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Noam Chomsky
The
fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution
might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s
conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.
In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal
agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the
internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with “minor
and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before
Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
The
basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world,
including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization
of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran),
and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along
these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in
January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the
session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980.
The record at the General Assembly since is similar.
There
was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism.
After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton
recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were
unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his “parameters”:
imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had
accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, in January
2001 to resolve the differences and were making considerable
progress. In their final press conference, they reported that, with
a little more time, they could probably have reached full
agreement. Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, however,
and official progress then terminated, though informal discussions
at a high level continued leading to the Geneva Accord, rejected by
Israel and ignored by the U.S.
A good
deal has happened since, but a settlement along those lines is still
not out of reach -- if, of course, Washington is once again willing
to accept it. Unfortunately, there is little sign of that.
Substantial mythology has been created about the entire record, but
the basic facts are clear enough and quite well documented.
The
U.S. and Israel have been acting in tandem to extend and deepen the
occupation. In 2005, recognizing that it was pointless to subsidize
a few thousand Israeli settlers in Gaza, who were appropriating
substantial resources and protected by a large part of the Israeli
army, the government of Ariel Sharon decided to move them to the
much more valuable West Bank and Golan Heights.
Instead of carrying out the operation straightforwardly, as would
have been easy enough, the government decided to stage a “national
trauma,” which virtually duplicated the farce accompanying the
withdrawal from the Sinai desert after the Camp David agreements of
1978-79. In each case, the withdrawal permitted the cry of “Never
Again,” which meant in practice: we cannot abandon an inch of the
Palestinian territories that we want to take in violation of
international law. This farce played very well in the West, though
it was ridiculed by more astute Israeli commentators, among them
that country’s prominent sociologist the late Baruch Kimmerling.
After
its formal withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel never actually
relinquished its total control over the territory, often described
realistically as “the world’s largest prison.” In January 2006, a
few months after the withdrawal, Palestine had an election that was
recognized as free and fair by international observers.
Palestinians, however, voted “the wrong way,” electing Hamas.
Instantly, the U.S. and Israel intensified their assault against
Gazans as punishment for this misdeed. The facts and the reasoning
were not concealed; rather, they were openly published alongside
reverential commentary on Washington’s sincere dedication to
democracy. The U.S.-backed Israeli assault against the Gazans has
only been intensified since, thanks to violence and economic
strangulation, increasingly savage.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, always with firm U.S. backing, Israel
has been carrying forward longstanding programs to take the valuable
land and resources of the Palestinians and leave them in unviable
cantons, mostly out of sight. Israeli commentators frankly refer to
these goals as “neocolonial.” Ariel Sharon, the main architect of
the settlement programs, called these cantons “Bantustans,” though
the term is misleading: South Africa needed the majority black work
force, while Israel would be happy if the Palestinians disappeared,
and its policies are directed to that end.
Blockading Gaza by
Land and Sea
One
step towards cantonization and the undermining of hopes for
Palestinian national survival is the separation of Gaza from the
West Bank. These hopes have been almost entirely consigned to
oblivion, an atrocity to which we should not contribute by tacit
consent. Israeli journalist Amira Hass, one of the leading
specialists on Gaza, writes that
“the
restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in
January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June
1967. Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion
of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a
single country -- to be sure, one that was occupied, but was
nevertheless whole.… The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the
West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics,
whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on
international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an
arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.…
“Since
January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely
perfected the split and the separation: not only between
Palestinians in the occupied territories and their brothers in
Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and
those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West
Bankers/Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a
superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical
infrastructure and freedom of movement.”
The
leading academic specialist on Gaza, Harvard scholar Sara Roy, adds:
“Gaza
is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a
state of abject destitution, its once productive population
transformed into one of aid-dependent paupers.… Gaza’s subjection
began long before Israel’s recent war against it [December 2008].
The Israeli occupation — now largely forgotten or denied by the
international community — has devastated Gaza’s economy and people,
especially since 2006…. After Israel’s December [2008] assault,
Gaza’s already compromised conditions have become virtually
unlivable. Livelihoods, homes, and public infrastructure have been
damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israel Defense Forces
admitted was indefensible.
“In
Gaza today, there is no private sector to speak of and no industry.
80 percent of Gaza’s agricultural crops were destroyed and Israel
continues to snipe at farmers attempting to plant and tend fields
near the well-fenced and patrolled border. Most productive activity
has been extinguished.… Today, 96 percent of Gaza’s population of
1.4 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic needs.
According to the World Food Programme, the Gaza Strip requires a
minimum of 400 trucks of food every day just to meet the basic
nutritional needs of the population. Yet, despite a March [22, 2009]
decision by the Israeli cabinet to lift all restrictions on
foodstuffs entering Gaza, only 653 trucks of food and other supplies
were allowed entry during the week of May 10, at best meeting 23
percent of required need. Israel now allows only 30 to 40 commercial
items to enter Gaza compared to 4,000 approved products prior to
June 2006.”
It
cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for
its 2008–9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally
using U.S. weapons. Near-universal opinion asserts the contrary,
claiming that Israel was acting in self-defense. That is utterly
unsustainable, in light of Israel’s flat rejection of peaceful means
that were readily available, as Israel and its U.S. partner in crime
knew very well. That aside, Israel’s siege of Gaza is itself an act
of war, as Israel of all countries certainly recognizes, having
repeatedly justified launching major wars on grounds of partial
restrictions on its access to the outside world, though nothing
remotely like what it has long imposed on Gaza.
One
crucial element of Israel’s criminal siege, little reported, is the
naval blockade. Peter Beaumont reports from Gaza that, “on its
coastal littoral, Gaza’s limitations are marked by a different fence
where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying
beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going
outside a zone imposed by the warships.” According to reports from
the scene, the naval siege has been tightened steadily since 2000.
Fishing boats have been driven steadily out of Gaza’s territorial
waters and toward the shore by Israeli gunboats, often violently
without warning and with many casualties. As a result of these naval
actions, Gaza’s fishing industry has virtually collapsed; fishing is
impossible near shore because of the contamination caused by
Israel’s regular attacks, including the destruction of power plants
and sewage facilities.
These
Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the BG
(British Gas) Group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas
fields in Gaza’s territorial waters. Industry journals report that
Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own
use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas. The
standard industry source reports:
“Israel’s finance ministry has given the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC)
approval to purchase larger quantities of natural gas from BG than
originally agreed upon, according to Israeli government sources
[which] said the state-owned utility would be able to negotiate for
as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine
field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian
controlled Gaza Strip.
“Last
year the Israeli government approved the purchase of 800 million
cubic meters of gas from the field by the IEC….Recently
the Israeli government changed its policy and decided the
state-owned utility could buy the entire quantity of gas from the
Gaza Marine field. Previously the government had said the IEC could
buy half the total amount and the remainder would be bought by
private power producers.”
The
pillage of what could become a major source of income for Gaza is
surely known to U.S. authorities. It is only reasonable to suppose
that the intention to appropriate these limited resources, either by
Israel alone or together with the collaborationist Palestinian
Authority, is the motive for preventing Gazan fishing boats from
entering Gaza’s territorial waters.
There
are some instructive precedents. In 1989, Australian foreign
minister Gareth Evans signed a treaty with his Indonesian
counterpart Ali Alatas granting Australia rights to the substantial
oil reserves in “the Indonesian Province of East Timor.” The
Indonesia-Australia Timor Gap Treaty, which offered not a crumb to
the people whose oil was being stolen, “is the only legal agreement
anywhere in the world that effectively recognises Indonesia’s right
to rule East Timor,” the Australian press reported.
Asked
about his willingness to recognize the Indonesian conquest and to
rob the sole resource of the conquered territory, which had been
subjected to near-genocidal slaughter by the Indonesian invader with
the strong support of Australia (along with the U.S., the U.K., and
some others), Evans explained that “there is no binding legal
obligation not to recognise the acquisition of territory that was
acquired by force,” adding that “the world is a pretty unfair place,
littered with examples of acquisition by force.”
It
should, then, be unproblematic for Israel to follow suit in Gaza.
A few
years later, Evans became the leading figure in the campaign to
introduce the concept “responsibility to protect” -- known as R2P --
into international law. R2P is intended to establish an
international obligation to protect populations from grave crimes.
Evans is the author of a major book on the subject and was co-chair
of the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, which issued what is considered the basic document on
R2P.
In an article devoted
to this “idealistic effort to establish a new humanitarian
principle,” the London Economist featured
Evans and his “bold but passionate claim on behalf of a three-word
expression which (in quite large part thanks to his efforts) now
belongs to the language of diplomacy: the ‘responsibility to
protect.’” The article is accompanied by a picture of Evans with the
caption “Evans: a lifelong passion to protect.” His hand is pressed
to his forehead in despair over the difficulties faced by his
idealistic effort. The journal chose not to run a different photo
that circulates in Australia, depicting Evans and Alatas exuberantly
clasping their hands together as they toast the Timor Gap Treaty
that they had just signed.
Though
a “protected population” under international law, Gazans do not fall
under the jurisdiction of the “responsibility to protect,” joining
other unfortunates, in accord with the maxim of Thucydides --
that the strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer as they must --
which holds with its customary precision.
Obama and the
Settlements
The
kinds of restrictions on movement used to destroy Gaza have long
been in force in the West Bank as well, less cruelly but with grim
effects on life and the economy. The World Bank reports that Israel
has established “a complex closure regime that restricts Palestinian
access to large areas of the West Bank… The Palestinian economy has
remained stagnant, largely because of the sharp downturn in Gaza and
Israel’s continued restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement in
the West Bank.”
The
World Bank “cited Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints hindering trade
and travel, as well as restrictions on Palestinian building in the
West Bank, where the Western-backed government of Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas holds sway.” Israel does permit -- indeed
encourage -- a privileged existence for elites in Ramallah and
sometimes elsewhere, largely relying on European funding, a
traditional feature of colonial and neocolonial practice.
All of
this constitutes what Israeli activist Jeff Halper calls a “matrix
of control” to subdue the colonized population. These systematic
programs over more than 40 years aim to establish Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan’s recommendation to his colleagues shortly after
Israel’s 1967 conquests that we must tell the Palestinians in the
territories: “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like
dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this
process leads.”
Turning to the second bone of contention, settlements, there is
indeed a confrontation, but it is rather less dramatic than
portrayed. Washington’s position was presented most strongly in
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s much-quoted statement rejecting
“natural growth exceptions” to the policy opposing new settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with President Shimon Peres
and, in fact, virtually the whole Israeli political spectrum,
insists on permitting “natural growth” within the areas that Israel
intends to annex, complaining that the United States is backing down
on George W. Bush’s authorization of such expansion within his
“vision” of a Palestinian state.
Senior
Netanyahu cabinet members have gone further. Transportation Minister
Yisrael Katz announced that “the current Israeli government will not
accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in Judea
and Samaria.” The term “legal” in U.S.-Israeli parlance means
“illegal, but authorized by the government of Israel with a wink
from Washington.” In this usage, unauthorized outposts are termed
“illegal,” though apart from the dictates of the powerful, they are
no more illegal than the settlements granted to Israel under Bush’s
“vision” and Obama’s scrupulous omission.
The
Obama-Clinton “hardball” formulation is not new. It repeats the
wording of the Bush administration draft of the 2003 Road Map, which
stipulates that in Phase I, “Israel freezes all settlement activity
(including natural growth of settlements).” All sides formally
accept the Road Map (modified to drop the phrase “natural growth”)
-- consistently overlooking the fact that Israel, with U.S. support,
at once added 14 “reservations” that render it inoperable.
If
Obama were at all serious about opposing settlement expansion, he
could easily proceed with concrete measures by, for example,
reducing U.S. aid by the amount devoted to this purpose. That would
hardly be a radical or courageous move. The Bush I administration
did so (reducing loan guarantees), but after the Oslo accord in
1993, President Clinton left calculations to the government of
Israel. Unsurprisingly, there was “no change in the expenditures
flowing to the settlements,” the Israeli press reported. “[Prime
Minister] Rabin will continue not to dry out the settlements,” the
report concludes. “And the Americans? They will understand.”
Obama
administration officials informed the press that the Bush I measures
are “not under discussion,” and that pressures will be “largely
symbolic.” In short, Obama understands, just as Clinton and Bush II
did.
American Visionaries
At
best, settlement expansion is a side issue, rather like the issue of
“illegal outposts” -- namely those that the government of Israel has
not authorized. Concentration on these issues diverts attention from
the fact that there are no “legal outposts” and that it is the
existing settlements that are the primary problem to be faced.
The
U.S. press reports that “a partial freeze has been in place for
several years, but settlers have found ways around the strictures…
[C]onstruction in the settlements has slowed but never stopped,
continuing at an annual rate of about 1,500 to 2,000 units over the
past three years. If building continues at the 2008 rate, the 46,500
units already approved will be completed in about 20 years.… If
Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation’s
overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the
number of settler homes in the West Bank.” Peace Now, which monitors
settlement activities, estimates further that the two largest
settlements would double in size: Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim, built
mainly during the Oslo years in the salients that subdivide the West
Bank into cantons.
“Natural population growth” is largely a myth, Israel’s leading
diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, points out, citing
demographic studies by Colonel (res.) Shaul Arieli, deputy military
secretary to former prime minister and incumbent defense minister
Ehud Barak. Settlement growth consists largely of Israeli immigrants
in violation of the Geneva Conventions, assisted with generous
subsidies. Much of it is in direct violation of formal government
decisions, but carried out with the authorization of the government,
specifically Barak, considered a dove in the Israeli spectrum.
Correspondent Jackson Diehl derides the “long-dormant Palestinian
fantasy,” revived by President Abbas, “that the United States will
simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its
democratic government agrees.” He does not explain why refusal to
participate in Israel’s illegal expansion -- which, if serious,
would “force Israel to make critical concessions” -- would be
improper interference in Israel’s democracy.
Returning to reality, all of these discussions about settlement
expansion evade the most crucial issue about settlements: what the
United States and Israel have already established in the West Bank.
The evasion tacitly concedes that the illegal settlement programs
already in place are somehow acceptable (putting aside the Golan
Heights, annexed in violation of Security Council orders) -- though
the Bush “vision,” apparently accepted by Obama, moves from tacit to
explicit support for these violations of law. What is in place
already suffices to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian
self-determination. Hence, there is every indication that even on
the unlikely assumption that “natural growth” will be ended,
U.S.-Israeli rejectionism will persist, blocking the international
consensus as before.
Subsequently, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared a 10-month
suspension of new construction, with many exemptions, and entirely
excluding Greater Jerusalem, where expropriation in Arab areas and
construction for Jewish settlers continues at a rapid pace. Hillary
Clinton praised these “unprecedented” concessions on (illegal)
construction, eliciting anger and ridicule in much of the world.
It
might be different if a legitimate “land swap” were under
consideration, a solution approached at Taba and spelled out more
fully in the Geneva Accord reached in informal high-level
Israel-Palestine negotiations. The accord was presented in Geneva in
October 2003, welcomed by much of the world, rejected by Israel, and
ignored by the United States.
Washington’s
“Evenhandedness”
Barack Obama’s June
4, 2009, Cairo address to the Muslim world kept pretty much to his
well-honed “blank slate” style -- with little of substance, but
presented in a personable manner that allows listeners to write on
the slate what they want to hear. CNN captured its spirit in
headlining a report “Obama Looks to Reach the Soul of the Muslim
World.” Obama had announced the goals of his address in an interview
with New
York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman. “‘We have a joke around the White House,’ the
president said. ‘We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until
it stops working and nowhere is truth-telling more important than
the Middle East.’” The White House commitment is most welcome, but
it is useful to see how it translates into practice.
Obama
admonished his audience that it is easy to “point fingers… but if we
see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be
blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of
both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and
Palestinians each live in peace and security.”
Turning from
Obama-Friedman Truth to truth, there is a third side, with a
decisive role throughout: the United States. But that participant in
the conflict Obama omitted. The omission is understood to be normal
and appropriate, hence unmentioned: Friedman’s column is headlined
“Obama Speech Aimed at Both Arabs and Israelis.” The front-page Wall
Street Journal report
on Obama’s speech appears under the heading “Obama Chides Israel,
Arabs in His Overture to Muslims.” Other reports are the same.
The
convention is understandable on the doctrinal principle that though
the U.S. government sometimes makes mistakes, its intentions are by
definition benign, even noble. In the world of attractive imagery,
Washington has always sought desperately to be an honest broker,
yearning to advance peace and justice. The doctrine trumps truth, of
which there is little hint in the speech or the mainstream coverage
of it.
Obama
once again echoed Bush’s “vision” of two states, without saying what
he meant by the phrase “Palestinian state.” His intentions were
clarified not only by the crucial omissions already discussed, but
also by his one explicit criticism of Israel: “The United States
does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.
This construction violates previous agreements and undermines
efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
That is, Israel should live up to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map,
rejected at once by Israel with tacit U.S. support, as noted --
though the truth is that Obama has ruled out even steps of the Bush
I variety to withdraw from participation in these crimes.
The
operative words are “legitimacy” and “continued.” By omission, Obama
indicates that he accepts Bush’s vision: the vast existing
settlement and infrastructure projects are “legitimate,” thus
ensuring that the phrase “Palestinian state” means “fried chicken.”
Always
even-handed, Obama also had an admonition for the Arab states: they
“must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important
beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” Plainly,
however, it cannot be a meaningful “beginning” if Obama continues to
reject its core principles: implementation of the international
consensus. To do so, however, is evidently not Washington’s
“responsibility” in Obama’s vision; no explanation given, no notice
taken.
On
democracy, Obama said that “we would not presume to pick the outcome
of a peaceful election” -- as in January 2006, when Washington
picked the outcome with a vengeance, turning at once to severe
punishment of the Palestinians because it did not like the outcome
of a peaceful election, all with Obama’s apparent approval judging
by his words before, and actions since, taking office.
Obama
politely refrained from comment about his host, President Mubarak,
one of the most brutal dictators in the region, though he has had
some illuminating words about him. As he was about to board a plane
to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two “moderate” Arab states, “Mr.
Obama signaled that while he would mention American concerns about
human rights in Egypt, he would not challenge Mr. Mubarak too
sharply, because he is a ‘force for stability and good’ in the
Middle East… Mr. Obama said he did not regard Mr. Mubarak as an
authoritarian leader. ‘No, I tend not to use labels for folks,’ Mr.
Obama said. The president noted that there had been criticism ‘of
the manner in which politics operates in Egypt,’ but he also said
that Mr. Mubarak had been ‘a stalwart ally, in many respects, to the
United States.’”
When a
politician uses the word “folks,” we should brace ourselves for the
deceit, or worse, that is coming. Outside of this context, there are
“people,” or often “villains,” and using labels for them is highly
meritorious. Obama is right, however, not to have used the word “authoritarian,”
which is far too mild a label for his friend.
Just
as in the past, support for democracy, and for human rights as well,
keeps to the pattern that scholarship has repeatedly discovered,
correlating closely with strategic and economic objectives. There
should be little difficulty in understanding why those whose eyes
are not closed tight shut by rigid doctrine dismiss Obama’s yearning
for human rights and democracy as a joke in bad taste.
Noam Chomsky is
Institute Professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and
Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the
author of numerous books, including the New
York Times bestsellers Hegemony
or Survivaland Failed
States. His newest
book, Hopes
and Prospects,
is out this week from Haymarket Books.
[Note:
All material in this piece is sourced and footnoted in Noam
Chomsky’s new book Hopes and
Prospects.]
Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky
Posted: April 27,
2010 04:35 PM
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