'It Is Convenient To Blame Israel'

Z: Is there a qualitative change in what's happening now?

I think there is a qualitative change. The goal of the Oslo process wasaccurately described in 1998 by Israeli academic Shlomo Ben-Ami just before hejoined the Barak government, going on to become Barak's chief negotiator at CampDavid in summer 2000. Ben-Ami observed that "in practice, the Osloagreements were founded on a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence ofone on the other forever." With these goals, the Clinton-Rabin-Peresagreements were designed to impose on the Palestinians "almost totaldependence on Israel," creating "an extended colonial situation,"which is expected to be the "permanent basis" for "a situation ofdependence." The function of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was to controlthe domestic population of the Israeli-run neocolonial dependency. That is theway the process unfolded, step by step, including the Camp David suggestions.

The Clinton-Barak stand (left vague and unambiguous) was hailed here as"remarkable" and "magnanimous," but a look at the facts madeit clear that it was -- as commonly described in Israel -- a Bantustan proposal;that is presumably the reason why maps were carefully avoided in the USmainstream. It is true that Clinton-Barak advanced a few steps towards aBantustan-style settlement of the kind that South Africa instituted in thedarkest days of Apartheid. Just prior to Camp David, West Bank Palestinians wereconfined to over 200 scattered areas, and Clinton-Barak did propose animprovement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control, virtuallyseparated from one another and from the fourth canton, a small area of EastJerusalem, the center of Palestinian life and of communications in the region.And of course separated from Gaza, where the outcome was left unclear.

But now that plan has apparently been shelved in favor of demolition of thePA. That means destruction of the institutions of the potential Bantustan thatwas planned by Clinton and his Israeli partners; in the last few days, even ahuman rights center. The Palestinian figures who were designated to be thecounterpart of the Black leaders of the Bantustans are also under attack, thoughnot killed, presumably because of the international consequences. The prominentIsraeli scholar Ze'ev Sternhell writes that the government "is no longerashamed to speak of war when what they are really engaged in is colonialpolicing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poorneighborhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era." Thisnew policy is a regression below the Bantustan model of South Africa 40 yearsago to which Clinton-Rabin-Peres-Barak and their associates aspired in the Oslo"peace process."

None of this will come as a surprise to those who have been reading criticalanalyses for the past 10 years, including plenty of material posted regularly onZnet, reviewing developments as they proceeded.

Exactly how the Israeli leadership intends to implement these programs isunclear -- to them too, I presume.

It is convenient in the US, and the West, to blame Israel and particularlySharon, but that is unfair and hardly honest. Many of Sharon's worst atrocitieswere carried out under Labor governments. Peres comes close to Sharon as a warcriminal. Furthermore, the prime responsibility lies in Washington, and has for30 years. That is true of the general diplomatic framework, and also ofparticular actions. Israel can act within the limits established by the masterin Washington, rarely beyond.

Z: What is the meaning of March 30th's Security Council Resolution?

The primary issue was whether there would be a demand for immediate Israeliwithdrawal from Ramallah and other Palestinian areas that the Israeli army hadentered in the current offensive, or at least a deadline for such withdrawal.The US position evidently prevailed: there is only a vague call for"withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian cities," no time framespecified. The Resolution therefore accords with the official US stand, largelyreiterated in the press: Israel is under attack and has the right ofself-defense, but shouldn't go too far in punishing Palestinians, at least toovisibly. The facts -- hardly controversial -- are quite different. Palestinianshave been trying to survive under Israeli military occupation, now in its 35thyear. It has been harsh and brutal throughout, thanks to decisive US militaryand economic support, and diplomatic protection, including the barring of thelong-standing international consensus on a peaceful political settlement. Thereis no symmetry in this confrontation, not the slightest, and to frame it interms of Israeli self-defense goes beyond even standard forms of distortion inthe interests of power. The harshest condemnations of Palestinian terror, whichare proper and have been for over 30 years, leave these basic facts unchanged.

In scrupulously evading the central immediate issues, the March 30 Resolutionis similar to the Security Council Resolution of March 12, which elicited muchsurprise and favorable notice because it not only was not vetoed by the US, inthe usual pattern, but was actually initiated by Washington. The Resolutioncalled for a "vision" of a Palestinian state. It therefore did notrise to the level of South Africa 40 years ago when the Apartheid regime did notmerely announce a "vision" but actually established Black-run statesthat were at least as viable and legitimate as what the US and Israel had beenplanning for the occupied territories.

Z: What is the U.S. up to now? What U.S. interests are at stake at thisjuncture?

The US is a global power. What happens in Israel-Palestine is a sidelight.There are many factors entering into US policies. Chief among them in thisregion of the world is control over the world's major energy resources. TheUS-Israel alliance took shape in that context. By 1958, the National SecurityCouncil concluded that a "logical corollary" of opposition to growingArab nationalism "would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-Westernpower left in the Middle East." That is an exaggeration, but an affirmationof the general strategic analysis, which identified indigenous nationalism asthe primary threat (as elsewhere in the Third World); typically called"Communist," though it is commonly recognized in the internal recordthat this is a term of propaganda and that Cold War issues were often marginal,as in the crucial year of 1958. The alliance became firm in 1967, when Israelperformed an important service for US power by destroying the main forces ofsecular Arab nationalism, considered a very serious threat to US domination ofthe Gulf region. So matters continued, after the collapse of the USSR as well.By now the US-Israel-Turkey alliance is a centerpiece of US strategy, and Israelis virtually a US military base, also closely integrated with the militarized UShigh-tech economy.

Within that persistent framework, the US naturally supports Israelirepression of the Palestinians and integration of the occupied territories,including the neocolonial project outlined by Ben-Ami, though specific policychoices have to be made depending on circumstances. Right now, Bush plannerscontinue to block steps towards diplomatic settlement, or even reduction ofviolence; that is the meaning, for example, of their veto of the Dec. 15 2001Security Council Resolution calling for steps towards implementing the USMitchell plan and introduction of international monitors to supervise thereduction of violence. For similar reasons, the US boycotted the Dec. 5international meetings in Geneva (including the EU, even Britain) whichreaffirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the occupiedterritories, so that critically important US-Israeli actions there are"grave breaches" of the Convention - war crimes, in simple terms - asthe Geneva declaration elaborated. That merely reaffirmed the Security CouncilResolution of October 2000 (US abstaining), which held once again that theConvention applied to the occupied territories. That had been the official USposition as well, stated formally, for example, by George Bush I when he was UNAmbassador. The US regularly abstains or boycotts in such cases, not wanting totake a public stand in opposition to core principles of international law,particularly in the light of the circumstances under which the Conventions wereenacted: to criminalize formally the atrocities of the Nazis, including theiractions in the territories they occupied. The media and intellectual culturegenerally cooperate by their own "boycott" of these unwelcome facts:in particular, the fact that as a High Contracting Party, the US government islegally obligated by solemn treaty to punish violators of the Conventions,including its own political leadership.

That's only a small sample. Meanwhile the flow of arms and economic supportfor maintaining the occupation by force and terror and extending settlementscontinues without any pause.

Z: What's your opinion of the Arab summit?

The Arab summit led to general acceptance of the Saudi Arabian plan, whichreiterated the basic principles of the long-standing international consensus:Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories in the context of a generalpeace agreement that would guarantee the right of every state in the region,including Israel and a new Palestinian State, to peace and security withinrecognized borders (the basic wording of UN 242, amplified to include aPalestinian state). There is nothing new about this. These are the basic termsof the Security Council resolution of January 1976 backed by virtually theentire world, including the leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe, the Sovietbloc, the non-aligned countries -- in fact, everyone who mattered. It wasopposed by Israel and vetoed by the US, thereby vetoed from history. Subsequentand similar initiatives from the Arab states, the PLO, and Western Europe wereblocked by the US, continuing to the present. That includes the 1981 Fahd plan.That record too has been effectively vetoed from history, for the usual reasons.

US rejectionism in fact goes back 5 years earlier, to February 1971, whenPresident Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty in return forIsraeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, not even bringing up Palestiniannational rights or the fate of the other occupied territories. Israel's Laborgovernment recognized this as a genuine peace offer, but decided to reject it,intending to extend its settlements to northeastern Sinai; that it soon did,with extreme brutality, the immediate cause for the 1973 war. The plan for thePalestinians under military occupation was described frankly to his Cabinetcolleagues by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labor leaders more sympathetic to thePalestinian plight. Israel should make it clear that "we have no solution,you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we willsee where this process leads." Following that recommendation, the guidingprinciple of the occupation has been incessant and degrading humiliation, alongwith torture, terror, destruction of property, displacement and settlement, andtakeover of basic resources, crucially water.

Sadat's 1971offer conformed to official US policy, but Kissinger succeeded ininstituting his preference for what he called "stalemate": nonegotiations, only force. Jordanian peace offers were also dismissed. Since thattime, official US policy has kept to the international consensus on withdrawal(until Clinton, who effectively rescinded UN resolutions and considerations ofinternational law); but in practice, policy has followed the Kissingerguidelines, accepting negotiations only when compelled to do so, as Kissingerwas after the near-debacle of the 1973 war for which he shares majorresponsibility, and under the conditions that Ben-Ami articulated.

Official doctrine instructs us to focus attention on the Arab summit, as ifthe Arab states and the PLO are the problem, in particular, their intention todrive Israel into the sea. Coverage presents the basic problem as vacillation,reservations, and qualifications in the Arab world. There is little that one cansay in favor of the Arab states and the PLO, but these claims are simply untrue,as a look at the record quickly reveals.

The more serious press recognized that the Saudi plan largely reiterated theSaudi Fahd Plan of 1981, claiming that that initiative was undermined by Arabrefusal to accept the existence of Israel. The facts are again quite different.The 1981 plan was undermined by an Israeli reaction that even its mainstreampress condemned as "hysterical," backed by the US. That includesShimon Peres and other alleged doves, who warned that acceptance of the Fahdplan would "threaten Israel's very existence." An indication of thehysteria is the reaction of Israel's President Haim Herzog, also considered adove. He charged that the "real author" of the Fahd plan was the PLO,and that it was even more extreme than the January 1976 Security Councilresolution that was "prepared by" the PLO, at the time when he wasIsrael's UN Ambassador. These claims can hardly be true, but they are anindication of the desperate fear of a political settlement on the part ofIsraeli doves, backed throughout by the US. The basic problem then, as now,traces back to Washington, which has persistently backed Israel's rejection of apolitical settlement in terms of the broad international consensus, reiteratedin essentials in the current Saudi proposals.

Until such elementary facts as these are permitted to enter into discussion,displacing the standard misrepresentation and deceit, discussion is mostlybeside the point. And we should not be drawn into it -- for example, byimplicitly accepting the assumption that developments at the Arab summit are acritical problem. They have significance, of course, but it is secondary. Theprimary problems are right here, and it is our responsibility to face them anddeal with them, not to displace them to others.