Chomsky on the Mid-East Crisis

Chomsky does it again.  An excellent article from someone who has
maintained his integrity over his many years of activism and writings.

-- Khaldoun
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MER WEEKEND READING:


                 THE CURRENT CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

                          WHAT CAN WE DO?

                      By Professor Noam Chomsky


          [Transcript of lecture delivered at MASSACHUSETTS 
              INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT) on 12/14/00]


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.   [Transcription by Angie D'Urso -media.mit.edu/~nitin/mideast/chomsky.html]





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