TRANSCRIPT OF NOAM CHOMSKY'S LECTURE
"THE CURRENT CRISES IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
WHAT CAN WE DO?"
MASSACHUSETTS
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
December
14, 2000
Transcription by
Angie D'Urso, Feb 2, 2001.
Audio/Video Webcast of Chomsky
Lecture:
http://www.media.mit.edu/~nitin/mideast/chomsky.html
MIT must be relaxing its standards if this many people can show up right on the eve of finals.
Well, just how dangerous is the crisis in the Middle
East? There is a UN Special Envoy, a
Norwegian, Roed-Larson. A couple of
days ago, he warned that Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian areas is leading
to enormous suffering and could rapidly detonate a regional war.
Notice that he referred to the blockade. He didn’t refer to the killings, and the
other atrocities. And he’s right about
that. The blockade is the crucial
tactic. There can be a blockade which
is very effective because of the way the so-called ‘peace’ process has evolved
under U.S. direction, meaning hundreds of isolated Palestinian enclaves, some
of them tiny, which can be blocked off and strangled by the Israeli occupying
forces. That’s the basic structure of
what’s called here the peace process.
So, there can be an extremely effective blockade. And a blockade is a sensible tactic for the
United States and Israel, and it’s always together. Remember that anything that Israel does, it does by U.S.
authorization, and usually subsidy and support.
The blockade is a tactic to fine-tune the atrocities
so that they don’t become too visible, visible enough to force Washington or
the West (which means Washington essentially) to make some kind of
response.
There have been mistakes in the past and the United
States and Israel have certainly learned from them. So in 1996 for example, when Shimon Peres launched yet another
attack on Lebanon, killing large numbers of people and driving
hundreds/thousands out of their home, it was fine and the U.S. was able to
support it and Clinton did support it, up until one mistake, when they bombed a
UN Camp in Qana, killing over a hundred people who were refugees in the
camp. Clinton at first justified it,
but as the international reaction came in, he had to back off, and Israel was
forced, under U.S. orders in effect, to call off the operation and withdraw. That’s the kind of mistake you want to
avoid. So, for those of you going into
the diplomatic service, you can’t allow that kind of mistake to happen. You want low level atrocities, fine-tuned,
so that an international response is unnecessary. [Laughter]
The same thing happened more recently, just a year ago,
last September, when the U.S.-backed slaughter in East Timor, which had been
going on nicely for about 25 years, finally got out of hand to such a degree
that Clinton was compelled, after the Country was virtually destroyed, to
essentially tell the Indonesian generals that the game is over, and they
instantly withdrew. So that, you want
to avoid.
In this particular case, there is a clear effort to
keep killings, which is what hits the front pages, at roughly the level of
Kosovo before the NATO bombing. In
fact, that’s about the level of killings right now, so that the story will sort
of fade into the background.
Now, of course, the Kosovo story was quite
different. At that time, the propaganda
needs were the opposite. The killings
were under fairly similar circumstances and the level of Serbian response was
approximately like Israel’s response in the occupied territories. (Then, in fact, there were attacks from
right across the border, so it would be as if Hizbollah was carrying out
attacks in the Galili, or something like that). That time, the propaganda needs were different, so therefore, it
was described passionately as genocide.
A well designed propaganda system can make those distinctions. So in that case it was genocide, and in this
case it’s unnoticeable and justified reprisal.
The general idea, and I think you can expect this to
continue for awhile, is for the tactics to be restricted to: assassination; lots and lots of people
wounded (severely - many of them will die later, but that doesn’t enter into
consciousness); starvation (according to the UN, there are about 600,000 people
facing starvation, but again that is below the level); and curfews (24 hour
curfews, like in Hebron, for weeks at a time, while a couple of hundred Israeli
settlers strut around freely, but the rest of the population, tens of thousands
of people, are locked in their homes, allowed out a couple of hours a week).
The isolation in the hundreds of enclaves, and so on,
is so that suffering can be kept below the level that might elicit a Western
response. And the assumption, which is pretty plausible, is that there is a
limit to what people can endure, and ultimately they will give up.
Well, there is, however, a problem in the Arab world,
which is more sensitive to these massive atrocities, and it could explode, and
that’s what Roed-Larson is warning about.
The governance in the Arab world is extremely fragile, especially in the
crucial oil producing region. Any
popular unrest might threaten the very fragile rule of the U.S. clients, which
the U.S. would be unwilling to accept.
And it might, equally unacceptably, induce the rulers of the oil
monarchies to move to improve relations (particularly with Iran, which, in
fact, they’ve already been doing), which would undermine the whole framework
for U.S. domination of the world’s major energy reserves.
Back in
1994, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, described what he
called a paradigm for the post cold war era, and for the Middle East. The paradigm was what’s called “dual
containment”, so it contains Iraq and Iran, but as he pointed out, dual
containment relies crucially on the Oslo process, the process that brings about
relative peace between Israel and the Arabs.
Unless that can be sustained, the dual containment can’t be sustained,
and the whole U.S. current policy for controlling the region will be in serious
danger. That’s happened already.
Just two
years ago in December 1998, the U.S. and Britain bombed Iraq with outright and
very explicit contempt for world opinion, including the UN Security
Council. Remember that the bombing was
timed just at the moment when the Security Council was having an emergency
session to consider the problems of inspection in Iraq, and as they began, they
got the announcement that the U.S. and Britain had pre-empted it by
bombing. That, and the events before
it, lead to a very negative reaction in the Arab World, and elsewhere for that
matter, and did lead to very visible steps, particularly by the Saudi ruling
monarchy, but also others, towards accommodation to Iran, and indication of
some degree of acceptance of an Iranian position that has been around for
awhile, that there should be a strategic alliance in the region that’s
independent of Western (meaning primarily U.S.) power. That is something that the U.S. is highly
unlikely to accept and could lead to very dangerous consequences.
Furthermore,
on top of this, the countries in the region, Iran and Syria in particular, are
testing missiles, which might be able to reach Israel. The United States and Israel are working not
only on missiles, but also on an anti-missile system, the Arrow anti-missile
system. When armaments are at that level,
tensions can easily break out suddenly and unpredictably and lead to a war with
advanced weapons, which can get out of
hand pretty quickly.
Well,
how dangerous is that? Turn to another
expert, General Lee Butler, recently retired.
He was head of the Strategic Command at the highest nuclear agency under
Clinton, STRATCOM. He wrote a couple of
years ago that it’s dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of
animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself,
ostensibly with stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the hundreds, and that
inspires other nations to do so as well, and also to develop other weapons of
mass destruction as a deterrent, which is highly combustible and can lead to
very dangerous outcomes. All of this is
still more dangerous when the sponsor of that one nation is regarded generally
in the world as a rogue state, which is unpredictable and out of control,
irrational and vindictive, and insists on portraying itself in that
fashion. In fact, the Strategic Command
under Clinton has, in its highest level pronouncement, advised that the United States
should maintain a national persona, as they call it, of being irrational and
vindictive and out of control so that the rest of the world will be
frightened. And they are. And the U.S. should also rely on nuclear
weapons as the core of its strategy, including the right of first use against
non-nuclear states, including those that have signed the Non-Proliferation
treaty. Those proposals have been
built into presidential directives, Clinton-era presidential directives, that
don’t make much noise around here, but it is understood in the world, which is
naturally impelled to respond by developing weapons of mass destruction of its
own in self defense. But these are
prospects that are indeed recognized by U.S. intelligence and high level U.S.
analysts. About two years ago, Harvard
professor Samuel Huntington wrote an article in a very prestigious journal,
Foreign Affairs, in which he pointed out that for much of the world, he
indicated most of the world, the United States is considered a dangerous rogue
state, and the main threat to their national existence. And it’s not surprising, if you look at what
happens in the world from outside the framework of the U.S. indoctrination
system. That’s very plausible even from
documents, and certainly from actions, and much of the world does see it that
way, and that adds to the severe dangers of the situation.
Well,
the recent history of the Middle East provides quite a few further
warnings. I’ll just mention one
example, which is very crucial in the present context right now - that’s 1967,
in the June 1967 war when Israel destroyed the Arab armies, the armies of the
Arab states, Egypt most importantly, and it conquered the currently occupied
territories. That set the stage for
what’s still going on right now. At
that time, the Soviet Union was still around, and the conflict there became
serious enough so that it almost led to a war – a nuclear war, which would have
been the end of the story. Then Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara later observed, in his words, “we damned near had
war”. At the end of the June war there
were hot line communications, apparently President Kosygin warned that if you
want to have war, you can have it.
There were naval confrontations between the Russian and the U.S. fleets
in the Eastern Mediterranean.
There
was also another case. There was an
Israeli attack on a U.S. spy ship, USS Liberty, which killed about 35 sailors
and crewman and practically sank the ship.
The Liberty didn’t know who was attacking it. The attackers were disguised.
Before they were disabled, they got messages back to the 6th Fleet
Headquarters in Naples, who also didn’t know who was attacking it. They sent out Phantoms, which were
nuclear-armed, because they didn’t have any that weren’t nuclear-armed, to
respond to whoever was attacking it, and they didn’t know who they were
supposed to bomb – Russia, Egypt, you know, anybody. Apparently the planes were called back directly from the Pentagon
sort of at the last moment. But that
event alone could have lead to a nuclear war.
All of
this was understood to be extremely hazardous.
Most of this probably had to do with Israel’s plans to conquer the Golan
Heights, which they did after the ceasefire.
And they didn’t want the United States to know about it in advance
because the U.S. would have stopped them, and probably that’s what lies behind
most of this. Documents aren’t out, so
we can only speculate, and they will probably never come out. Anyhow, the situation was ominous enough so
that the great powers on all sides figured that they better put a stop to it,
and they very quickly met at the Security Council and accepted a resolution, UN
242, the famous UN 242 from November 1967, which laid out a framework for a
diplomatic settlement.
And it’s
worth paying close attention to what UN 242 was and is. It’s different now from what it was
then. The information about this is
public technically, but barely known and often distorted, so just pay attention
to what it is. You can easily check it
if you like.
UN 242
called for - the basic idea was full peace in return for a full
withdrawal. So, Israel would withdraw
from the territories that it just conquered, and in return, the Arab states
would agree to a full peace with it.
There was kind of a minor footnote, that the withdrawal could involve
minor and mutual adjustments. So, for
example, regarding some line or curve, they could straighten it out, that sort
of thing. But that was the policy, and
that was U.S. policy - it was under U.S. initiative. So, full peace in return for full withdrawal. Notice that this very crucially, and it’s
very crucial now, that UN 242 was completely “rejectionist”.
I use
the term “rejectionist” now in a slightly non-standard sense, in a non-racist
sense. It is usually used in a
completely racist sense. So the
rejectionists are those who deny Israel’s right to national
self-determination. But, of course,
there are two national groups contesting, and I am using the term rejectionist
in a neutral sense, hence non-standard, to refer to a denial of the rights of
either of the two contestants, including denials of Palestinian rights. That terminology is never used in the United
States, and can’t be used, because if it is used, it will turn out that the
United States is the leader of the rejectionist camp, and we can’t have
that. So therefore the term is always
used in a racist sense. So, you will
understand that I’m switching from normal usage now.
UN 242
was completely rejectionist. It offered
nothing to the Palestinians. There was
no reference to them, except the phrase that there was a refugee problem that
somehow had to be dealt with. That’s
it. Apart from that, it was to be an
agreement among the states. The states
were to reach full peace treaties in the context of complete Israeli withdrawal
from the territories. That’s UN
242.
Well,
without proceeding, for the local people in the region, the Israelis and the
Palestinians, the crisis is obviously extremely grave. It could lead to a regional war that could
easily escalate to a global war with weapons of mass destruction with
consequences that are unimaginable, and that could happen at almost any
time.
Secondly,
the U.S. role is highly significant.
That’s always true throughout the world just because of U.S. power, but
it’s particularly true in the Middle East, which has been recognized in high
level planning for 50 years (and goes back beyond that, but explicitly for 50
years) as a core element in U.S. global planning. Just to quote documents from 50 years ago, declassified
documents, the Middle East was described as the “strategically most important
region of the world”, “a stupendous source of strategic power”, “the richest
economic prize in the world”, and, you know, on and on in the same vein. The U.S. is not going to give that up. And the reason is very simple. That’s the world’s major energy reserves,
and not only are they valuable to have because of the enormous profit that
comes from them, but control over them gives a kind of veto power over the
actions of others for obvious reasons, which were recognized right away at the
time. So, that’s a core issue. It’s been the prime concern of U.S. military
and strategic planning for half a century.
The gulf region, the region of major energy reserves, has always been
the target of the major U.S. intervention forces, with a base system that
extends over a good part of the world, from the Pacific to the Azores, with
consequences for all of those regions because they are backup bases for the intervention
forces targeting the gulf region, also including the Indian Ocean.
And this
is a big issue right now, in England at least, and much of the world, but not
in the United States. The inhabitants
of an Indian Ocean island, the Diego Garcia, that were kicked out and
unceremoniously dumped on another island, Mauritius, some years ago, and those
who managed to survive it, have been fighting through the British Courts (this
was a British dependency) to try to gain the right to return to their homes. They finally won a couple of months ago in
the High Court in England and were granted the right to return, except that the
U.S. won’t relinquish the Island, where it has a major military base that’s
used for the Middle East targeted forces.
Just a couple of days ago, they asked for indemnity of about 6 billion
dollars, and the U.S. is refusing, of course.
Madeline Albright commented on it.
She said it’s just an issue between Britain and Mauritius. We don’t have anything to do with it, even
though we hold the Island and refuse to allow them to return, and refuse to pay
indemnities. I think you’ll search
pretty far to find some discussion of this in the U.S. press, but that’s part
of the base system for targeting the Middle East.
Well,
for years, there was a kind of a public pretext for all of this. The public pretext was that we had to defend
ourselves against the Russians. That
was the pretext for everything, and the pretext for this in particular. There is a pretty rich internal record,
bequest by documents, which tells quite a different story, however. The story it tells is that the Russians
were, at most, a marginal factor, often no factor. But, fortunately there is no need to debate the matter anymore
because it has been conceded publicly.
It was conceded, in fact, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
which sort of got rid of the pretext.
You can’t appeal to the Russian threat anymore.
A couple
of weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bush Administration submitted
its annual message to Congress, calling for a huge military budget, and it was
a very interesting document.
Unfortunately it wasn’t reported, but it was very important obviously -
the first call for a huge military budget after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
when you can’t appeal to the Russians anymore.
So, therefore, it’s revealing and tells you what’s really going on. As expected, the Russian threat was gone. We don’t need a huge Pentagon budget because
of the Russians who aren’t around anymore, but we still need it. In fact, it turned out to be exactly as it
was in the past, and we needed it for reasons which are now frankly
expressed. We needed it because of what
they called the technological sophistication of Third World countries, which is
a way of saying they pose a danger of becoming independent. And, we need it because we have to maintain
what’s called the defense industrial base, which is what pays our salaries
among other things. The defense
industrial base is just a term for hi-tech industry, which has to be funded by
the public, which has to bear the costs and risks of development. MIT is one of the funnels for that. That has to be maintained. We have to keep the source of the dynamic
sectors of the economy, which are substantially in the public sectors, so we
have to maintain the defense industrial base.
And we also have to keep the intervention forces that we’ve always had
still targeting the Middle East, the gulf region. Then it adds (where the threat to our interests that involve
possible military action could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door – contrary to
half a century, forty years, of lies), sorry, folks, we’ve been lying to you,
but we still need them there because of the technological sophistication of
Third World powers, that is, the threat that they may become independent.
Notice
that the threat to our interests could also not be laid at Iraq’s door at that
time because Saddam Hussein was still a nice guy. He had only been gassing Kurds, and torturing dissidents, and
that sort of thing. But he was
considered obedient, so he was a friend and ally. This is early 1990. It
changed a few months later.
So, we
don’t have to debate the question of the war with the Russians. It’s now conceded that that was not a
significant threat, could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door, and the threat, in
fact, is what it is all over the world, and has been right through the cold
war, the threat of what’s called “radical nationalism” or “independent
nationalism”. It doesn’t make much of a
difference where it is in the political spectrum. But, if it’s independent, it’s a danger and you have to undermine
it as a way of threatening what’s called stability, that is, the subordination
of the world to the dominant interests that the U.S. represents.
Actually
U.S. relations with Israel developed in that context. The 1967 war was a major step forward, when Israel showed its
power and ability to deal with Third World radical nationalists, who were, at
that time, threatening, particularly Nasser.
Nasser was engaged in a kind of proxy war with Saudi Arabia, which is
the most important country, that’s where all the oil is, and the Yemen. And Israel put an end to that by smashing
Nasser’s armies and won a lot of points for that, and U.S. relations with
Israel really became solidified at that point.
But it had been recognized 10 years earlier and the U.S. intelligence
had noted that what they called the logical corollary to opposition to radical
Arab nationalism is support for Israel as a reliable base for U.S. power in the
region. And Israel is reliable because
it’s under threat, and therefore it needs U.S. support, which has another
logical corollary, that for the U.S. interests’, it’s a good idea for Israel to
be under threat. That essentially
continues, and a good deal of the relationship is based on the way that context
developed. If there was time, I could
talk about it, but I’ll skip it.
Anyhow,
we can thankfully put the pretext aside at this point, and just look at the
reasons which are now on the table - it’s the threat of independent
nationalism, and in the case of the Gulf region, that’s particularly important
because that’s the world’s major energy reserves.
Well,
the final consideration, on to the topic, is that the U.S. role is not the only
one, of course. It’s one factor in a
complicated mixture, but it is a decisive factor, and crucially, it’s the one
factor that’s under our control. We can
directly influence it. So, we can
bewail the terrible actions of other people, but we can do something about our
own actions. That’s a rather critical
difference, in personal life and in international affairs. And it’s illuminating to observe how much
attention is given to the crimes of others, which most of the time we can’t do
anything about, and compare it with the amount of attention that is given to
our own crimes, which we can do a great deal about. That’s an instructive comparison, and if you take the trouble to
work it out, you learn a lot about the intellectual culture in which we live
and to which we’re expected to contribute.
For that reason alone, and it’s far from the only one, we ought to be
discussing primarily the U.S. role. And
furthermore, that role is little understood.
It’s often just suppressed, which is another reason to focus on it.
Well,
let me illustrate the things that are happening right at this moment. The Intifada, the current uprising, began on
September 29th, that was the day after General Ariel Sharon appeared
at the Haram al Sharif with a lot of troops.
That event alone was provocative, but it probably would have gone by
without any reaction. What happened the
next day, however, was different. The
next day is the Friday, the day of prayers, and there was a huge military
presence, mostly border guards who were kind of like the paramilitaries, the
ones you farm out atrocities to, and they were there in force, and as people
came out of the Mosques, it was obviously extremely provocative. Some rock throwing took place. They shot into the crowds, killed four or
more people, wounded over a hundred.
And after that, it just took off.
This is incidentally Barak, not Sharon.
It’s easy to blame Sharon, and there’s plenty to blame on him for fifty
years of atrocities but this happened to be Barak’s planning.
Let me
just consider one aspect of what has gone on since, mainly the use of
helicopter gunships. On October 1st,
right after this, Israel military helicopters, meaning U.S. helicopters with
Israeli pilots, killed two Palestinians in Gaza. On October 2nd, the next day, they killed 10
Palestinians, wounded 35 others in Gaza at Netzarim, which if you follow this
closely, you’ll notice is the scene of many of the major atrocities, including
the famous photo of the 12 year old boy who was killed. What’s Netzarim? Well, the fact is, Netzarim is just an excuse to split the Gaza
Strip in two. There’s a small
settlement south of Gaza, the only purpose of which is to require a big
military outpost to protect it, and the military outpost then requires a road,
a huge road, which cuts the Gaza Strip in two, so that separates Gaza City, the
main population concentration, from the Southern part of the strip, and Egypt,
and insures that in any outcome, Gaza will be imprisoned inside Israel in
effect. There are other breaks down farther
South, but Netzarim is the main one, and that is where a lot of the atrocities
have been. So this October 2nd
killing of 10 and wounding of 35 at Netzarim by helicopters is just one of
these many incidents.
On
October 3rd, the next day, the Defense Correspondent of Ha'aretz,
which is the major serious Hebrew newspaper,
reported the largest purchase of military helicopters in a decade – that means
U.S. military helicopters. These were
Blackhawks, and spare parts for Apaches.
Apaches are the main attack helicopters. These had been delivered a few weeks earlier. They were getting spare parts, also jet fuel.
The next
day, October 4th, Jane’s Defence Weekly, which is the major military
journal in the world, the British military journal, reported that the Clinton
administration had further approved a new sale of attack helicopters, Apache
attack helicopters, because they had decided that upgrading the ones that they
had just sent would not be sufficient, so they really had to send new, more
advanced ones. The same day the Boston
Globe reported that Apache attack helicopters were attacking apartment
complexes with rockets, again in Netzarim.
The international press agencies at that time quoted Pentagon officials,
as saying, and I’m quoting a Pentagon official, “U.S. weapon sales do not carry
a stipulation that the weapons cannot be used against civilians. We cannot second guess an Israeli commander
who calls in helicopter gunships.”
Okay, so, the story so far - U.S. helicopter gunships are being used to
attack civilians, but they aren’t advanced enough, and Israel doesn’t have
enough of them, so therefore, the Clinton administration had to move in with
the biggest purchase in a decade.
Purchase means American taxpayers pay for it in some indirect
fashion. And then it had the next day
to extend it further, sending them more advanced Apache helicopters, and
there’s no stipulation going along with them that they can’t be used against civilians. Well, that carries us up to October 4th.Then
come more and more attacks on civilians, and I’ll skip them.
The
first reference in the U.S. press to any of this is on October 12th. There was an opinion piece in the Raleigh
North Carolina newspaper, which said they thought this was kind of a bad
idea. That’s also the last reference to
it in the U.S. press, meaning the only reference. It’s not that editors don’t know about this. Of course they know about it. In fact, it has been explicitly brought to
the attention of editors of leading newspapers, as if they didn’t know
already. And it’s not that it’s
unimportant, because it is obviously very important. It’s just the kind of news that’s not fit to print. And that’s very typical, not only in this
part of the world, but everywhere. It’s
extremely important that the public be kept in the dark about what’s being
done, because if they know about it, they’re not going to like it. And if they don’t like it, they might do
something about it. So, there’s a grave
responsibility on the media, and on intellectuals generally, the educational
system and so on, to ensure that people are kept in the dark about things that
it’s better for them not to know, like this for example. And the task is carried out with very
impressive dedication. This is not an
untypical example.
On
October 19th, Amnesty International published a report condemning
the United States for providing new military helicopters to Israel. They were also reporting the
atrocities. That was not reported in
the United States. It was
elsewhere.
On
November 10th, Amnesty International published a much broader
condemnation of the excessive use of force and terror, and so on, that was
barely mentioned. So it continues.
Well,
let’s turn to the question what can we do?
The answer is we have choices.
We can do a lot. So, for
example, we can continue to provide helicopter gunships and other military
support to ensure that Israel is able to attack civilians, maintain a blockade,
starve them to death, and so on. And we
can provide the funding that allows Israel to continue to integrate the
occupied territories within Israel proper as it has been doing, settlements,
infrastructure, etc. It doesn’t matter
which government is in office. It goes
on under Barak about the same way it did under Netanyahu. And it’s anticipated to go on next
year. The budget provisions have
already been made for next year. So we
can continue with that if we’d like.
Or, we can act to stop their participation in these activities, which is
pretty straightforward. It doesn’t
require bombing or sanctions. It just
means stop participating in atrocities, the easiest thing to do. That’s a choice. And, in fact, we may even go further and call them off, as is
pretty easily done when a country has the power that the United States
has. I gave a couple of examples.
Well, if
we decide on the latter choice, which is always open here and elsewhere,
there’s a prerequisite. The
prerequisite is that we know what’s going on.
So you can’t make that choice, say to stop providing military
helicopters (and you know the helicopters are just an illustration of a much
bigger picture) unless you know about
it. Again, the grave responsibility of the
intellectual world, the media, journals, universities, and others, is to prevent
people from knowing. That takes
effort. It’s not easy. As in this case, it takes some dedication to
suppress the facts and make sure that the population doesn’t know what’s being
done in their name, because if they do, they aren’t going to like it, and
they’ll respond. Then you get into
trouble.
Well,
the very same applies to the diplomatic record. Let me turn to that.
Let’s begin with the current phase of diplomacy, what started in
September 1993, that’s the famous Oslo process. In September 1993, there was a meeting on the White House lawn,
very august, with the Boston Globe having a headline describing it as “a day of
awe”. The Israelis and the Palestinians
agreed, under Clinton’s supervision, to what’s called a Declaration of
Principles. There were at that time a
number of issues, and it’s crucial to understand how the Declaration of
Principles dealt with them.
Okay, so
one issue, was territory - what’s going to happen with the occupied
territories, how they are going to be assigned – that’s issue number one.
Number
two, is the issue of national rights.
Now that issue only arises for Palestinians. There is no question in the case of Israel, that’s just not in
question and hasn’t been in question at all.
The only question is what about the rights of the Palestinians?
The
third question is what about the right to resist? And do the Palestinians, or the Lebanese for that matter, have
the right to resist military occupation.
That’s the third question.
The
fourth question, which is kind of a counterpart to that, is whether the
occupying power (does Israel, which means the U.S. here) have the right to
attack in the occupied territories and in Lebanon? Those are the four main questions.
There
were answers in the Declaration of Principles.
With regard to territory, the Declaration of Principles stated that the
permanent settlement would be on the basis of UN 242, but that raises a
question. What does UN 242 mean? Here, we have to go to the earlier diplomatic
record. I’ll return to it in a moment.
The
second, with regard to national rights, again, is settled in terms of UN
242. And anyone who is paying attention
in September 1993 could see exactly where this was going. The Declaration of Principles states that
the permanent settlement, long term outcome, you know, the end of the road,
will be based upon UN 242 alone. Now
for 20 years, the issue in international diplomacy had been the rejectionism of
UN 242. Remember, UN 242 says nothing
about the Palestinians. For 20 years
there have been a series of efforts by the whole world to supplement UN 242 to
include Palestinian rights alongside the rights of Israel, which were never in
question. That was the issue from the
mid-70’s right up until Oslo, and the U.S. won flat out on that one. Palestinian rights are not to be
considered. It’s just UN 242, no
Palestinian rights. They are not mentioned
and that’s the permanent settlement.
So, territories, it’s UN 242, which means what the U.S. decides (I’ll
come back to that), national rights – U.S. wins flat out, the rest of the world
capitulates. What about the right to
resist?
Well,
Arafat agreed at the signing of the Declaration of Principles to abandon any
right to resist, and it’s taken for granted that in Lebanon the population also
has no right to resist. It’s called
terrorism if they resist. Why did
Arafat have to state this? He actually
said it over and over again. You know,
he made solemn pronouncements to that effect over and over, but the purpose
here was just pure humiliation. You
have to make sure you humiliate the lower breeds to make sure that they don’t
get too big for their britches. George
Schultz, Secretary of State, who is considered something of a dove, put it
pretty plainly. He said it’s true that
Arafat has said unc, unc, unc, and he said oh, oh, oh, but he hasn’t said
uncle, uncle, uncle in a sufficiently submissive tone, and we ought to make
sure that he does, over and over again.
That’s the way you treat the lower breeds. So, once again, Arafat had to say uncle, loudly and submissively,
and thank you Massa, and sign a statement saying, you know, once again, we
reject the right to resist. Same in
Lebanon, it isn’t even a question.
What
about the fourth question, the right to attack? A counterpart is Israel’s right to attack. Well, they’ve retained that right, and
Israel continues to use it repeatedly with U.S. support before and after. Notice that over this period there is
virtually no defensive pretext, contrary to what you read in U.S.
commentary. That goes way back. But, contrary to propaganda, almost the
entire series of U.S./Israeli attacks, certainly in the occupied territories,
but in Lebanon as well, were not for any defensive purpose. They were initiated. That includes the 1982 invasion, and that’s
no small matter. I mean, it’s not
considered a big deal here, but during the 22 years that Israel illegally
occupied Southern Lebanon in violation of Security Council orders (but with
U.S. authorization), they killed about maybe 45,000 or 50,000 Lebanese and
Palestinians, not a trivial number.
This included many very brutal attacks going on after the Oslo accords
as well, in 1983, 1986, and so on.
Incidentally,
you might again want to compare this with Serbia and Kosovo. The comparison in this case has to be kind
of like a thought experiment, because it never happened. But, imagine if Serbia had been bombing
Albania to the extent that Israel was bombing Lebanon, that would be an
analogy. It didn’t happen, but you can
just imagine what the reaction would have been. It tells you again something about our values and of the need to
maintain discipline on these issues, so that people don’t think it through.
Well,
the PLO accepted all this, just abjectly.
Israel in return and the Declaration of Principles committed itself to
absolutely nothing. You should take a
look back at what happened on the White House lawn, on “the day of awe”. Prime Minister Rabin made a very terse
comment, a couple of lines, in which, after Arafat agreed to all of this stuff,
he said that Israel would now recognize the PLO as the representative of the
Palestinians – period. Nothing about
national rights. Nothing. We just recognize you as the representative
of the Palestinians, and his Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, considered a dove,
explained why right away in Israel, in Hebrew.
He said, well, yeah, we can recognize them now because they’ve
capitulated, so there is no problem in recognizing them. They can now become a kind of junior partner
in controlling the Palestinian population, which follows a traditional colonial
pattern.
Israel
and the United States had made a rather serious error in the occupied
territories. It’s not a good idea to
try to control a subject population with your own troops. The way it is usually done is, you farm it
out to the natives. That’s the way the
British ran India for a couple of hundred years. India was mostly controlled by Indian troops, often taken from
other regions, you know like the Gurkhas and
so on. That’s the way the United States
runs Central America, with mercenary forces, which are called armies, if you
can keep them under control. That’s the
way South Africa ran the Black areas.
Most of the atrocities are carried out by Black mercenaries, and in the
Bantustans, it was entirely Blacks.
That’s the standard colonial pattern and it makes a lot of sense. If you have your own troops out there, it
causes all kinds of problems. You know,
first of all they suffer injuries, and these are people who don’t like to feel
good about killing people, and their parents get upset and so on and so forth,
but if you have mercenaries or paramilitaries, you don’t have those
problems. So, Israel and the United
States were going to turn to the standard colonial pattern and have the
Palestinian forces, who in fact mostly came from Tunis, control the local
population – control them economically and politically, as well as
militarily. That was the idea, a
sensible reversion to standard colonial practice.
Well,
let’s move a little back to the earlier diplomatic record, which helps put all
of this in context. So, what about the
right to resist? The right to resist
military occupation in the territories, and in Lebanon? That actually has been discussed in the
international community, though you wouldn’t know it here. In December 1987, which was right at the
peak of all of the furor about international terrorism, you know, the plague of
the modern world, and so on and so forth, the UN General Assembly considered
and passed a resolution condemning terrorism very strongly, you know,
international terrorism is the worst crime there is, and had all of the right
wording in it and so on and so forth.
The resolution was passed 153 to 2, which is actually pretty
normal. The two were the usual ones,
the United States and Israel. One
country only abstained, Honduras, for unknown reasons, so it was essentially
unanimous except for the United States and Israel. Now, why would the United States and Israel reject, and that
means veto since it’s a U.S. vote against, a resolution denouncing
terrorism? Well, the reason is because
it contained one paragraph which said that nothing in this resolution
prejudices the right of people to struggle against racist and colonialist
regimes and foreign military occupation and to gain the support of others for
their struggle for freedom under these conditions. Well that, the U.S. won’t accept of course. For example, that would have given the
A.N.C. in South Africa the right to resist the South African regime, which is
unacceptable. It would have given the
Lebanese the right to resist Israeli military occupation and attacks which
can’t be accepted, and it would have extended to the occupied territories as
well. So, therefore, the U.S. and Israel
rejected it, and in fact, as usual, it is vetoed from history. It was never reported here, it was never
mentioned, it might as well not exist unless you read this in the literature. It’s there, I mean if you go to the UN’s
dusty records you can find it. But
that’s the right to resist, which was blocked by the United States in 1987 and
is out of history.
What
about the right to attack? Well, that
exists by U.S. fiat, as I mentioned during the 22 years of Israeli occupation
of Southern Lebanon. With U.S.
authorization, they killed tens of thousands of people, probably 40,000 to
50,000, and there are plenty of atrocities, terrorist iron fist operations in
1985 for example. But, it’s not only
there. The right extends much
further. So 1985 and 1986 are
interesting years. That was the peak of
the hysteria about international terrorism, you know, the top story and so on
and so forth. And, in fact, there was
plenty of international terrorism in those years. For example, in 1985 Israel bombed Tunis, killing 75 people,
Tunisians and Palestinians, no pretext.
The United States publicly backed it, although Schultz, then Secretary
of State, backed off when the Security Council condemned it unanimously as an
act of armed aggression, namely a war crime, with the U.S. abstaining. The U.S. was directly involved. The 6th Fleet in the
Mediterranean sort of pulled back so that the Israeli planes would be able to
refuel with the 6th Fleet pretending not to notice them, and the
United States did not warn Tunisia, an ally, that this bombing attack was
coming. So that’s a major act of
terrorism outside the local area of the Middle East, and there are many
others. In fact, the main act of
terrorism in that year, sort of garden variety terrorism, was a car bombing in
Beirut which killed 80 people and wounded about 200, set off by the C.I.A.,
British Intelligence, and Saudi Intelligence, in an effort to kill a Muslim
cleric who they missed, but they got a lot of their people. It was a car bombing right outside a mosque,
timed to go off right when everybody would be coming out, so you get maximum
killing of civilians. That’s there, but
also not in the annals of terrorism, anymore than the bombing of Tunis, or for
example, the U.S. bombing of Libya the next year, which is another act of armed
aggression, but considered okay.
I should
say that Arab opinion in the Middle East, and here too, is very misled about
all this in my opinion, pretty clearly in fact. It very consistently, if you read it now or in the past, claims that
the United States overlooks Israeli terrorism because of the Jewish influence
or Jewish lobby, or something like that.
And this is simply untrue. It’s
missing the fact that a much more general principle applies to this case and to
many others. The principle is that the
United States has the right of terrorism and that right is inherited by its
clients, and it doesn’t matter who they are.
So, Israel happens to be a U.S. client, so it inherits the right of terror.
And you
can see this very easily in other parts of the world. Just to give one illustration from a different part of the world
at the same time, 1987, the State Department conceded what anyone paying
attention knew, that the U.S. terrorist forces attacking Nicaragua were being
directed, commanded, and trained to attack what were called “soft” targets,
meaning defenseless civilian targets, like agricultural cooperatives and health
centers and so on. And they were able
to do this because the U.S. had total control of the air, and surveillance, and
was able to communicate the position of the Nicaraguan army forces to the local
terrorist forces attacking from Honduras, that they could go somewhere else,
and so on. That was all conceded
publicly, but nobody paid much attention except those who are interested in
these things. But the human rights
groups did protest. Americas Watch
protested against this, and said this was really awful.
And
there was a response, an interesting response that you should read, by Michael
Kinsley, who was a kind of representative of the dovish left in mainstream
commentary, and still is. He had an
article in which he pointed out, speaking from the dovish left, that it’s
perfectly true that these terrorist attacks against undefended targets, in his
words, “caused vast civilian suffering but they may nevertheless be sensible
and legitimate”, and the way we decide this is by carrying out “cost benefit
analysis”, namely, and I’m quoting all through this, we have to measure “the
amount of blood and misery that we will be pouring in” and compare it with the
outcome, you know, democracy in our sense, meaning ruled by the business world
with the population crushed. And if the
cost benefit analysis comes out okay, then it’s right to pour in blood and
misery and cause vast suffering. In
short, aggression and terror have to meet a pragmatic criterion, and we are the
ones who decide whether it’s met, not anybody else, and U.S. clients inherit
that right – and it doesn’t have to be Israel.
It can be anybody else. So, it
can be Arabs for example. Saddam
Hussein is a striking case. In 1988
remember, Saddam Hussein was still a loyal friend and ally, and that’s when he
committed his worst crimes, that’s the gassing of the Kurds, and so on. The U.S. thought that was okay and they
continued to support him. They
downplayed it, and provided him with military equipment, sent agricultural
assistance which he badly needed. The
Kurds were in an agricultural region, so Iraq was short of food, so the Bush
Administration moved in and that continued.
In fact, Iraq, an Arab state, was allowed to do something that up until
then only Israel had been allowed to do, mainly attack a U.S. ship and kill
sailors. Iraq was permitted to attack
the USS Stark, the destroyer, and kill 37 crewmen with missiles, and didn’t
even get a tap on the wrist. That means
you’re really privileged if you are allowed to do that. Up until then, the only country that had
been allowed to do that was Israel in 1967 in the case of the USS Liberty. And remember, this is an Arab state. That was important. Again, nobody pays much attention here, but
in the region people paid attention. In
particular, Iran paid attention. This
was part of what convinced Iran to capitulate to Iraq as the U.S. wanted. The other major event that convinced Iran
that the U.S. was really serious was the shooting down of an Iranian
airliner. Killing 290 people by an
American warship in Iranian airspace, it wasn’t even a problem. Again it’s kind of fluffed off here, not
very important, but for the Iranians, that was important, and they understood
from these acts that the U.S. was going to go to any lengths to ensure that
Saddam Hussein won, so they capitulated, not a small point in the politics of
the region. Here, people don’t want to
think about it, but elsewhere in the world they do.
So, I
think the thing to be recognized is, contrary to a lot of the Arab commentary
abroad and here, Washington really is an equal opportunity employer. That is, it adheres pretty well to a policy
of non-discrimination in advocacy of terror and war crimes, and so on. Other issues are involved, not, you know,
who you are.
Well,
let’s go a couple of steps back further, to 242. Remember that UN 242, the basic document and the permanent
settlement according to the current process, was strictly rejectionist, nothing
for the Palestinians. It was taken
really seriously. There was a threat of
war at the time, nuclear war. It called
for full peace in return for full withdrawal.
There was a deadlock. Israel
refused full withdrawal, the Arab states refused full peace. That deadlock was broken in 1971, when
President Sadat of Egypt, who had just come into office, offered to accept the
official U.S. position. So, he said,
yeah, he’ll accept full peace with Israel in return for partial withdrawal,
didn’t even go as far as 242, namely withdrawal from Egyptian territory. So, if Israel would withdraw from the Sinai,
Sadat would agree to full peace. Didn’t
say anything about the Palestinians, nothing about the West Bank. Israel recognized that officially in
response as a genuine peace offer.
Rabin in his memoirs later called it a “famous milestone on the path to
peace”.
Internally
in Israel it was understood that they could have peace at this point, general
peace. One of the leading Labor Party
officials, a retired general, Haim Bar-Lev, wrote in a Labor Party journal at
the time, that’s okay, with this offer we can have full peace. The conflict’s over, if we decide it’s over,
but I think we should refuse, because if we hold out, we can get more. This would require us to withdraw from the
Sinai, and I don’t think we have to. So
therefore, we should hold out and abandon peace, and that’s what Israel
did. Its response was that it would not
withdraw to the pre-June borders.
Well,
the U.S. was then in a dilemma. Should
it continue with its official policy, the policy which in fact it had
initiated, UN 242, or should it abandon it, and that means siding with
Sadat-Egypt against Israel, or should it abandon its policy and side with
Israel against Egypt, but that means rescinding UN 242 in effect? And there was an internal conflict. The State Department was in favor of keeping
to this policy. Kissinger, National
Security Advisor, wanted what he called stalemate, meaning no diplomacy, no
negotiations, just force. And in the
internal conflict, Kissinger won out.
The U.S. effectively rescinded UN 242, which no longer exists and people
should understand that.
UN 242
now means what the United States says it means, as do other things, that’s the
meaning of power. It means withdrawal,
insofar as the U.S. and Israel determine, and that’s what it’s meant ever
since. So when Palestinians or Arab
states now complain that Israel isn’t living up to 242, they are just choosing
to ignore the historical record and blindness is not a helpful position if you
are in world affairs. You might as well
have your eyes open. UN 242 since
February 1971 does not exist. It exists
only in the Kissingerian sense. Now,
here you have to be a little nuanced, because officially the U.S. continues to
endorse UN 242 in its original sense.
So you can find statements by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, or you
know speechwriters, and George Bush, saying yeah, we insist on 242 in its
original sense. You can’t find
statements by Clinton. Clinton, I
think, is the first president not even having given lip service to it. But the fact is that the lip service is pure
hypocrisy, because while they are adhering to it for public purposes, they are
also providing Israel with the wherewithal, the funds, the military support,
the diplomatic support, to violate it, namely to act to integrate the occupied
territories within Israel, so the endorsement of it is hypocritical and you
should compliment Clinton on having the honesty simply to withdraw it, in
effect.
Well,
that brings us up to February 1971. The
United States has also blocked all other UN resolutions, except for one, UN
resolution 194, December 11, 1948, which called for the right of return of
refugees, or a compensation. That was
technically endorsed by the United States, like they voted for it at the UN
every year, but pure hypocrisy. And
again Clinton overcame the hypocrisy.
He withdrew support for it. So
the last vote was unanimous with Israel and the United States opposed, and the
Clinton Administration also declared all other related UN resolutions null and
void. It will now only be the Oslo
process, so that’s honesty again.
Sadat in
1971 made it very clear, and continued for several years, to make it clear that
if the United States refused to accept a negotiated settlement, he would be
forced to go to war. Nobody took him
seriously. A lot of racism here, it was
assumed that Arabs didn’t know which end of the gun to hold and that sort of thing. Finally war came in 1973, and it turned out
to be a very close thing, and it scared everyone. There was another near nuclear confrontation and Israel was in
deep trouble for awhile. And it was
understood that Egypt can’t just be written off. They’re not just a basket case.
So, Kissinger moved to the natural fall back position, namely exclude
Egypt from the conflict. It’s the only
Arab deterrent, so we can’t just ignore it, so exclude it from the conflict,
then you get shuttle diplomacy. In 1977,
comes Sadat’s famous trip to Jerusalem, where he was hailed as a kind of a
saint for being the first Arab leader to be willing to talk to Israel. In fact, in Jerusalem, if you look at his
speech, it was less forthcoming than his offer in February 1971. In February 1971, he offered full peace,
with nothing about the Palestinians. In
his trip to Jerusalem, he insisted on rights for the Palestinians. But that’s allowed to enter history. February 1971 is out of history. I mean you can’t even find it in the
scholarly literature. But, the trip to
Jerusalem is in history because at that time the U.S. was compelled to accept
the offer, whereas in February of 1971 it was able to reject the offer. So one is out of history, the other is in
history. Sadat is a secular saint
because of his trip in 1977, not because of his more forthcoming offer in
February 1971.
Well,
that goes on to Camp David in 1978 and 1979, under Carter, and it’s considered
a grand moment of the peace process.
Israel did agree to withdraw from Sinai as Egypt had offered seven years
earlier, and the U.S. at this point had no choice but to agree. The result, however, was understood very
clearly in Israel. One leading Israeli
military strategic analyst, Avner Yaniv, pointed out right away that the Camp
David settlement eliminates the only Arab deterrent and therefore allows Israel
to continue at will to integrate the occupied territories into Israel and to
attack its northern neighbor, to attack Lebanon, with massive U.S. support in
both cases. The Carter Administration
rapidly increased support to more than half of the total U.S. aid overseas, to
make sure that these ends could be achieved.
Well,
while all this was going on, there was another current. The international consensus on the issue had
shifted. In 1967, there was nothing for
the Palestinians, no Palestinian rights.
By the early 70’s that was changing.
By the mid-70’s there was an extremely broad international consensus,
including just about everybody, calling for Palestinian national rights,
alongside of Israel. It included the
Russians, it included Europe, it included Asia, Latin America, virtually
everyone.
That
came to a head in January 1976, another very important event, crucial for
understanding what’s happening now, but out of history, because it tells the
wrong story. You can find it, but you
know, it’s out of history, again even out of scholarship. In January 1976, the United Nations Security
Council considered a resolution calling for a two state settlement. It included all the wording of UN 242, so
everything about Israel’s rights and so on, but it added national rights for
the Palestinians in the territories that had been occupied, from which Israel
was to withdraw according to the original understanding of 242. Well, what happened to that? Well that resolution was actually brought by
what are called the confrontation states, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. It was strongly supported by the PLO, though
they may have forgotten that. In fact,
I suspect they have. But in fact
according to Israel’s UN representative, Chaim Herzog (later President), the
resolution was actually prepared by the PLO.
I don’t think that’s likely, but that’s what Israel perceives at least. Anyhow, it was certainly supported by them,
and by the confrontation states, and indeed, by virtually the entire
world. Maybe Khaddafi didn’t support
it, I don’t remember, but essentially the whole world supported it.
And
Israel and the United States had to react.
Israel reacted in a typical way, by bombing Lebanon. It bombed Lebanon, killing 50 people in some
village that was chosen at random. That
was reported here, but considered insignificant. It was retaliation against the United Nations, in effect. The United States reacted in a simpler way,
namely by vetoing the resolution, so it was vetoed by Carter, and that means
vetoed from history. Remember, it’s
very common for the U.S. to veto Security Council resolutions. In fact, it’s the champion of the world by a
long shot. But they disappeared from
history as well. Carter did the same
thing in 1980, same resolution. But,
meanwhile, the international consensus persisted.
Here you
can begin to understand the significance of the fact that the Declaration of
Principles in September of 1993 referred to UN 242 and nothing else. Because by then, there is a whole raft of
resolutions vetoed by the U.S. at the Security Council, but passed at the
General Assembly, calling for Palestinian national rights, and they were not to
be part of the permanent settlement under the U.S. version of the peace
process. The General Assembly had votes
year after year, I won’t run through the details, but their wording varied a
little bit, but they were more or less the same, you know, kind of a two state
settlement, national rights for both groups.
The votes were 150 to 2, or something like that. Occasionally the U.S. would pick up another
vote, from El Salvador, or somebody, but that was year by year, essentially
never reported. They will, in fact,
probably never report it.
The last
vote was December 1990, 144 to 2, and the date is important. Shortly after that, a couple of weeks after,
the United States and Britain bombed Iraq.
Saddam, remember, had shifted from loyal friend and ally to reincarnation
of Hitler, not because of any crimes, the crimes were fine, but because he had
disobeyed orders, or maybe misunderstood orders, and that’s not permitted, so
that’s a standard transition, and therefore, you had to get rid of the beast of
Baghdad, and you know, it’s obvious where the power was, so that worked. During the bombing, George Bush announced,
probably the coming of the New World Order.
He defined it very simply. What
we say goes, said it sort of clearly, certainly with regard to the Middle
East. The rest of the world understood
that. Everybody backed off. Europe disappeared, the Third World was in
disarray, Russia was gone.
At this
point, the U.S. could simply ram through its own extreme rejectionist position,
and it did. The Madrid conference took
place a few months later, and then you go straight on to Oslo. Then come successive agreements and the
integration of the territories continues right through the Oslo period. The various agreements - it’s late so I
won’t run through them, authorize this, the U.S. funds it, it protects it
diplomatically, which brings us up to Camp David and the year 2000.
Regarding
the public discussion about Barak’s remarkable offers and, you know,
forthcoming this and that, and willing to give away everything - there is
absolutely no basis for any of that.
There
was a focus on Jerusalem, and for good reasons. Jerusalem is probably the easiest of all of the problems to
solve, and for Clinton and Barak it made good sense to focus on Jerusalem
because then you would divert attention away from what’s important, namely
what’s going on in the occupied territories, the settlement, the infrastructure
development, the enclaves, and so on.
For Arafat it also made good sense to focus on Jerusalem because he is
desperately eager to get support from the Arab states, and the Arab states
don’t give a damn what happens to the Palestinians. Their populations may, but certainly not the leaders. On the other hand, they will find it
difficult to abandon control over the religious sites, because if they do that,
their populations will blow up. So, by
focusing on the religious sites, it’s kind of a negotiating ploy for Arafat, so
they all focused on that, neglecting the crucial problem, what’s gone on
elsewhere.
I have a
couple of Israeli maps with me. These
are final status maps, you know, what it’s supposed to look like in the long
term. And what it looks like in the
long term, briefly, is what’s called Jerusalem extends all the way to the
Jordan river, so that splits the West Bank in two, with a substantial city,
Ma’ale Adumim in the middle and extension all the way. There is another break in the North right
through Samaria, includes towns that are settled there. Israel keeps the Jordan river. Jericho is isolated. You end up with four Palestinian camptowns,
separated from one another, separated from Jerusalem, but there’s some hint
that in the long term, some meaningless connection will be established between
them, but they are essentially completely controlled and surrounded. What’s called Jerusalem extends north of
Ramallah, and south of Bethlehem. If
you look at the map, that’s the area which splits the northern and central and
southern settlement areas. It’s kind of
modeled on South Africa’s policies in the early 60’s. The population concentrations should be under local
administration, but everything else is taken over by the dominant power, the
resources, the useable land, and so on.
And there is massive infrastructure developments that sort of lie behind
this.
The U.S.
is paying for all of it, of course.
That’s the marvelous offer that was given. And apart from what’s talked about, what actually counts, of
course, is what’s happening on the ground.
And what’s happening on the ground has been implementing this. Finally you can’t spend half a day driving
through the West Bank without seeing it.
It’s a little harder to drive through Gaza, because it’s usually closed
off, but essentially the same thing is happening there.
And the
situation is extremely serious. Right
through the occupation from 1967 to 1993, Israel was making sure, and again,
when I say Israel, I mean the United States, was making sure that there would
be no development in the occupied territories.
So, right after 1993, when Israeli journalists who had covered the
territories were finally able to go to Jordan, they were shocked by what they
saw and they wrote about it in the Hebrew press. Jordan is a poor country, and Israel is a rich country. Before the 1967 war, the populations in
Jordan and the Palestinian populations were pretty comparable, in fact, there
was more development in the West Bank.
By 1993, it was totally different.
In the poorer country Jordan, there were agricultural development,
universities, schools, roads, health services, all sorts of things. In the West Bank there was essentially
nothing. The people could survive by
remittances from abroad, or by doing dirty work in Israel, but no development
was allowed, and that was very shocking to Israeli reporters, and it is also
backed up in the statistics. The most
important work on this topic, if you want to learn about, is by Sara Roy, a
researcher at Harvard who has spent an awful lot of time in the Gaza Strip. Just to give you a couple of her figures,
current ones, in 1993 electric power usage in the West Bank and Gaza was two
thirds that of Egypt, half that of Jordan – and those are poorer countries,
remember. Israel is a rich
country. Sanitation and housing in the
West Bank and Gaza was about 25 percent for Palestinians, 50 percent in Egypt,
and 100 percent in Jordan, and the figures run through that way. GDP, per capita, and consumption per capita
declined and then it got worse. After
1993, it’s been the worst. So GDP, per
capita, and consumption per capita have dropped, according to her, about 15
percent in the West Bank and Gaza since 1993 - that’s even with large foreign
assistance pouring in, from Europe, mostly.
It’s
gotten worse in other respects. Up
until 1993, the U.S. and Israel permitted humanitarian aid to come into the
territories. UN humanitarian aid was
permitted into the West Bank and Gaza.
In 1993, that was restricted.
This is part of the peace process.
After Oslo, heavy customs duties were imposed, lots of other
restrictions were imposed, you know various kinds of harassment. Now, it’s blocked. Right now, humanitarian aid is blocked. The UN is protesting, but it doesn’t matter. If the UN protests the blocking of
humanitarian aid, and it doesn’t register here, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t register here because it’s
not reported. So, they can say, yeah
the Israelis are stopping humanitarian aid from coming in, and people are
starving, and so on, but what does it matter as long as people in the United
States don’t know about it. They can
know in the Middle East, they can know in Europe, but it makes no
difference. These are our choices
again.
For the
Palestinians themselves, they are under a dual repression, very much like the
Bantustans again, the repression of Israel and the United States, and then the
repression of the local mercenaries who do the work for the foreigner, and
enrich themselves. It’s again a
standard, colonial pattern. Anyone who
has ever taken a look at the Third World sees it.
As for
the goals of Oslo, they were stated very nice and neatly by one of the leading
Israeli doves, who is now the Minister of Security in the Barak government, and
a temporary foreign minister, known as an academic dove, Shlomo Ben-Ami. In an academic book, 1998, so before he got
into the government, he described the goals of Oslo as to impose what he called
a permanent neo-colonialist dependency in the West Bank and Gaza. And that’s pretty much accurate, that’s what
the U.S. has been aiming for through the peace process - period.
As for
the population, it’s kind of hard to improve on a description by Moshe Dayan
about 30 years ago. He was in the Labor
Party, and among the Labor Party leaders, he was one of those most noted for
his sympathetic attitude towards Palestinians, and also his realism. And he described what Israeli policy ought
to be, U.S. policy as well. He said the
Palestinians should live like dogs and whoever wishes may leave, and we’ll see
where this leads. Reasonable policy,
and that’s U.S. policy as well, and it will continue that way as long as we
agree to permit it.
Updated: Feb 8, 2001