'Hamas is not...': Palestinian diplomat confronts BBC journalist over 'do you condemn attack on Israel' question

A Palestinian diplomat's interview with BBC has gone viral where he refused to condemn Hamas and underlined that the world should not draw any symmetry between Israel and Palestine. Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, said that he regretted the international community had not heeded their warnings for all the years and that the issue between Israel and Palestine was allowed to fester for decades.

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"Regret that there is attention now, on the BBC and all over the world, only because blood has been spilled...I wish we did not get to this moment," he said while responding to a question on what went through his mind when he heard about what Hamas had done in Israel on Saturday. When asked whether he regretted the loss of lives in Israel, Zomlot said: "Every loss of life is regrettable, of course, and tragic. Absolutely."

However, when the interviewer asked the diplomat whether he condemned the killing of civilians by Hamas, Zomlot said this was neither "the right question" nor "important". "Hamas is a militant group, you are talking to a Palestinian representative - and our policy is very clear. This is not about support or not support (Hamas). I am here to represent the Palestinian people, and what they are going through. I am not here to condemn anybody. And if anybody that needs to be condemned is what you call 'the only democracy in the Middle East' and that is Israel."

The diplomat alleged that Israel was targeting civilians in Palestine. When pressed further to condemn the militant organisation that rules Gaza, he said: "Hamas is not the Palestine government. The Israeli government is giving orders to its organised army. Don't throw any symmetry here. Don't equate the occupied and occupier. This doesn't serve justice."

Hamas, a militant group, controls the Gaza Strip, while the Palestine Authority rules the West Bank. Hamas is a rival of the Palestinian Authority, which recognises Israel and wants a peaceful settlement. 

Zomlot said that since 1948, when Israel was founded, the Jewish nation had been targeting civilians to pressure the fighters in Gaza. "So the real question is how do we stop this vicious deadly cycle." When asked again why he was not condemning Hamas, the diplomat said that Israel had committed war crimes many times but their officials were never asked to condemn themselves. 

"I refused to answer this question because I refuse the premise of it. Because at the very heart of it is the misrepresentation of the whole thing." He said it is the Palestinians who are always expected to condemn themselves. "This is a political conflict, we have been denied our rights for a long time. This is a wrong starting point. The right starting point is to focus on the root causes."

The diplomat said that the media focuses on the issue when Israelis are killed but doesn't show when Tel Aviv strikes Palestinians. "You bring us here whenever it is the Israelis who are killed. Did you bring me here when many Palestinians in the West Bank [were killed], more than 200 over the last few months? Do you invite me when there are such Israeli provocations in Jerusalem and elsewhere?" he asked.  

Zomlot said that what Israelis had seen in the recent Hamas attack, the Palestinians had seen every day for the last 50 years. "You know, the situation in Gaza, you’ve just described it. This is the biggest open-air prison."

Zomlot's interview has gone viral, with many praising him for confronting the presenter. "Here’s a brilliant interview from Palestinian diplomat Husam Zomlot, wherein he refuses to let BBC News hypocritically center the convo in a condemnation paradigm trap. Instead, he focuses the conversation on the root causes of the suffering and resistance occurring in Palestine," Anees, a social media user, said. 

Omair Anas said that the Palestinian diplomat gave an on-air training class on how to cover the Palestine-Israel conflict to the BBC anchor.