October 25, 2000
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