Noam Chomsky perspective on the Palestinian - Israeli issue
Palestine-Israel-USA, Politics, 12/26/2005

A US intellectual recently gave an interesting background on the Palestinian -Israeli issue. MIT professor Noam Chomsky, known for views on international affairs and US policy said in prepared remarks:

"Where we go from here" is largely up to us. Transparently, it requires some understanding of how we got here. The question where we are going now has a clear answer. It's given accurately by the leading academic specialist on the occupation, Harvard's Sara Roy. She writes that "under the terms of disengagement," Gazans are virtually sealed within the Strip while "West Bankers, their lands dismembered by relentless Israeli settlement, will continue to be penned into fragmented geographic spaces, isolated behind and between walls and barriers." Her judgment is affirmed by Israel's leading specialist on Jerusalem and the West Bank, Meron Benvenisti, who writes that the Separation wall snaking through the West Bank will create "three Bantustans," north, central and south, all virtually separated from East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian commercial, cultural and political life. He adds that the "soft transfer" from Jerusalem that is "an unavoidable result" of the Separation wall might "achieve its goal" of "disintegration of the Palestinian community," after many earlier efforts have failed. The "human disaster" being planned, he continues, will also "turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen community, hostile and nurturing a desire for revenge," another example of the sacrifice of security to expansion that has being going on for a long time. A European Union report concludes that US-backed Israeli programs will virtually end the prospects for a viable Palestinian state by cantonization and by breaking the organic links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch concurs.

There was no effort to conceal the fact that Gaza disengagement was, in reality, West Bank expansion. The official plan stated that Israel will permanently take over major "population centers, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel." That was endorsed by the US Ambassador, as it had been by the President, breaking sharply with US policy. Along with the disengagement plan, Israel announced investment of tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Sharon approved new housing units in the town of Ma'aleh Adumim to the East of Jerusalem, the core of the salient that divides the southern from the central Bantustan, along with other expansion plans. Ha'aretz political commentator Aluf Benn added that the timing was "no coincidence." Rather, it underscores Sharon's determination that Gaza disengagement is a component of the plan to expand permanent control over the West Bank.

There is near unanimity that all of this violates international law. The consensus was expressed by US Judge Buergenthal, in his separate declaration attached to the World Court judgment ruling the Separation wall illegal. In his words, "the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international human rights law, are applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and must [therefore] be faithfully complied with by Israel." Accordingly, "the segments of the wall being built by Israel to protect the settlements are ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law" – which means 80% of the wall. Two months later, Israel's High Court rejected that judgment, ruling that the Separation Wall "must take into account the need to provide security for...Israelis living" in the West Bank, including their "property" rights. This is consistent with Chief Justice Barak's doctrine that Israeli law supersedes international law, particularly in East Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders. Practically speaking, he is correct, as long as the US continues to provide the required economic, military, and diplomatic support, as it has been doing for 30 years, in violation of the international consensus on a two-state settlement.

You can find documentation about all of this in work of mine and others who have supported the international consensus for 30 years. In Israeli literature, like Benny Morris's histories, you can find ample evidence about the nature of the occupation – in his words, "founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation," along with stealing of valuable lands and resources. Like other Israeli political and legal commentators, Morris reserve special criticism for the Supreme Court, whose record "will surely go down as a dark day in the annals of Israel's judicial system."

Keeping to the diplomatic record, the first important step forward was in 1971, when President Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. That would have ended the international conflict. Israel rejected the offer, choosing expansion over security – in this case, expansion into the Sinai, where General Sharon's forces had driven thousands of farmers into the desert to clear the land for the all-Jewish city of Yamit. The US backed Israel's stand. Those decisions led to the 1973 war, a near disaster for Israel. The US and Israel recognized that Egypt could not be dismissed, and finally accepted Sadat's 1971 offer at Camp David in 1979. But by then, the agreement included the demand for a Palestinian state, which had reached the international agenda.

In 1976, the major Arab states introduced a resolution to the UN Security Council calling for a peace settlement on the international border, based on UN 242, the basic document as all agree, but now adding a call for a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. The US vetoed the resolution, again in 1980. The General Assembly passed similar resolutions year after year, with the US and Israel opposed. The matter reached a head in 1988, when the PLO moved from tacit approval to formal acceptance of the two-state consensus. Israel responded with the declaration that there can be no "additional" Palestinian state between the Jordan and the sea – Jordan already being a Palestinian state -- and that the status of the territories must be settled according to Israeli guidelines. The US endorsed Israel's stand. I can only add what I wrote at the time: it's as if someone were to argue that Jews don't need a "second homeland" in Israel because they already have New York.

In May 1997, Israel's Labor Party at last agreed not to rule out "the establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty (in areas excluding) major Jewish settlement blocs," that is, in the three cantons that were being constructed with US support. The highest rate of post-Oslo settlement was in 2000, the final year of Clinton's term, and Prime Minister Barak's.

Maps of the US-Israel proposals at Camp David in 2000 show a salient east of Jerusalem virtually bisecting the West Bank, and a northern one virtually dividing the northern from the central canton. The current map considerably extends these salients and the isolation of East Jerusalem. The crucial issue at Camp David was territorial; not the refugee issue, for which Arafat agreed to a "pragmatic" solution, Israeli scholarship reveals. No Palestinian could accept the cantonization, including the US favorite Mahmoud Abbas. Clinton recognized that Palestinian objections had validity, and in December 2000 proposed his "parameters," which went some way towards satisfying Palestinian rights. Clinton reported that Barak and Arafat had both "accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations."

The reservations were addressed at a high-level meeting in Taba, which made considerable progress, and might have led to a settlement. But Israel called it off. That one week at Taba was the only break in 30 years of US-Israeli rejectionism. High-level informal negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December 2002, welcomed by virtually the entire world, rejected by Israel, dismissed by Washington. That could have been the basis for a just peace. It still can be. However, by then, Bush-Sharon bulldozers were demolishing any basis for it.

Every sane Israel hawk understood that it is absurd for Israel to leave 8000 settlers in Gaza, protected by a large part of the army while taking over scarce water resources and arable land. The sane conclusion was to withdraw from Gaza while expanding through the West Bank. That will continue as long as Washington insists on marching "on the road to catastrophe" by rejecting minimal Palestinian rights, to quote the warning of the four former heads of Israel's Shin Bet Security Service. There are clear alternatives, and if that march to catastrophe continues, we will have only ourselves to blame.

Previous Stories:
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  Palestinian outpost to protect Palestinian property removed by Israeli occupation   (12/24/2005)
  Israeli human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory   (12/24/2005)
  US disappointed in Rafah agreement delays   (12/17/2005)
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  US condemns Nathania attack   (12/6/2005)

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