    Noam Chomsky 2002

    Years ago, Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling observed that
    "What we feared has come true." Jews and Palestinians are "regressing to
    superstitious tribalism... War appears an unavoidable fate," an "evil
    colonial" war. After Israel's invasion of the refugee camps this year
    his colleague Ze'ev Sternhell wrote that "In colonial Israel...human
    life is cheap." The leadership is "no longer ashamed to speak of war
    when what they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which recalls
    the takeover by the white police of the poor neighborhoods of the blacks
    in South Africa during the apartheid era." Both stress the obvious:
    there is no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" regressing to
    tribalism. The conflict is centered in territories that have been under
    harsh military occupation for 35 years. The conqueror is a major
    military power, acting with massive military, economic and diplomatic
    support from the global superpower. Its subjects are alone and
    defenseless, many barely surviving in miserable camps, currently
    suffering even more brutal terror of a kind familiar in "evil colonial
    wars" and now carrying out terrible atrocities of their own in revenge.

    The Oslo "peace process" changed the modalities of the occupation, but
    not the basic concept. Shortly before joining the Ehud Barak government,
    historian Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that "the Oslo agreements were founded on
    a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence of one on the other
    forever." He soon became an architect of the US-Israel proposals at Camp
    David in Summer 2000, which kept to this condition. These were highly
    praised in US commentary. The Palestinians and their evil leader were
    blamed for their failure and the subsequent violence. But that is
    outright "fraud," as Kimmerling reported, along with all other serious
    commentators.

    True, Clinton-Barak advanced a few steps towards a Bantustan-style
    settlement. Just prior to Camp David, West Bank Palestinians were
    confined to over 200 scattered areas, and Clinton-Barak did propose an
    improvement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control,
    virtually separated from one another and from the fourth enclave, a
    small area of East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life and of
    communications in the region. In the fifth canton, Gaza, the outcome was
    left unclear except that the population were also to remain virtually
    imprisoned. It is understandable that maps are not to be found in the US
    mainstream, or any of the details of the proposals.

    No one can seriously doubt that the US role will continue to be
    decisive. It is therefore of crucial importance to understand what that
    role has been, and how it is internally perceived. The version of the
    doves is presented by the editors of the NY Times (7 April), praising
    the President's "path-breaking speech" and the "emerging vision" he
    articulated. Its first element is "ending Palestinian terrorism,"
    immediately. Some time later comes "freezing, then rolling back, Jewish
    settlements and negotiating new borders" to end the occupation and allow
    the establishment of a Palestinian state. If Palestinian terror ends,
    Israelis will be encouraged to "take the Arab League's historic offer of
    full peace and recognition in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal more
    seriously." But first Palestinian leaders must demonstrate that they are
    "legitimate diplomatic partners."

    The real world has little resemblance to this self-serving portrayal --
    virtually copied from the 1980s, when the US and Israel were desperately
    seeking to evade PLO offers of negotiation and political settlement
    while keeping to the demand that there will be no negotiations with the
    PLO, no "additional Palestinian state..." (Jordan already being a
    Palestinian state), and "no change in the status of Judea, Samaria and
    Gaza other than in accordance with the basic guidelines of the [Israeli]
    Government" (the May 1989 Peres-Shamir coalition plan, endorsed by Bush
    I in the Baker plan of Dec. 1989). All of this remained unpublished in
    the US mainstream, as regularly before, while commentary denounced the
    Palestinians for their single-minded commitment to terror, undermining
    the humanistic endeavors of the US and its allies.

    In the real world, the primary barrier to the "emerging vision" has
    been, and remains, unilateral US rejectionism. There is little new in
    the "Arab League's historic offer." It repeats the basic terms of a
    Security Council Resolution of January 1976 backed by virtually the
    entire world, including the leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe, the
    Soviet bloc -- in fact, everyone who mattered. It was opposed by Israel
    and vetoed by the US, thereby vetoing it from history. The Resolution
    called for a political settlement on the internationally-recognized
    borders "with appropriate arrangements...to guarantee...the sovereignty,
    territorial integrity, and political independence of all states in the
    area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized
    borders" -- in effect, a modification of UN 242 (as officially
    interpreted by the US as well), amplified to include a Palestinian
    state. Similar initiatives from the Arab states, the PLO, and Europe
    have since been blocked by the US and mostly suppressed or denied in
    public commentary.

    US rejectionism goes back 5 years earlier, to February 1971, when
    President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty in return
    for Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, with no mention of
    Palestinian national rights or the fate of the other occupied
    territories. Israel's Labor government recognized this to be a genuine
    peace offer, but rejected it, intending to extend its settlements to
    northeastern Sinai; that it soon did, with extreme brutality, the
    immediate cause for the 1973 war. Israel and the US understood that
    peace was possible in accord with official US policy. But as Labor Party
    leader Ezer Weizmann (later President) explained, that outcome would not
    allow Israel to "exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she
    now embodies." Israeli commentator Amos Elon wrote that Sadat caused
    "panic" among the Israeli political leadership when he announced his
    willingness "to enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and to respect
    its independence and sovereignty in `secure and recognized borders'."

    Kissinger succeeded in blocking peace, instituting his preference for
    what he called "stalemate": no negotiations, only force. Jordanian peace
    offers were also dismissed. Since that time, official US policy has kept
    to the international consensus on withdrawal -- until Clinton, who
    effectively rescinded UN resolutions and considerations of international
    law. But in practice, policy has followed the Kissinger guidelines,
    accepting negotiations only when compelled to do so, as Kissinger was
    after the near-debacle of the 1973 war for which he shares major
    responsibility, and under the conditions that Ben-Ami articulated.

    Plans for Palestinians followed the guidelines formulated by Moshe
    Dayan, one of the Labor leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian
    plight. He advised the Cabinet that Israel should make it clear to
    refugees that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like
    dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process
    leads." When challenged, he responded by citing Ben-Gurion, who "said
    that whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a
    Zionist." He could have also cited Chaim Weizmann, who held that the
    fate of the "several hundred thousand negroes" in the Jewish homeland
    "is a matter of no consequence."

    Not surprisingly, the guiding principle of the occupation has been
    incessant and degrading humiliation, along with torture, terror,
    destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of
    basic resources, crucially water. That has, of course, required decisive
    US support, extending through the Clinton-Barak years. "The Barak
    government is leaving Sharon's government a surprising legacy," the
    Israeli press reported as the transition took place: "the highest number
    of housing starts in the territories since the time when Ariel Sharon
    was Minister of Construction and Settlement in 1992 before the Oslo
    agreements" -- funding provided by the American taxpayer, deceived by
    fanciful tales of the "visions" and "magnanimity" of US leaders, foiled
    by terrorists like Arafat who have forfeited "our trust," perhaps also
    by some Israeli extremists who are overreacting to their crimes.

    How Arafat must act to regain our trust is explained succinctly by
    Edward Walker, the State Department official responsible for the region
    under Clinton. The devious Arafat must announce without ambiguity that
    "We put our future and fate in the hands of the US," which has led the
    campaign to undermine Palestinian rights for 30 years.

    More serious commentary recognized that the "historic offer" largely
    reiterated the Saudi Fahd Plan of 1981 -- undermined, it was regularly
    claimed, by Arab refusal to accept the existence of Israel. The facts
    are again quite different. The 1981 plan was undermined by an Israeli
    reaction that even its mainstream press condemned as "hysterical."
    Shimon Peres warned that the Fahd plan "threatened Israel's very
    existence." President Haim Herzog charged that the "real author" of the
    Fahd plan was the PLO, and that it was even more extreme than the
    January 1976 Security Council resolution that was "prepared by" the PLO
    when he was Israel's UN Ambassador. These claims can hardly be true
    (though the PLO publicly backed both plans), but they are an indication
    of the desperate fear of a political settlement on the part of Israeli
    doves, with the unremitting and decisive support of the US.

    The basic problem then, as now, traces back to Washington, which has
    persistently backed Israel's rejection of a political settlement in
    terms of the broad international consensus, reiterated in essentials in
    "the Arab League's historic offer."

    Current modifications of US rejectionism are tactical and so far minor.
    With plans for an attack on Iraq endangered, the US permitted a UN
    resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from the newly-invaded
    territories "without delay" -- meaning "as soon as possible," Secretary
    of State Colin Powell explained at once. Palestinian terror is to end
    "immediately," but far more extreme Israeli terror, going back 35 years,
    can take its time. Israel at once escalated its attack, leading Powell
    to say "I'm pleased to hear that the prime minister says he is
    expediting his operations." There is much suspicion that Powell's
    arrival in Israel is being delayed so that they can be "expedited"
    further. That US stance may well change, again for tactical reasons.

    The US also allowed a UN Resolution calling for a "vision" of a
    Palestinian state. This forthcoming gesture, which received much
    acclaim, does not rise to the level of South Africa 40 years ago when
    the Apartheid regime actually implemented its "vision" of Black-run
    states that were at least as viable and legitimate as the neo-colonial
    dependency that the US and Israel have been planning for the occupied
    territories.

    Meanwhile the US continues to "enhance terror," to borrow the
    President's words, by providing Israel with the means for terror and
    destruction, including a new shipment of the most advanced helicopters
    in the US arsenal (Robert Fisk, Independent, 7 April). These are
    standard reactions to atrocities by a client regime. To cite one
    instructive example, in the first days of the current Intifada, Israel
    used US helicopters to attack civilian targets, killing 10 Palestinians
    and wounding 35, hardly in "self-defense." Clinton responded with an
    agreement for "the largest purchase of military helicopters by the
    Israeli Air Force in a decade" (Ha'aretz, 3 October, '01), along with
    spare parts for Apache attack helicopters. The press helped out by
    refusing to report the facts. A few weeks later, Israel began to use US
    helicopters for assassinations as well. One of the first acts of the
    Bush administration was to send Apache Longbow helicopters, the most
    murderous available. That received some marginal notice under business
    news.

    Washington's commitment to "enhancing terror" was illustrated again in
    December, when it vetoed a Security Council Resolution calling for
    implementation of the Mitchell Plan and dispatch of international
    monitors to oversee reduction of violence, the most effective means as
    generally recognized, opposed by Israel and regularly blocked by
    Washington. The veto took place during a 21-day period of calm --
    meaning that only one Israeli soldier was killed, along with 21
    Palestinians including 11 children, and 16 Israeli incursions into areas
    under Palestinian control (Graham Usher, Middle East International, 25
    January '02). Ten days before the veto, the US boycotted -- thus
    undermined -- an international conference in Geneva that once again
    concluded that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the occupied
    terrorities, so that virtually everything the US and Israel do there is
    a "grave breach"; a "war crime" in simple terms. The conference
    specifically declared the US-funded Israeli settlements to be illegal,
    and condemned the practice of "wilful killing, torture, unlawful
    deportation, wilful depriving of the rights of fair and regular trial,
    extensive destruction and appropriation of property...carried out
    unlawfully and wantonly." As a High Contracting Party, the US is
    obligated by solemn treaty to prosecute those responsible for such
    crimes, including its own leadership. Accordingly, all of this passes in
    silence.

    The US has not officially withdrawn its recognition of the applicability
    of the Geneva Conventions to the occupied territories, or its censure of
    Israeli violations as the "occupying power" (affirmed, for example, by
    George Bush I when he was UN Ambassador). In October 2000 the Security
    Council reaffirmed the consensus on this matter, "call[ing] on Israel,
    the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations
    under the Fourth Geneva Convention." The vote was 14-0. Clinton
    abstained, presumably not wanting to veto one of the core principles of
    international humanitarian law, particularly in light of the
    circumstances in which it was enacted: to criminalize formally the
    atrocities of the Nazis. All of this too was consigned quickly to the
    memory hole, another contribution to "enhancing terror."

    Until such matters are permitted to enter discussion, and their
    implications understood, it is meaningless to call for "US engagement in
    the peace process," and prospects for constructive action will remain
    grim.