a saviour of Israel and so on.
“It boils my blood that somebody would think of a genocidal psychopath in those terms. It is totally unacceptable to me.”
When Amanpour said that one of the prizes Israel was aiming for was normalisation with Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki said, “How can anybody expect Saudi Arabia to normalise (relations) with such a criminal or genocidal maniac.”
He stressed that there was no way Saudi would normalise ties with Israel in the present scenario.
Prince Turki added that the kingdom was the one that presented the Arab peace initiative.
“It is there on the table. Just recently, the kingdom, together with France and other countries, proposed to end the fighting in Gaza and go forward to an end to the hostilities between Israel and its neighbours.
“There’s a whole history and backlog of Saudi action for peace. Normalisation is not going to come before any of that.”
Prince Turki said that instead of choosing peace, Netanyahu is talking about some kind of biblical image of Israel.
“He is not hiding it. He’s even showing it on maps. That would be from the river to the river. From the Nile to the Euphrates, which he is going to pursue. Is he going to go for occupying Syrian and Lebanese and Iraqi territory along with Palestine and Egypt?”
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