In an act violating international laws, Tel Aviv has played a direct role in the demolition of a Palestinian heritage hotel in East al-Quds (Jerusalem), a political expert says.

“Israelis have had many racist and apartheid laws implemented against the Palestinians within the occupied territories since 1948, including East al-Quds,” the journalist and founder of the London-based Palestine Telegraph, Sameh Habeeb, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Monday.

The demolition of the Shepherd Hotel further proves that Israel has always a pretext to use whenever it does something and therefore never seeks to justify what it wants, he added.

"They have a ready propaganda machines that really bring the reasons and bring the justifications for whatever they carry out," Habeeb said.

“Israelis are violating the international law."

He stressed that according to the United Nations, East al-Quds should be managed by a third party and that all settlement construction inside these territories is forbidden.

Habeeb blamed the US and the international community for supporting Israel and giving it the green light to push ahead with its policies against the Palestinians, and condemned Washington’s contradictory stance on the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He pointed out that the number of Israeli Jewish settlers in East al-Quds has almost doubled in the past few years, noting that the trend is aimed at making the illegally annexed city a purely Jewish one and erasing it of any Palestinian existence "whether the population or any historical places indicate that the Palestinians were there."

He said Israel’s insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state aims at establishing a racist country where Palestinians and the followers of other religions have no place.

Habeeb further said that Israel’s call for an exchange of land with the Palestinian Authority aspires to remove the Palestinians living in the occupied territories since before 1948.

"So the settlements will stay in the West Bank and they will get rid of many of those Palestinians inside Israel.”

He also highlighted how Tel Aviv took advantage of the Jewish beliefs against Palestinians during the 22-day war against the Gaza Strip at the turn of 2009, and how Israeli rabbis and the radical rightist groups have affected the army.

"They were using the Torah when they were attacking Gaza, they were praying at the borders of Gaza when the rockets were falling killing the innocents in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

(Press TV)