Former Saudi Intel Chief: Violence Cannot Solve Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

Breaking News: Former Saudi Intel Chief: Violence Cannot Solve Israeli-Palestinian Crisis. Oct. 26, 2023—The time has come to face the truth, no matter how inconvenient, about the ongoing bloody mess in Southwest Asia. To forward this process, we present below excerpts from the remarks, little reported in Western media, made by Prince Turki Al-Faisal Al Saud, the former Director of Al Mukhabarat Al’Ammah, the intelligence agency for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during a forum at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas on Oct.17.

In blasting both Hamas and the Israelis for attacks on innocent civilians, he calls on the Palestinians to adopt the same policies of peaceful civil disobedience that Indians, led by Mohandas Ghandi, used to defeat the British occupation of their country. And while armed resistance against an occupying power is permissible, such violent opposition will not work in Gaza or other areas occupied by Israel and will only lead to the slaughter of innocents.

Reputed to be a close advisor to the Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Turki supports the efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, now disrupted by the Hamas-Israeli conflict, and the role the Saudis can play in helping to broker a deal, finally, for a Palestinian state.

Sane forces in the region including in Israel see Turki’s statements as providing the basis for an agreement on de-escalation of the current conflict, and for peace negotiations that could lead to a resolution of the crisis. We provide below some written excerpts, as well as a video of the presentation. The question needs to be asked of Americans and other political leaders around the world, “Do you agree with what is being said here? Do you want the slaughter of innocent civilians, including women and children, to continue? Do you agree that violence and vengeance can never provide solutions?

The message is not intended to be limited to merely the Palestinians. There is no possibility of organizing any effective political movement anywhere that is not based on non-violent direct political action of the type not only practiced by Ghandi in India and by the masses in East Germany against the Honecker regime but also by the Civil Rights movement as led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States.

And such a mass movement needs to be organized immediately especially by and among young people who are being told that to oppose Israeli genocide against Gaza and Palestinian young people, including women and children, is anti-semitic. Protests on college campuses against a policy that holds all Palestinians responsible for the despicable actions of Hamas extremists, even though more than half the population of Gaza is under the age of 18, and never even had a chance to vote to support Hamas. No matter what the obstacles, such murder of innocent young people and others, which calls them animals and then proceeds to slaughter them in acts of purgative vengeance must be opposed by all who would remain human in outlook. But violence, as Dr. King preached, must never be repaid in kind and opposition needs to take the form of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.

Such a movement, worldwide, should also support the call by the Chinese among others for an immediate cease-fire and the convening of an emergency international peace conference to find a solution to the crisis.” The actions of Saudi Arabia, whose vast sovereign wealth and resources it has pledged to the development of the region, in its new status as a member of the BRICS alliance, is thought to have the full backing that the BRICS alliance including Russia and China, in its efforts to bring peace to a region now threatened with total—and totally unnecessary—war.

Excerpts from Turki Al-Faisal’s remarks as quoted in the Hindustan Times:

“All militarily occupied people have a right to resist their occupation, even militarily. I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option, civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British Empire in

India and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. Israel has overwhelming military superiority, and we see in front of our eyes the devastation and oblivion it is bringing to the people of Gaza.

“I categorically condemn Hamas’ targeting of civilian targets of any age or gender as it is accused of. Such targeting belies Hamas’ claims to an Islamic identity. There is an Islamic injunction against the killing of innocent children, women, and elders. The injunction is also against the desecration of places of worship.

“I also condemn Hamas’ gifting the high moral ground to an Israeli government that is universally shunned even by half of the Israeli public, as fascist, miscreant, and abhorrent. I condemn Hamas for giving this awful government the excuse to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its citizens and bomb them to oblivion. I condemn Hamas for further undermining the Palestinian Authority, as Israel has been doing.

“I condemn Hamas for sabotaging the attempt of Saudi Arabia to reach a peaceful resolution to the plight of the Palestinian people, but equally I condemn Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian innocent civilians in Gaza and the attempt to forcibly drive them into Sinai.

“I condemn the Israeli targeted killing, and the indiscriminate arrest of Palestinian children, women, and men in The West Bank. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I’ve been hearing a repeated phrase in American media—‘unprovoked attack’ [by Hamas]—what more provocation is required to make it provoked than what Israel has done to the Palestinian people for three-quarters of a century?”