Marc Botenga: "Israel is taking advantage of the genocide in Gaza to take control of the whole of Palestine"
On 28 October 2024, an international delegation arrived in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for a week-long observation mission. Among them were lawyers, former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, Jaume Asens, a former Spanish MP who has since become an MEP, and Marc Botenga, his PVDA-PTB counterpart in the European Parliament. Solidaire met up with Botenga for a hard-hitting account of the few days he spent close to Israeli army fire.
Why did you go to Palestine?
Marc Botenga. A lot of images are circulating on social media but, the fact is, we donʼt fully realize the reality. I wanted to see for myself. Israel doesn’t give permission to go to Gaza, but also hides what they're doing in the West Bank. I didn’t hesitate when I was asked to be part of the delegation. Iʼd seen amateur videos showing whole villages being burned by settlers, and that there were attacks on refugee camps in this area. So I said to myself: "Somethingʼs going on there too. Letʼs go see."
Was this your first trip to Palestine?
Marc Botenga. No. Iʼve been there several times. I was there just last year. I could see major differences in a year...
The first thing that strikes you about the occupied territory is that there are lots of new Israeli highways. Palestinians are not allowed to drive there. This territory has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. These highways and infrastructures are used to steal land from the Palestinians and annex it to Israel. The Israeli authorities have supplied the settlers with weapons, to create a climate of terror. We see these settlers driving around at night in cars without licence plates, going from Palestinian village to Palestinian village to burn cars, to intimidate Palestinians or even to kill them. Settlers are terrorizing an unarmed population. What's more, the Israeli army supports the settlers. Whenever we arrived in a village, we saw frightened children wondering whether it was Israeli settlers who had landed.
What were the original objectives of the mission?
Marc Botenga. To document a range of things and to provide concrete solidarity on the ground. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared Israel's occupation illegal. Israeli settlers were supposed to leave within 12 months. We wanted to know if this decision was being respected. And it's not, not at all. They're doing the opposite.
What made a lasting impression on you?
Marc Botenga. Everywhere you go, you see the military occupation. There are checkpoints everywhere, checkpoints where the Israeli army arbitrarily decides who can pass and who can't, and that can be closed at any time. That's what happened to us just as we were about to leave Nablus for Ramallah. The checkpoint was closed, so we were locked in the town. Then, the checkpoint to get into Ramallah was also closed. There was no reason, no justification.
Another event that marked us was when we accompanied the farmers to their fields, as it was olive harvesting season: the Israeli army does not want the Palestinians to have access to water sources or even to their own olive trees. As soon as we got out of the car, the settlers threw flares and tear gas grenades at us to prevent us from reaching the fields with the farmers. Given that they’re all armed, they could even have shot at us, which they do in other places.... We've also seen areas where settlers have driven out the Palestinian population and boast of having created "Arab-free" zones.
What testimonials left a mark on you?
Marc Botenga. There are plenty of them, of course... One strong testimonial was that of Fakhri, who lives in East Jerusalem. He was born in his home in 1964. So, three years before Israel arrived and occupied this part of Palestine. The Israeli authorities have declared his house "illegal". In February, Israeli army bulldozers landed in front of his birthplace, his family home for decades. They blew up the entrance walls, to intimidate him and his family. Why? Because they want to clear out the Palestinians, to raze the houses and make a little park. Itʼs ethnic cleansing that's being carried out as we speak. Fakhri told me that it wasnʼt "just" his house but his whole history, his memories and those of his family, for generations, that the Israeli authorities want to erase... He stayed there saying "it's my land and I will not leave". He built a small shack next to it. A few days after our visit, the Israelis came back to destroy what was left.
Do the Israelis have the right to take back land from the Palestinians?
Marc Botenga. No. It's all done completely illegally. They give themselves the right, but from the point of view of international law, they donʼt have any right to do that.
Everything I've just described is totally illegal. Even though everything is done in a way that is completely open and visible to all.
What has this mission taught you?
Marc Botenga. That Israel is carrying out total ethnic cleansing, ever more rapidly. There's the genocide in Gaza, but also the annexation of land in the West Bank and the destruction of Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem. Then we see the reality behind what they call "their right to defend themselves". What they're defending is above all their "right" to steal other people's land. They chase families from their homes, move in and if the family resists, they kill them.
Finally, this trip also showed me that the image of the European Union is horrible. The people there have lost all trust in it. They say: "Europe talks to us about human rights, international law... But here, none of that exists. Our children can be killed in the street by an Israeli, they can kill thousands of them, and there'll be no European sanctions, nothing will happen."
Did you feel in danger yourself?
Marc Botenga. Our "status" as members of an international delegation does not protect us. The Israeli army sends out totally indoctrinated kids, 18-year-old soldiers who have been led to believe that all Arabs are terrorists, that anyone with a Palestinian flag is a terrorist and that they should all get out or die. These soldiers know they can do whatever they want, with total impunity. A few weeks before our arrival, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a young American activist, was killed trying to protect Palestinian farmers.
One thing that surprised me is that most of the Israeli soldiers we met speak a foreign language perfectly. We met a young soldier who addressed us in perfect French. She had grown up in France, but was now coming to stop the Palestinians from picking their olives.
In a video, we see you walking under a net used to protect Palestinians from the waste thrown by settlers...
Marc Botenga. Both in Jerusalem and in other cities, settlers steal Palestinian homes and apartments. There are different ways of doing this. By force, of course, but also by other means. In Hebron, for example, they occupy apartments above Palestinian businesses and try to sabotage them by throwing rocks, waste and excrement at the stalls below. The Palestinians try to protect themselves with nets. When you walk under this protection, you feel the humiliation imposed day after day on the Palestinians.
Wasn’t this mission too difficult an experience?
Marc Botenga. It was necessary. When you see how impressively the Palestinians deal with this, every day, defending themselves and their land, their olive trees, their homes, their history... They're not giving up, which is incredibly inspiring.
Your stances in the European Parliament on the question of Palestine are massively shared on social media, but your commitment goes back a long way. Where does it come from?
Marc Botenga. For me, it's always been normal to take a stand for the Palestinians. There is a lot of injustice in the world. A lot. But in this case, the difference is that without European support, this would not happen. The European Union and our governments are not standing idly by. They give trade privileges to Israel, and even European public money to Israel. The idea that our governments are directly supporting a genocide is intolerable, and we must fight alongside the Palestinians because they have the right to self-determination, like all peoples. It's one of the last colonies in the world.
What can you do as an MEP?
Marc Botenga. At European Parliament level, we're putting the issue on the agenda. If we let European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen have her way, nobody would talk about it. She wants to make people forget the European Union's complicity in Israeli crimes.
Then, we expose it, showing just how complicit the European Union is. When we talk about a privileged partnership agreement with Israel, it means we don’t make them pay all the customs duties, we send them weapons... We can explain all that from the rostrum of Parliament.
Fortunately, we’re not the only ones, with the PTB, to denounce it. Authentic left-wing MPs such as Spainʼs Irene Montero and France's Rima Hassan courageously speak out. The aim, of course, is to reinforce the mobilization of solidarity with Palestine throughout Europe. Because what makes the difference is popular mobilization. We see, moreover, that the countries where there is the most pressure from people are the places that have taken better positions on Palestine.
You spoke of a privileged partnership. It dates from before October 7th...
Marc Botenga. It dates back to the 1990s. Article 2 states that human rights must be respected. No one today can dare say that Israel respects human rights. There has always been complicity with colonization. Now that the International Court of Justice has said that this colonization is illegal, it has to be ended.
When you hear its defenders call it "the most moral army in the world", what's your reaction?
Marc Botenga. It's nonsense. All the international humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, etc., are talking about genocide. European doctors have documented how Israel deliberately targets children, even with drones.
At the beginning of the war in Gaza, there was a debate over whether Israel hit a hospital or not. Since then, Israel has targeted every hospital in Gaza, children, doctors, journalists... Remember Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist killed by the Israeli army two and a half years ago because she was doing her job....
Just look at what "the world’s most moral army" looks like when you see Israeli soldiers filming themselves burning and razing villages... There is nothing "moral" about them. It's an army that practices state terrorism.
Will Trump's re-election change anything about the war?
Marc Botenga. I'm not expecting anything good. Trump has already appointed extremely pro-Israeli ministers and ambassadors, who deny the very existence of the occupation. US support for Israel is a constant. The current President Joe Biden had already given Netanyahu so much. Since the Second World War, the Americans have protected Israel because Israel protects their interests, bombs various countries in the region, destabilizes when the United States needs it... Israel is sometimes dubbed the 51st state of the United States.
We are seeing many actions for peace, such as numerous students mobilizing everywhere, in the United States and elsewhere, or dockworkers refusing to transport weapons to Israel. What does that inspire in you?
Marc Botenga. If workers say there aren’t any more guns coming into Israel, that's a game-changer. If students say "our university should no longer collaborate on Horizon with Israel", that's a game-changer.
And I’ve seen in Palestine that while people are angry with European governments, they are happy with these solidarity actions, the mass mobilizations in Europe. They feel they’re not alone. That's really important.
What proposals does the PTB have to put an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and, more widely, to the Israeli occupation?
Marc Botenga. The first thing is that this is no longer "just" a political issue, but also a legal and civilizational one. An international court said there was a risk of genocide, so we have to stop supplying arms.
Secondly, Israel can no longer be considered a normal state. It is a state condemned for the occupation of Palestine, accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing with terrorist practices. We cannot allow this to become the norm.
Finally, let's believe in the strength of the Palestinian people and support them. Sometimes we think that Israel is all-powerful. It is not true. Look at South Africa. The struggle helped destroy apartheid. The same goes for the anti-war movement in Vietnam. And here, we see the same thing in Europe. All these young people mobilizing, they are "Palestine" generations that will make a difference. Algerians fought for 130 years against French colonization. In the end, 1 million French settlers had to leave Algeria.
