Chomsky on the Al-Aqsa Intifada

> Al-Aqsa Intifada
> By Noam Chomsky
>
> After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied
> territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan
> to determine the final status of the region. During these
> weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
> children, often by "excessive use of lethal force in
> circumstances in which neither the lives of the security
> forces nor others were in imminent danger, resulting in
> unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a
> detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US. The
> ratio of Palestinian to Israeli dead was then about 15-1,
> reflecting the resources of force available.Barak's plan was
> not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar: they
> conform to the "final status map" presented by the US-Israel
> as the basis for the Camp David negotiations that collapsed
> in July. This plan, extending US-Israeli rejectionist
> proposals of earlier years, called for cantonization of the
> territories that Israel had conquered in 1967, with
> mechanisms to ensure that usable land and resources
> (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the
> population is administered by a corrupt and brutal
> Palestinian authority (PA), playing the role traditionally
> assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several
> varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South
> Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious
> analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include
> Nablus and other Palestinian cities, a central canton is
> based in Ramallah, and a southern canton in Bethlehem;
> Jericho is to remain isolated. Palestinians would be
> effectively cut off from Jerusalem, the center of
> Palestinian life. Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza,
> with Israel keeping the southern coastal region and a small
> settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the recent
> atrocities), which is hardly more than an excuse for a large
> military presence and roads splitting the Strip below Gaza
> City. These proposals formalize the vast settlement and
> construction programs that Israel has been conducting,
> thanks to munificent US aid, with increasing energy since
> the US was able to implement its version of the "peace
> process" after the Gulf war.
>
> For more on the negotiations and their background, see my
> July 25 commentary; and for further background, the
> commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom, Oct. 10.
>
> The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA
> adherence to this project. Two months after they collapsed,
> the current phase of violence began. Tensions, always high,
> were raised when the Barak government authorized a visit by
> Ariel Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious sites
> (Al-Aqsa) on a Thursday (Sept. 28). Sharon is the very
> symbol of Israeli state terror and aggression, with a rich
> record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's announced
> purpose was to demonstrate "Jewish sovereignty" over the
> al-Aqsa compound, but as the veteran correspondent Graham
> Usher points out, the "al-Aqsa intifada," as Palestinians
> call it, was not initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the
> massive and intimidating police and military presence that
> Barak introduced the following day, the day of prayers.
> Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people
> streamed out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and
> 200 wounded. Whatever Barak's purpose, there could hardly
> have been a more efficient way to set the stage for the
> shocking atrocities of the following weeks.
>
> The same can be said about the failed negotiations, which
> focused on Jerusalem, a condition observed strictly by US
> commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling
> was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this
> problem "could have been reached in five minutes," but he is
> right to say that "by any diplomatic logic [it] should have
> been the easiest issue to solve (Ha'aretz, Oct. 4). It is
> understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to suppress
> what they are doing in the occupied territories, which is
> far more important. Why did Arafat agree? Perhaps because he
> recognizes that the leadership of the Arab states regard the
> Palestinians as a nuisance, and have little problem with the
> Bantustan-style settlement, but cannot overlook
> administration of the religious sites, fearing the reaction
> of their own populations. Nothing could be better calculated
> to set off a confrontation with religious overtones, the
> most ominous kind, as centuries of experience reveal.
>
> The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the
> US-Israeli demands are to be imposed by direct force instead
> of coercive diplomacy, and in a harsher form, to punish the
> victims who refused to concede politely. The outlines are in
> basic accord with policies established informally in 1968
> (the Allon Plan), and variants that have been proposed since
> by both political groupings (the Sharon Plan, the Labor
> government plans, and others). It is important to recall
> that the policies have not only been proposed, but
> implemented, with the support of the US. That support has
> been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the
> basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN
> Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its
> unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that
> followed, culminating in the "Oslo process." Since all of
> this has been effectively vetoed from history in the US, it
> takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They
> are not controversial, only evaded.
>
> As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of
> familiar US-Israeli rejectionism. It calls for terminating
> electricity, water, telecommunications, and other services
> that are doled out in meager rations to the Palestinian
> population, who are now under virtual siege. It should be
> recalled that independent development was ruthlessly barred
> by the military regime from 1967, leaving the people in
> destitution and dependency, a process that has worsened
> considerably during the US-run "Oslo process." One reason is
> the "closures" regularly instituted, must brutally by the
> more dovish Labor-based governments. As discussed by another
> outstanding journalist, Amira Hass, this policy was
> initiated by the Rabin government "years before Hamas had
> planned suicide attacks, [and] has been perfected over the
> years, especially since the establishment of the Palestinian
> National Authority." An efficient mechanism of strangulation
> and control, closure has been accompanied by the importation
> of an essential commodity to replace the cheap and exploited
> Palestinian labor on which much of the economy relies:
> hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from around the
> world, many of them victims of the "neoliberal reforms" of
> the recent years of "globalization." Surviving in misery and
> without rights, they are regularly described as a virtual
> slave labor force in the Israeli press. The current Barak
> proposal is to extend this program, reducing still further
> the prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians.
>
> A major barrier to the program is the opposition of the
> Israeli business community, which relies on a captive
> Palestinian market for some $2.5 billion in annual exports,
> and has "forged links with Palestinian security officials"
> and Arafat's "economic adviser, enabling them to carve out
> monopolies with official PA consent" (Financial Times, Oct.
> 22; also NYT, same day). They have also hoped to set up
> industrial zones in the territories, transferring pollution
> and exploiting a cheap labor force in maquiladora-style
> installations owned by Israeli enterprises and the
> Palestinian elite, who are enriching themselves in the
> time-honored fashion.
> Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a
> plan, though they are a natural extension of what has come
> before. Insofar as they are implemented, they would extend
> the project of "invisible transfer" that has been underway
> for many years, and that makes more sense than outright
> "ethnic cleansing" (as we call the process when carried out
> by official enemies). People compelled to abandon hope and
> offered no opportunities for meaningful existence will drift
> elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so. The plans,
> which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist
> movement from its origins (across the ideological spectrum),
> were articulated in internal discussion by Israeli
> government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic cleansing
> was underway: their expectation was that the refugees "would
> be crushed" and "die," while "most of them would turn into
> human dust and the waste of society, and join the most
> impoverished classes in the Arab countries." Current plans,
> whether imposed by coercive diplomacy or outright force,
> have similar goals. They are not unrealistic if they can
> rely on the world-dominant power and its intellectual
> classes.
>
> The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass,
> in Israel's most prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18).
> Seven years after the Declaration of Principles in September
> 1993 -- which foretold this outcome for anyone who chose to
> see -- "Israel has security and administrative control" of
> most of the West Bank and 20% of the Gaza Strip. It has been
> able "to double the number of settlers in 10 years, to
> enlarge the settlements, to continue its discriminatory
> policy of cutting back water quotas for three million
> Palestinians, to prevent Palestinian development in most of
> the area of the West Bank, and to seal an entire nation into
> restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass roads
> meant for Jews only. During these days of strict internal
> restriction of movement in the West Bank, one can see how
> carefully each road was planned: So that 200,000 Jews have
> freedom of movement, about three million Palestinians are
> locked into their Bantustans until they submit to Israeli
> demands. The bloodbath that has been going on for three
> weeks is the natural outcome of seven years of lying and
> deception, just as the first Intifada was the natural
> outcome of direct Israeli occupation."
> The settlement and construction programs continue, with US
> support, whoever may be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz
> noted that two governments -- Rabin and Barak -- had
> declared that settlement was "frozen," in accord with the
> dovish image preferred in the US and by much of the Israeli
> left. They made use of the "freezing" to intensify
> settlement, including economic inducements for the secular
> population, automatic grants for ultra-religious settlers,
> and other devices, which can be carried out with little
> protest while "the lesser of two evils" happens to be making
> the decisions, a pattern hardly unfamiliar elsewhere. "There
> is freezing and there is reality," the report observes
> caustically. The reality is that settlement in the occupied
> territories has grown over four times as fast as in Israeli
> population centers, continuing -- perhaps accelerating --
> under Barak. Settlement brings with it large infrastructure
> projects designed to integrate much of the region within
> Israel, while leaving Palestinians isolated, apart from
> "Palestinian roads" that are travelled at one's peril.
>
> Another journalist with an outstanding record, Danny
> Rubinstein, points out that "readers of the Palestinian
> papers get the impression (and rightly so) that activity in
> the settlements never stops. Israeli is constantly building,
> expanding and reinforcing the Jewish settlements in the West
> Bank and Gaza. Israel is always grabbing homes and lands in
> areas beyond the 1967 lines - and of course, this is all at
> the expense of the Palestinians, in order to limit them,
> push them into a corner and then out. In other words, the
> goal is to eventually dispossess them of their homeland and
> their capital, Jerusalem" (Ha'aretz, October 23).
>
> Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are
> largely shielded from the unwelcome facts, though not
> entirely so. In the US, it is far more important for the
> population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious reasons: the
> economic and military programs rely crucially on US support,
> which is domestically unpopular and would be far more so if
> its purposes were known.
>
> To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting
> and killing, the defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported
> "the largest purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli
> Air Force in a decade," an agreement with the US to provide
> Israel with 35 Blackhawk military helicopters and spare
> parts at a cost of $525 million, along with jet fuel,
> following the purchase shortly before of patrol aircraft and
> Apache attack helicopters. These are "the newest and most
> advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US
> inventory," the Jerusalem Post adds. It would be unfair to
> say that those providing the gifts cannot discover the fact.
> In a database search, David Peterson found that they were
> reported in the Raleigh (North Carolina) press.
>
> The sale of military helicopters was condemned by Amnesty
> International (Oct. 19), because these "US-supplied
> helicopters have been used to violate the human rights of
> Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the recent conflict in
> the region." Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced
> cretinism.
>
> Israel has been condemned internationally (the US
> abstaining) for "excessive use of force," in a
> "disproportionate reaction" to Palestinian violence. That
> includes even rare condemnations by the ICRC, specifically,
> for attacks on at least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, Oct
> 4). Israel's response is that it is being unfairly singled
> out for criticism. The response is entirely accurate. Israel
> is employing official US doctrine, known here as "the Powell
> doctrine," though it is of far more ancient vintage, tracing
> back centuries: Use massive force in response to any
> perceived threat. Official Israeli doctrine allows "the full
> use of weapons against anyone who endangers lives and
> especially at anyone who shoots at our forces or at
> Israelis" (Israeli military legal adviser Daniel Reisner,
> FT, Oct. 6). Full use of force by a modern army includes
> tanks, helicopter gunships, sharpshooters aiming at
> civilians (often children), etc. US weapons sales "do not
> carry a stipulation that the weapons can't be used against
> civilians," a Pentagon official said; he "acknowleged
> however that anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters are
> not traditionally considered tools for crowd control" --
> except by those powerful enough to get away with it, under
> the protective wings of the reigning superpower. "We cannot
> second-guess an Israeli commander who calls in a Cobra
> (helicopter) gunship because his troops are under attack,"
> another US official said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October
> 3). Accordingly, such killing machines must be provided in
> an unceasing flow.
>
> It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt
> standard US military doctrine, which has left a toll too
> awesome to record, including very recent years. The US and
> Israel are, of course, not alone in adopting this doctrine,
> and it is sometimes even condemned: namely, when adopted by
> enemies targeted for destruction. A recent example is the
> response of Serbia when its territory (as the US insists it
> is) was attacked by Albanian-based guerrillas, killing Serb
> police and civilians and abducting civilians (including
> Albanians) with the openly-announced intent of eliciting a
> "disproportionate response" that would arouse Western
> indignation, then NATO military attack. Very rich
> documentation from US, NATO, and other Western sources is
> now available, most of it produced in an effort to justify
> the bombing. Assuming these sources to be credible, we find
> that the Serbian response -- while doubtless
> "disproportionate" and criminal, as alleged -- does not
> compare with the standard resort to the same doctrine by the
> US and its clients, Israel included.
>
> In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that
> "If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah
> state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States
> [which is not accurate, unfortunately]. Its development and
> settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of
> apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to
> live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in
> self-administered `bantustans', with `whites' monopolising
> the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black
> population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in
> disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's
> treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating
> against them in housing and education spending - would be
> recognised as scandalous too" (Observer, Guardian, Oct. 15).
>
> Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose
> vision has not been constrained by the doctrinal blinders
> imposed for many years. It remains a major task to remove
> them in the most important country. That is a prerequisite
> to any constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and
> destruction, terrible enough before our eyes, and with
> long-term implications that are not pleasant to contemplate.
>