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Title: A Painful Peace
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: January 1996
Language: en
Topics: Israel/Palestine
Source: Retrieved on 19th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/199601__/
Notes: Published in Z Magazine.

Noam Chomsky

A Painful Peace

Sometimes it requires judgment to select the lead stories of the day,

but in November 1995 it’s easy enough: on the domestic front, balancing

the budget; in the international arena, the Middle East peace process,

framed by two dramatic events, the signing of the Oslo II agreement by

Israel and the PLO under Washington’s guiding hand, and the

assassination a few weeks later of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,

another “martyr for peace,” in President Clinton’s words.

I will return to a word on the domestic story, but would like to

concentrate on the “historic trade” in which the two longtime

adversaries abandoned their traditional goals, at last coming to

recognize that a “painful peace” requires compromise and sacrifice.

Let’s begin with the bare facts of Oslo II, then turn to background

developments, the commentary that all of this has elicited, and finally

the significance of the events themselves and the reaction to them.

The “Historic Trade”

On September 28, Israel and the PLO initiated the second major step in

the peace process (Oslo II), dividing the West Bank into 3 zones, with

extensive further arrangements (not yet fully available). The

Palestinian National Authority (PA) is to exercise total control in Zone

A while Israel exercises total control in Zone C. Zone B is the region

of “autonomy”: here the PA administers Palestinian villages under

overall Israeli “security control.” Zone A consists of the municipal

areas of towns populated exclusively by Palestinians. Zone C includes

all Jewish settlements. Zone B is a collection of scattered sectors,

about 100 of them according to Israeli maps.

In addition to Zones A, B, and C there is a fourth zone that

incorporates part of the occupied territories: Jerusalem, which is

assigned without comment to Israeli control, including formerly Arab

East Jerusalem and an indefinite region beyond. The maps published in

Israel and the New York Times identify the Jerusalem area as part of

Israel (with slightly different borders). Arafat’s announcement of a

“Jihad” to seek Palestinian rights in Jerusalem (in accord with the

terms of Oslo I) aroused much fury in the United States, demonstrating

that the devious old terrorist had not changed his stripes. Rabin’s

announcement that Israel’s Jihad had been completed and that Jerusalem

will be the eternal and undivided capital of Israel elicited no

reaction; nor did the maps published after Oslo II, ratifying that

announcement. Official rhetoric aside, Israel’s decision accords with

U.S. intentions, and is therefore legitimate by definition.

The delimitation of the three zones is not precisely clear. According to

the analysis accompanying Israeli maps, Zone C covers two-thirds of the

West Bank and Zone B another 30 percent, with 3 percent in the

Palestinian Zone A. Prime Minister Rabin, however, informed the Knesset

(Parliament) on October 5 that Zone C includes 73 percent of the West

Bank, the Israeli press reported. The map and analysis in the New York

Times assigns 70 percent of the West Bank to Zone C. The authoritative

Washington Report on Israeli Settlement estimates Zone A at 1 percent of

the West Bank, Zone C at 72 percent (relying on published Israeli

sources). Of the Palestinian towns, one was disputed, Hebron, with 450

Jewish settlers among some 100,000 Palestinians; Israel therefore

retains substantial control. Zone C includes 140,000 Jews, Zones A and B

1.1 million Arabs. “About 300,000 Israelis are living in the areas

conquered by Israel in 1967,” veteran Israeli correspondent Danny

Rubinstein observes, about 150,000 of them “in the municipal area

annexed to Jerusalem after 1967.”

Oslo II reaffirms the provision of the Cairo accords of May 1994 that

Palestinian legislation cannot “deal with a security issue that falls

under Israel’s responsibility” and cannot “seriously threaten other

significant Israeli interests protected by this agreement.” The basic

terms of the Cairo accords apparently remain in force for all three

zones, including their provision that the Israeli Military

Administration retains exclusive authority in “legislation,

adjudication, policy execution” and “responsibility for the exercise of

these powers in conformity with international law,” which the U.S. and

Israel interpret as they please. The meaning, as the knowledgeable

Israeli analyst Meron Benvenisti observed after Cairo, is that “the

entire intricate system of military ordinances…will retain its force,

apart from ‘such legislative regulatory and other powers Israel may

expressly grant’“ to the Palestinians, while Israeli judges retain “veto

powers over any Palestinian legislation ‘that might jeopardize major

Israeli interests’,” which have “overriding power” (his quotes are from

the text of the Cairo agreement).

Oslo II stipulates further that the Palestinian Council that is to be

elected must recognize the “legal rights of Israelis related to

Government and Absentee land located in areas under the territorial

jurisdiction of the Council.” In effect, the PA therefore accepts the

legality of already existing Jewish settlements and any further ones

that Israel may choose to construct, and recognizes Israeli sovereignty

over parts of the West Bank that Israel decides to designate as state

and absentee lands (unilaterally, as in the past): up to 90 percent of

Area B, according to “well-informed Palestinian sources” cited by the

Report on Israeli Settlement, an estimate only, because the ruling

authorities do not release information.

By incorporating these provisions, Oslo II rescinds the position of

virtually the entire world that the settlements are illegal and that

Israel has no claim to the territories acquired by force in 1967. Oslo

II reaffirms the basic principle of Oslo I: UN resolution 242 of

November 1967, the basic framework of Middle East diplomacy, is dead and

buried; UN 242, that is, as interpreted by those who formulated it,

including — quite explicitly — the United States until Washington

switched policy in 1971, departing from the international consensus it

had helped shape. The “peace process” keeps to the doctrines that the

U.S. has upheld in international isolation (apart from Israel) for 25

years, a matter of no slight significance.

To summarize, Israel runs Zone C (about 70 percent of the West Bank)

unilaterally, and Zone B (close to 30 percent) effectively, while

partially ceding Zone A (1 percent-3 percent). Israel retains unilateral

control over the whole West Bank to the extent that it (and its foreign

protector) so decide, and the legality of its essential claims is now

placed beyond discussion. The principles extend to the Gaza Strip, where

Israel retains full control of the 30 percent that it considered of any

value.

To illustrate with an analogy, it is somewhat as if New York State were

to cede responsibility for slums of South Bronx and Buffalo to local

authorities while keeping the financial, industrial, and commercial

sectors, wealthy residential areas, virtually all of the usable land and

resources, indeed everything except for scattered areas it would be

happy to hand over to someone else, just as Israel is delighted to free

itself from the burden of controlling downtown Nablus and Gaza City

directly. Here and in the isolated villages of Zone B Palestinian forces

are to manage the population on the standard models: the British in

India, Whites in South Africa and Rhodesia, the U.S. in Central America,

and so on. Israel has at last recognized the absurdity of using its own

forces for to keep the natives quiet.

To take another standard of comparison, recall that in 1988, at the most

extreme period of U.S.-Israeli refusal to recognize any Palestinian

rights or to have any dealings with the PLO, Rabin called for Israeli

control of 40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, speaking for the

Labor Party and reiterating its basic stand from 1968 (with some

variations). In 1995, Rabin recognized the need to sacrifice, and at

Oslo II was willing to accept Israeli control of only about twice as

much as he had demanded before — 70 percent-99 percent of the West Bank

and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip — along with recognition of the

legality of whatever Israel and its sponsor have done and may choose to

do.

There has been another change from 1988: at Oslo, Rabin and Shimon Peres

were willing to negotiate with the PLO and recognize it as “the

representative of the Palestinian people,” at least in a side letter

though not in the official agreement. In 1988, they had flatly refused

any dealings with the PLO. That transformation has evoked much acclaim

from U.S. commentators, who were particularly impressed by Rabin’s

ability to overcome the revulsion he felt for his old enemy — and who

prefer not to listen to the explanation offered by the objects of their

admiration: “There has been a change in them, not us,” Peres informed

the Israeli public as the Oslo I accords were announced; “We are not

negotiating with the PLO, but only with a shadow of its former self.”

The new approved shadow effectively accepts Israel’s demands, abandoning

its call for mutual recognition in a two-state settlement, the program

that branded the PLO a terrorist organization unfit for entry into

negotiations, according to the conventions of U.S. discourse.

Without consideration of the actual background, discussion of the issues

can hardly be serious. The crucial facts of recent history, however,

have been almost totally banned, even from scholarship for the most

part; again, a matter of no slight significance.

Commenting on the early stages of the historic trade, Palestinian human

rights lawyer Raji Sourani sees “the beginning of a trend towards the

militarization of Palestinian society,” consistent with the standard

model of population control by client forces. That trend proceeds,

Middle East correspondent Graham Usher adds, alongside “the repressive

Israeli regime of containment that since Oslo [I] has killed 255

Palestinians in the West Bank And Gaza, while attacks by Palestinians

have claimed 137 Israelis” (to mid-1995), and has arrested 2400

Palestinians “for alleged ‘Islamist tendencies’ between October 1994 and

January 1995” alone.

The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed has declined since Oslo I,

a tendency described in Israel and the West as an increase in

Palestinian terror; not false, but not quite the whole story either,

even more so if we bring in the suppressed topic of international

terrorism in Lebanon.

The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed has declined since Oslo I,

a tendency described in Israel and the West as an increase in

Palestinian terror; not false, but not quite the whole story either,

even more so if we bring in the suppressed topic of international

terrorism in Lebanon.

U.S.-Israeli intentions to maintain those terrorist operations was made

explicit the day that Shimon Peres assumed his duties as Prime Minister.

“Peres Sets Tone of Post-Rabin Era,” a front-page New York Times

headline read, introducing a report that “Israeli warplanes shrieked

over Lebanon” and “pounded the bases of radical Palestinian guerrillas

south of Beirut.” This is well beyond the “security zone” that Israel

runs in South Lebanon with the aid of a terrorist mercenary force, in

violation of the demand of the UN Security Council in March 1978 that it

withdraw immediately and unconditionally. Peres won only praise for this

demonstration of his intention “to assume Mr. Rabin’s soldier’s mantle

as the scourge of Arabs who reject Israel’s offer of peace.” The

adjacent column condemned the “desperate act, a horrible act, the work

of cowards,” when terrorists attacked a U.S.-run military training

center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the same day. Two weeks later, Hizbollah

fired rockets into Northern Israel, wounding several civilians, an act

of terrorism that it described as a “warning response” to “Israel’s

continuing aggressions,” including the demolition of homes by the

Israeli army in Lebanon and the Israeli Navy’s continuing refusal to

allow Lebanese fisherman to fish off the Lebanese coast. As the rockets

fell, a senior security official of Hizbollah was blown up by a car

bomb. Hizbollah’s terror was condemned as a violation of the 1993

agreement that neither side would carry out actions outside of Israel’s

“security zone,” an agreement that Israel violates at will: for example,

two weeks earlier as Peres took office, or a month before that, on

October 13, when “Israeli artillery bombarded villages outside the

security zone,” a tiny item reported, with “no immediate word on

casualties,” in retaliation for the wounding of Israeli soldiers in

Israel’s “security zone.”

As Peres took office, the knowledgeable Middle East correspondent Mary

Curtius explained that “Peres is expected to follow Rabin’s course of

selectively hitting at guerrilla targets rather than pouring huge

numbers of Israeli troops into Lebanon and risking more Israeli

casualties” — “Rabin’s course” in July 1993, when he reacted to

guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops in South Lebanon by pouring huge

number of troops into Lebanon in an assault that killed 125 Lebanese and

drove half a million people from their homes, as Curtius among others

reported. Curtius also gives some historical background: Israel invaded

Lebanon in 1982 when the PLO “regularly fired Katyushas at northern

communities and sent guerrillas on cross-border attacks.” That is the

standard way of referring to the fact that the PLO scrupulously adhered

to the U.S.-brokered truce while Israel stepped up its terrorist attacks

in Lebanon, killing many civilians by bombing and other actions in a

desperate attempt to elicit some response that could serve as an excuse

for the long-planned invasion. The facts are uncontroversial, but

unacceptable, therefore turned into their opposite here with amazing

regularity (though discussed frankly in Israel).

Israeli atrocities in Lebanon regularly pass without mention or comment.

More than 100 Lebanese were killed by the Israeli army or its local

mercenaries in the first half of 1995, the London Economist reports,

along with 6 Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. Israeli forces use terror

weapons, including anti-personnel shells that spray steel darts

(sometimes delayed action shells to maximize terror), which killed two

children in July 1995 and four others in the same town a few months

earlier, and seven others in Nabatiye, where “no foreign journalists

turned up” to describe the atrocities, British Middle East correspondent

Robert Fisk reported from the scene. So matters continue. The occasional

mention is usually in the context of a denunciation of Hizbollah terror

against Israelis in retaliation.

The brutality of the new Palestinian forces and their cooperation with

the Israeli security apparatus have been reported extensively by the

Israeli press and human rights monitors, and should come as no surprise.

That, after all, was the announced plan. Speaking to the political

council of the Labor Party on October 2 1993, immediately after Oslo I,

Prime Minister Rabin explained that the Palestinian security forces

would be able to “deal with Gaza without problems caused by appeals to

the High Court of Justice, without problems made by [the human rights

organization] B’Tselem, and without problems from all sorts of bleeding

hearts and mothers and fathers.” His plan was as rational as it is

conventional.

Small wonder that Henry Kissinger sees Rabin as a “visionary,” though

reaching his full heights as “a visionary late in life,” on the path to

Oslo I: “When you sit where I do and have, the number of world class

thinkers among statesmen is very limited — and he was one of them,”

Kissinger explained.

Minister of Interior Ehud Barak, now Foreign Minister in the Peres

government, announced that Oslo II “ensures Israel’s absolute

superiority in both the military and economic fields.” Benvenisti points

out that the Oslo II map, establishing the “peace of the victors,”

conforms to the most extreme Israeli proposal, that of the ultra-right

General Sharon in 1981. Not surprisingly, Sharon does not appear too

dissatisfied with the outcome. Correspondents report that after Oslo II,

he was “smiling broadly as he talked about the bright future for” a new

West Bank settlement that he had “planned and helped build…and others

like it” while watching the “construction going on” and showing the

press his own proposed map from 1977, now implemented by Rabin, with

whom Sharon said he “felt close,” thanks to the congruence of their

programs. Yisrael Harel, the founder of the Yesha Council of West Bank

settlers and editor of its extremist newspaper Nekudah, agrees with

Sharon and the governing Labor Party: “If they keep to the current plan,

I can live with it,” he says. Prime Minister Peres’s right-hand man,

Labor dove Yossi Beilin, explains that the Oslo II agreement “was

delayed for months in order to guarantee that all the settlements would

remain intact and that the settlers would have maximum security. This

entailed an immense financial investment. The situation in the

settlements was never better than that which was created following the

Oslo II agreement.”

In his report on Oslo II to the Knesset, Rabin outlined “the main

changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent

solution.” In accord with these primary demands, hardly likely to be

subject to negotiation, Greater Israel is to incorporate “united

Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim [a town to its east]

and Giv’at Ze’ev” [a suburb to its north]; the Jordan Valley; “blocs of

settlements in Judea and Samaria like the one in Gush Katif” (the

southern sector of Gaza that Israel retains surrounding its

settlements). These blocs are to include “Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and

other communities” in the West Bank. The press reported that Ma’ale

Adumim will be annexed to the greatly expanded Jerusalem area after

expanded settlement establishes contiguity between the two urban areas.

The meaning of the “peace of the victors” has been spelled out

accurately in the Hebrew press in Israel. Tel Aviv University Professor

Tanya Reinhart observed after the Cairo agreement that the arrangements

being imposed should not be compared with the end of Apartheid in South

Africa; rather, with the institution of that system, with its “home

rule” provisions for new “independent states,” as they were viewed by

South African Whites and their friends. The analysis, since reiterated

by Benvenisti and others, is quite reasonable. Political scientist

Shlomo Avineri points out that “In one sense [Oslo II] is a major

victory for Israel and a minimalist settlement for Arafat,” who “has

done a relatively good job given the impossible circumstances under

which he is working.” That is almost accurate. It is necessary, however,

to recall other features of the Third World model: Arafat, his cronies,

and rich Palestinians can expect to do quite well in the client

relationship, whatever the effects on the population.

In brief, there is considerable agreement about the bare facts across a

spectrum ranging from Sharon and Harel to the sharpest critics.

There is disagreement, however, about what the facts portend, a matter

of speculation of course. Some believe that the foundation has been laid

for Palestinian independence beyond the Bantustan level, even full

Israeli withdrawal. To others, the more likely prospect conforms to the

hopes expressed by New Republic editor Martin Peretz as he advised

Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982 and administer to the PLO a “lasting

military defeat” that will drive notions of independence out of the

minds of Palestinians in the occupied territories: Then “the

Palestinians will be turned into just another crushed nation, like the

Kurds or the Afghans,” and the Palestinian problem, which “is beginning

to be boring,” will be resolved. Speculation aside, at least this much

seems clear: it would be pointless for Israel to retain anything like

the territory it controls under Oslo II. Presumably, the government will

sooner or later decide to restrict its administrative burden while

continuing to integrate within Israel whatever land and resources it

finds valuable, at which point another “historic trade” will be

celebrated.

The “historic trade” just consummated establishes the most extreme

position of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism that has been seriously put forth

within the mainstream political spectrum. But however extreme a position

may be, some will remain unsatisfied. Ten years ago, central elements of

the Likud coalition reiterated their claim to Jordan, while conceding

that “in the context of negotiations with Jordan we might agree to

certain concessions in Eastern Transjordan” (the largely uninhabited

desert areas). A similar position had long been held by the mainstream

of the Kibbutz movement, Ahduth Avodah. which played a leading role in

the Golda Meir government. To my knowledge, such claims have never been

renounced. Today, some sectors, Americans and ultraorthodox prominent

among them, claim the right to every stone West of the Jordan.

The pattern is the same everywhere. Saudi Arabia is the most extreme

Islamic fundamentalist state in the world, but is under attack by

Islamic fundamentalists for selling out to the West. If the recent

terrorist bombing in Riyadh turns out to have been done by such groups,

that will hardly prove the government to be “moderate,” just as one

cannot seriously argue that Rabin is a “moderate” on the grounds that he

was murdered by a religious extremist. The point is equally obvious in

both cases — understood in the first and commonly denied in the second,

consistent with doctrinal imperatives.

The Facts on the Ground

Looking more closely, we find that the expanding area of Greater

Jerusalem-Ma’ale Adumim extends virtually to Jericho and the Jordan

Valley, so that the anticipated permanent settlement effectively bisects

the West Bank. A huge array of “bypass roads” is being constructed to

fragment the region further into “cantons,” as they are called in the

programs of the ultra-right now being implemented. The new roads link

the territories under Israeli control so that settlers can travel freely

without having to see the Arab villages scattered in the hills, or the

municipal areas run by the PA. Construction of Israeli settlements,

housing, and infrastructure has accelerated since Oslo I was signed in

September 1993, using funds provided by the U.S. taxpayer with the

agreement of the Bush and particularly the Clinton Administrations. The

government of Israel continues to provide inducements to Jews to settle

in the territories, where they enjoy a subsidized life-style well beyond

the reach of the general population; most recently, new efforts to

encourage settlement in lands confiscated from Bedouins in Ma’ale

Adumim, where a new bypass road was opened on October 23 and 6000 new

housing units are to be erected by the year 2005 along with 2400 new

hotel rooms, its population projected to grow to 50,000. Building starts

increased by over 40 percent from 1993 to 1995 (not including East

Jerusalem), according to a report by Peace Now issued on October 10,

though they are still well below 1992.

The same conception, Israel Shahak observes, has been implemented in

Gaza, “sliced into enclaves controlled by the bypass roads [that] cut

the Gaza Strip in two, in its strategically most sensitive spot: between

Gaza town and the big refugee camps to the south of it.” The settlements

“serve as pivots of the road grid devised to ensure Israeli control”

over the areas granted “autonomy,” which are separated from Egypt and

from each other. In both Gaza and the West Bank, these arrangements

allow Israel to continue to imprison the population in whole or in part

by road and area closures, as it has often done, sometimes for long

periods.

The motive for curfew-closure may be punishment, or to deter possible

terrorist action (particularly, after some Israeli atrocity, or for

several weeks during the signing of Oslo II). Or simply to liberate

Jewish citizens from the annoying presence of the locals, as when the

Arab population of Hebron was locked up under 24-hour curfew for four

days during the Passover holidays in 1995 so that settlers and 35,000

Jewish visitors brought there in chartered buses could have picnics and

travel around the city freely, dancing in the streets with public

prayers to bring down “the government of the Left,” laying the

cornerstone for a new residential building, and indulging in other

pleasures under the protective gaze of extra military forces, using the

opportunity “to insult the Palestinians imprisoned in their houses and

to throw stones at them if they dared to peek out of the windows at the

Jews celebrating in their city,” and finally bringing the celebration to

a close “by settlers rampaging through the Old City, destroying

property, and smashing car windows…in a city magically cleansed…of

Palestinians.” “Children, parents and old people are effectively jailed

for days in their homes, which in most cases, are seriously

overcrowded,” able to turn on their TV sets to “watch a female settler

saying happily, ‘There is a curfew, thank God’,” and to hear the “merry

dances of settlers” and “festive processions,” some to “the Patriarchs

Cave open only to Jews.” Meanwhile “commerce, careers, studies, the

family, love — all are immediately disrupted,” and “the medical system

was paralyzed” so that “many sick persons in Hebron were unable to reach

hospitals during the curfew and women giving birth could not arrive in

time at the clinics” (Yifat Susskind, Israel Shahak, Gideon Levy).

In annexed East Jerusalem, Israel is free to extend its programs to

reduce Arab citizens to second-class status. These were devised and

implemented by former Mayor Teddy Kollek, much admired here as an

outstanding democrat and humanitarian, and are now being extended under

his successor, Ehud Olmert of Likud. Their purpose, Kollek’s adviser on

Arab affairs Amir Cheshin explained, was “placing difficulties in the

way of planning in the Arab sector.” “I don’t want to give [the Arabs] a

feeling of equality,” Kollek elaborated, though it would be worthwhile

to do so “here and there, where it doesn’t cost us so much”; otherwise

“we will suffer.” Kollek’s planning commission advised development for

Arabs if it would have “a ‘picture window’ effect,” which “will be seen

by a large number of people (residents, tourists, etc.).” Kollek

informed the Israeli media in 1990 that for the Arabs, he had “nurtured

nothing and built nothing,” apart from a sewage system — which, he

hastened to add, was not intended “for their good, for their welfare,”

“they” being the Arabs of Jerusalem. Rather, “there were some cases of

cholera [in Arab sectors], and the Jews were afraid that they would

catch it, so we installed sewage and a water system against cholera.”

Under Olmert, treatment of Arabs has become considerably harsher,

according to reports from the scene.

The Kollek programs are analyzed by Israeli community planner Sarah

Kaminker (a City Council member and city planner in Kollek’s

administration) in a June 1994 Report submitted to the High Court on

behalf of Arab plaintiffs by the Society of St. Yves, the Catholic Legal

Resource Center for Human Rights. In Jewish West Jerusalem, the Report

concludes, “there is large-scale illegal construction” which the

Municipality does not prevent and retroactively approves. In Arab East

Jerusalem, standards are different. There, 86 percent of the land has

been made “unavailable for use by Arabs.” The remaining 14 percent “is

not vacant land but land that has already been developed”; vacant lands

are reserved for development for Jews, or kept as “open landscape views”

(often for eventual development for Jews, so it regularly turns out).

“The dearth of land zoned for Arab housing is a result of government

planning and development policy in East Jerusalem,” where the Kollek

administration conducted “a consistent effort since 1974 to limit the

land area available to Arabs for licensed construction.” The goal is

“demographic balance,” partially achieved in 1993 when Kollek’s

Municipality “was able to announce that the number of Jews residing in

East Jerusalem had surpassed the number of Arabs.”

The government has provided housing in formerly Arab East Jerusalem:

60,000 units for Jews, 555 for Arabs. Arabs whose homes have been

demolished for Jewish settlement often “come from the lowest economic

strata of their community” and now “live in makeshift hovels, doubled

and tripled up with other families, or even in tents and caves.” Those

who are willing to build their own homes on their own lands are barred

by law and subject to demolition if they proceed. The threat is

executed, unlike Jewish West Jerusalem, where “the problem of illegal

construction…is as serious, if not more so, than that in East

Jerusalem.” “Demographic balance” is advanced further by discriminatory

regulations on building heights, far more limited in Arab than Jewish

neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. An array of zoning provisions and other

legal instruments has been designed to intensify the discrimination

between Jews and Arabs, as throughout Israel itself, always using funds

provided by the U.S. taxpayer directly or through tax-free donations,

always with the approval of admiring U.S. commentators.

With Israel’s Jihad for Jerusalem now officially over, such programs can

be extended there and beyond. The cantonization of Arab regions and the

new stamp of legitimacy for the right of closure should also make it

possible to refine the long-term program of inducing the population to

go somewhere else, except for those who may find a place in industrial

parks handed over to Israeli and Palestinian investors, linked to

foreign capital.

During the occupation, the military administration barred independent

development. An official order declared that “no permits will be given

for expanding agriculture and industry which may compete with the State

of Israel,” a device familiar from U.S. practice and Western imperialism

generally, which typically permitted “complementary development” only.

The facts are well-known in Israel. As Oslo II was announced, Ronny

Shaked recalled that in the territories Israeli governments “were only

interested in calm and cheap manpower. Decisions to develop any

infrastructures, to create any industrial or agricultural development,

were taken only to promote a specific Israeli interest and were forced

on the inhabitants. In Hebron, for example, the Civil Administration

refused denied a request to set up a factor for making nails, fearing

competition with a factory in Tel Aviv. The health system, on the other

hand, was taken care of, because diseases in the West Bank might also

endanger residents of Tel Aviv.” The Civil Administration was cheap to

run, he adds, because its “minuscule” budget was covered by taxes from

the local inhabitants. It effectively continues with little change under

Oslo II.

Under the Israeli regime, the local population was left with few options

beyond exile or employment in Israel under terrible conditions that have

been bitterly condemned for years in the Israeli press, largely

concealed from those who pay the bills. The only comparative scholarly

study concludes that “the situation of noncitizen Arabs in Israel is

worse relative to that of nonnationals in other countries” — migrant

workers in the United States, “guestworkers” in Europe, etc.

Even these options have now been sharply reduced as Palestinians are

being replaced by workers brought in from Thailand, the Philippines,

Romania, and other places where people live in misery. Israeli

investigative reporters have documented “inhuman” working conditions and

treatment, including virtual slavery and “severe sexual harassment,”

much as in the Gulf principalities and other client states. The curfews

and closures in the territories had “devastated the Palestinian economy

and destroyed 100,000 families in Gaza alone,” journalist Nadav Ha’etzni

reported in May 1995, a “trauma” that can only be compared with the mass

dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, he added. The

situation is likely to deteriorate as imported semi-slave labor

displaces the Palestinian workforce from the only employment that had

been allowed them. In such ways, “the Oslo Accords have created a truly

new Middle East,” Ha’etzni writes.

The rights of Palestinian workers in the “new Middle East” were spelled

out in a May 1995 ruling by Justice Y. Bazak of the Jerusalem District

court, rejecting a lawsuit brought by the workers’ rights group Kav

La’Oved (“Workers’ Hotline,” Tel Aviv). The plaintiffs had requested

restitution of $1 billion withheld from salaries for social benefits

that Palestinian workers had never received (pensions, unemployment

payments, and so on); the funds ended up in the State treasury. The

Court dismissed the case, accepting the government’s argument that

Knesset legislation to implement the Oslo I accords retroactively

legalized the robbery, thus removing any legal basis for the suit. The

Court also accepted the government’s argument that Israel’s National

Insurance Law grants rights only to residents of Israel. The deductions

were never intended to ensure equal rights for the Palestinian workers,

Justice Bazak ruled, but were designed to keep wages for Palestinians

high on paper but low in reality, thus protecting Israeli workers from

unfair competition by cheap Palestinian labor. This is “a worthy and

reasonable purpose which is recognized by the Court,” Justice Bazak

explained, “just as the legality of imposing customs taxes is recognized

for the purpose of protecting the country’s products…”

One can see why the Israeli judicial system must retain veto power over

any legislation that the Palestinian authorities might contemplate; and

why American taxpayers must be kept in the dark about the use of the

huge subsidies they provide to Israel.

These subsidies, incidentally, are opposed by the public even more than

most foreign aid, and are the one component that is immune from the

sharp reductions now being instituted in the miserly U.S. program, an

international scandal and virtually invisible if Israel and other U.S.

Middle East interests are excluded. It includes, for example, 25 of “the

most sophisticated fighter-bombers in the world,” the British press

reports, a deal that “slid through Congress with no objections by

legislators and virtually no comment in the American media.” This is

“the first time such high-performance military equipment has been sold

unrestricted and unamended abroad since the Second World War” (“sold”

means funded by U.S. military aid), a “decisive enhancement of Israel’s

military capabilities, giving it the power to strike at potentially

dangers nations far beyond its borders: Iran, Iraq, Algeria, and Libya

for example.” The U.S. “appears to be reappointing Israel as local

deputy sheriff, a role which ended with the disappearance of the

communist threat in the Middle East” — which, rhetoric aside, was never

the real threat as the extended appointment once again reveals, and has

indeed been official conceded.

Though Israel’s barring of development in the territories was well

known, its extent came as a surprise even to the most knowledgeable

observers when they had an opportunity to visit Jordan after the

Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of October 1994. The comparison is

particularly apt, Danny Rubinstein observes, since the Palestinian

populations are about as numerous on both sides of the Jordan, and the

West Bank was somewhat more developed before the Israeli takeover in

1967. Having covered the territories with distinction for years,

Rubinstein was well aware that the Israeli administration “had purposely

worsened the conditions under which Palestinians in the territories had

to live.” Nonetheless, he was shocked and saddened to discover the

startling truth.

“Despite Jordan’s unstable economy and its being part of the Third

World,” he found, “its rate of development is much higher than that of

the West Bank, not to mention Gaza,” administered by a very rich society

which benefits from unparalleled foreign aid. While Israel has built

roads only for the Jewish settlers, “in Jordan people drive on new,

multiple-lane highways, well-equipped with bridges and intersections.”

Factories, commerce, hotels, and universities have been developed in

impoverished Jordan, at quite high levels. Virtually nothing similar has

been allowed on the West Bank, apart from “two small hotels in

Bethlehem.” “All universities in the territories were built solely with

private funding and donations from foreign states, without a penny from

Israel,” apart from the Islamic University in Hebron, originally

supported by Israel as part of its encouragement of Islamic

fundamentalism to undermine the secular PLO, now a Hamas center. Health

services in the West Bank are “extremely backward” in comparison with

Jordan. “Two large buildings in East Jerusalem, intended for hospitals

and clinics to serve the residents of the West Bank, which the

Jordanians were constructing in 1967, were turned into police buildings

by the Israeli government,” which also refused permits for factories in

Nablus and Hebron under pressure from Israeli manufacturers who wanted a

captive market without competition. “The result is that the backward and

poor Jordanian kingdom did much more for the Palestinians who lived in

it than Israel,” showing “in an even more glaring form how badly the

Israeli occupation had treated them.”

Electricity is available everywhere in Jordan, unlike the West Bank,

where the great majority of Arab villages have only local generators

that operate irregularly. “The same goes for the water system. In arid

Jordan, several large water projects…have turned the eastern bank of the

Jordan valley into a dense and blooming agricultural area,” while on the

West Bank water supplies have been directed to the use of settlers and

Israel itself — about 5/6 of West Bank water, according to Israeli

specialists.

As reported by the London Financial Times last summer, “Nothing

symbolises the inequality of water consumption more than the fresh green

lawns, irrigated flower beds, blooming gardens and swimming pools of

Jewish settlements in the West Bank” while nearby Palestinian villages

are denied the right to drill wells and have running water one day every

few weeks, polluted by sewage, so that men have to drive to towns to

fill up containers with water or to hire contracters to deliver it at 15

times the cost. In summer 1995 the Israeli national water company

Mekorot cut supplies to the southern and central parts of Gaza for 20

days because people had no money to pay their bills. While a handful of

Israeli settlers run luxury hotels with swimming pools for guests and

profit from water-intensive agriculture, Palestinians lack water to

drink — or, increasingly, even food to eat, as the economy collapses,

apart from wealthy Palestinians, who are doing fine, on the standard

Third World model.

Individual cases clarify the general picture. For example, the village

of Ubaydiya, where 8000 Palestinians were deprived of running water for

18 months while the nearby Jewish settlements are “flourishing in the

desert” (though Mekorot did promise to restore service to deter a

hearing at the High Court of Justice, with outcome unknown at the time

of writing). Or Hebron, where thousands of people had no water from

their pipes in August 1995. Journalist Amiram Cohen reports that in “the

hot days of summer,” 1995, each Arab of Hebron received less than 1/4 of

the water allotment of a resident of the nearby all-Jewish settlement of

Kiryat Arba.

The radically discriminatory use of water resources should persist under

Oslo II, which “continues the old policy of keeping [Palestinians] from

thirsting to death,” one analyst in Israel observes, while “not allowing

the increases that would be necessary for economic growth.” Water is

denied for Arab industry or agriculture, restrictions that do not hold

for Jewish settlers. Meanwhile Israel itself will continue to use the

waters of the West Bank under its claim of “historic use” since the 1967

occupation. The Oslo II accords provide that “both sides agree to

coordinate the management of water and sewage resources and systems in

the West Bank during the interim period,” basically preserving the

status quo. Only the waters of the occupied territories are subject to

discussion, consistent with the general framework of capitulation.

The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty has provisions on “achieving a

comprehensive and lasting settlement of all the water problems between

[Israel and Jordan].” They are outlined by David Brooks of Canada’s

International Development Centre, a specialist on water resources of the

region and a member of Canada’s delegation to the Middle East

Multilateral Peace Talks on water and the environment, who comments that

the terms are not “particularly remarkable as water agreements go,” with

one exception: “what is omitted, or, more accurately, who is omitted.

Not a word is said about water rights for the Palestinians, nor about

giving them a role in managing the waters of the Jordan valley.”

“Palestinians are not even party to the negotiations,” Brooks observes:

“Their omission is staggering given that most of the Lower Jordan River

(from Kinneret to the Dead Sea) forms the border between Jordan and what

is likely in the near future to be Palestinian, not Israeli, territory.”

His basic point is correct, but the omission becomes less staggering

when we depart from the rhetoric about what lies down the road and

attend to its factual basis: specifically, to the fact that Israel has

always made very clear its intention to retain the Jordan Valley within

Greater Israel, so that Palestinian cantons that may some day be called

“a state” will be largely cut off from the outside. Effective control

over Palestinian enclaves by Jordan and Israel, if that proves to be the

outcome, will bring to a natural conclusion the cooperative efforts of

Israel and Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy that go back to the post-World

War II origins of these states, including the 1948 war.

Neither Jordan nor Israel (nor the pre-state actors) has ever had any

use for Palestinian nationalism, though there is a version that the U.S.

and Israel do advocate: Palestinian nationalism in the sense made

explicit in the official U.S. policy that provided the basis for the

peace process initiated at Madrid in 1991. That conception had been

spelled out in the Baker plan of December 1989, which identified the

Shamir-Peres plan of Israel’s coalition government as the sole

“initiative” to be considered in eventual negotiations. The basic

principle of the Shamir-Peres-Baker plan was that there can be no

“additional Palestinian state in the Gaza district and in the area

between Israel and Jordan” — the latter already a “Palestinian state.”

The terms of the Shamir-Peres-Baker plan, expressing the consensus of

virtually the entire spectrum of U.S.-Israeli politics, are scarcely to

be found in the United States (this journal being among the very rare

exceptions), and the occasional references involve substantial

misrepresentation. The highly efficient suppression of official U.S.

policy makes good sense.

The Jordan-Israel Treaty is a component of the “truly new Middle East”

that does receive attention in Western commentary, being far more

significant than $1 billion stolen from Palestinians laboring under

subhuman conditions or the assignment of crucial Palestinian resources

to important partners in the peace process. Its major achievement is the

integration of Israel within the U.S.-dominated Middle East system.

Long-standing tacit relations among participants are now becoming more

overt and efficient, and Israel is taking on its intended role as a

military-industrial-technological center for the region (possibly

financial center as well). This goal was difficult to achieve as long as

the Palestinian issue remained a festering sore, a source of unrest in

the Arab world. But Arafat’s acceptance of “the peace of the victors,”

in the apparent hope of salvaging some shreds of his waning authority by

becoming an agent of the powerful, has helped to suppress the

Palestinian issue, at least for the present (there are other factors,

including the disintegration of secular Arab nationalism and the

disarray of the South generally). One notable consequence of this

success is “the real peace dividend for Israel,” as the Wall Street

Journal describes the fact that “the barriers are now down in the

fastest-growing markets in the world, which are in the Far East, not the

Middle East.” The Middle East is already pretty much in Washington’s

pocket, but for a U.S. outpost to position itself in the contested

Asia-Pacific region is a useful further accomplishment.

These consequences of the Oslo peace process are reflected in the

rapidly rising level of foreign investment in Israel, which is

increasingly seen as “the fulcrum of economic development in the region”

(Lord Sterling, chairman of a major U.K. shipping company). “Israel will

look back on 1995 as the year when international finance and business

discovered its thriving economy,” the Financial Times observed —

“thriving” in the usual manner of “economic miracles,” mimicking its

patron by achieving unusually high rates of inequality and dismantling

social services.

Another important component of the “peace of the victors” is the end of

even a gesture towards Palestinian refugees. The Oslo settement

effectively abolishes their “right of return,” endorsed unanimously by

the UN General Assembly in 1948 as the most direct application of

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted the

previous day, and reiterated regularly since. Immediately after Oslo I,

in another “visionary” pronouncement, Rabin had dashed any hopes that

refugees might return to the areas of Palestinian autonomy (let alone

anywhere else). That is “nonsense,” he explained: “If they expect tens

of thousands, they live in a dream, an illusion.” Perhaps some

“increased family reunification,” nothing more. While the Clinton

Administration offered $100 million to the PA, mostly for security

forces (in contrast to $3 billion to Israel, perhaps twice that if we

add other devices), it cut by $17 million the U.S. contribution to

UNRWA, the largest single employer in the Gaza Strip and responsible for

40 percent of its health and education services as well as for

Palestininian refugees elsewhere. Washington may be planning to

terminate UNRWA, which “Israel has historically loathed,” Graham Usher

observed. Breaking with earlier policies, the Clinton Administration

voted against all General Assembly Resolutions pertaining to Palestinian

refugees in 1993 and 1994, on the grounds that they “prejudge the

outcome of the ongoing peace process and should be solved by direct

negotiations,” now safely in the hands of the U.S. and its clients. As a

step towards dismantling UNRWA, its headquarters are to be moved to

Gaza, which should effectively terminate international support for the

1.8 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The next

step may be to defund it completely, UN sources report.

“A Day of Awe”

The signing of Oslo II and the Rabin assassination received enormous

attention and coverage. Typical headlines after the signing give the

flavor. “Israel agrees to quit West Bank.” “Israel Ends Jews’ Biblical

Claim on the West Bank” in “Rabin’s historic trade with Arabs,” a

“historic compromise.” “Israelis, Palestinians find a painful peace,”

establishing an “undeniable reality: The Palestinians are on their way

to an independent state; the Jews are bidding farewell to portions of

the Holy Land to which they have historically felt most linked.” “Score

One for Clinton.” “At White House, symbols of a Day of Awe.”

Editorials added that “the latest Israeli-Palestinian accord is a big

one, making the historic move toward accommodation of the two peoples

all but irreversible.” A Reuters chronology published here and abroad

identified the Day of Awe, September 28, as the day on which “Israel and

the PLO sign agreement extending Palestinian rule to most of West Bank.”

The New York Times lead story after the assassination reported that

Rabin had “conquered the ancient lands on the West Bank of the Jordan”

and then “negotiated the accord to eventually cede Israeli control of

them to the Palestinians.” The major Times think piece on Rabin focused

on the “evolution” in his thinking that was “taking place before your

eyes,” as “his language underwent a remarkable transformation and so did

his ideas about peace with the Palestinians”; “it was astonishing how

far he had roamed from where he stood in 1992.” The former Jerusalem

bureau chief of the Washington Post reported that “when Rabin offered

Israelis the possibility of ‘separation’ — of walling off the Gaza Strip

and West Bank and getting Palestinians out of sight and out of mind —

the majority responded with enthusiasm.” “Those who murdered Rabin, and

those who incited them, didn’t do so because they opposed plans to

create a Palestinian Bantustan,” the New Statesman correspondent

reported from Jerusalem, chiding Edward Said for thinking otherwise.

“No: they knew that the course Rabin was charting would lead, unless

stopped, to a Palestinian state.”

That’s a fair sample

One intriguing feature is that the factual assertions are not even close

to true. Israel did not “agree to quit West Bank” or “End Jews’ Biblical

Claim on the West Bank.” It signed no “agreement extending Palestinian

rule to most of West Bank” or “to eventually cede Israeli control of

West Bank lands to the Palestinians.” Rabin never so much as hinted at

an offer “of walling off the Gaza Strip and West Bank”; quite the

contrary, he was adamant, clear, and consistent in stressing that

nothing of the sort was even a remote possibility. And although Rabin’s

“ideas about peace” had indeed “roamed far” from 1992, it was not quite

in the direction indicated: in 1992, as in 1988 and before, Rabin was

advocating the traditional Labor Party stand that Israel should keep

about 40 percent of the occupied territories, not the far greater

proportion he accepted on the Day of Awe.

As for what is “undeniable” and “irreversible,” readers can make their

own guesses, recognizing that these are speculations lacking any serious

factual basis. Those who “know” that Rabin’s course would lead to an

authentic Palestinian state, not “a Palestinian Bantustan,” might want

to explain why they dismiss out of hand not all relevant facts, but also

the explicit statements of the leadership, not only Rabin, but also

Shimon Peres, even more of a “visionary dove” than Rabin. Explaining the

Oslo II accords to a gathering of Ambassadors in Jerusalem, Peres

responded to the question whether the permanent settlement could involve

a Palestinian state by making it crystal clear that “this solution about

which everyone is thinking and which is what you want will never

happen.” Two weeks before, journalist Amnon Barzilai reports further in

Ha’aretz, Peres responded with a “resounding ‘No’ when asked at a

meeting with the editorial board of Newsweek whether a Palestinian state

might be the eventual outcome. He proceeded with a “learned

explanation,” which, however, was never completed, because the verdict

in the O.J. Simpson trial was just then broadcast so that the meeting

had to stop, and afterwards the Newsweek editors were “too excited about

the verdict” to return to his thoughts.

Part of the standard story is indeed true. We should “Score One for

Clinton” and observe what happened with Awe. The scale of the victory

can only be appreciated by reviewing the history, almost totally

suppressed in the U.S. — and, quite interestingly, by now largely

forgotten abroad, not only in Europe but in Latin America and elsewhere.

The facts are not in dispute, and need not be reviewed here once again.

In brief, from 1967 to 1971 the U.S. led the international consensus in

support of a diplomatic settlement based on UN 242, which it understood

as implying full peace in return for full Israeli withdrawal from the

territories occupied in 1967 (with perhaps minor and mutual

modifications). When President Sadat of Egypt accepted these terms in

February 1971 in what Rabin describes in his memoirs as a

“famous…milestone” on the road to peace, the U.S. had to decide whether

to keep to the policy it had crafted or join its Israeli ally in

rejecting it. Kissinger insisted on “stalemate” — no negotiations, only

force — and won out in the internal conflict, setting the U.S. on a

lonely path as leader of the rejectionist camp, not only ignoring

Palestinian rights (as did UN 242 and Sadat’s offer as well) but also

rejecting one of the two paired requirements of UN 242: Israeli

withdrawal. U.S. isolation deepened a few years later as the

international consensus shifted to support for a two-state settlement

incorporating the wording of UN 242, compelling Washington to veto

Security Council resolutions, vote alone annually at the General

Assembly (with Israel, and occasionally some other client state), and

block all other diplomatic initiatives, a task that became increasingly

complex from the early 1980s as the PLO more forcefully called for

negotations leading to mutual accommodation, but was handled with ease,

thanks to the services of the intellectual community.

It was not until the Gulf War established that “What We Say Goes,” in

George Bush’s words, that the U.S. was able to initiate the Madrid

negotiations, an authentic “peace process” because it was unilaterally

run by Washington and restricted to its extremist agenda. The

establishment of Washington’s rejectionist stand in Oslo I, and its

affirmation in Oslo II, is an impressive achievement.

The character of the triumph is revealed in a different way when we

compare the reaction to the Rabin assassination with other cases, the

most obvious one being the assassination of Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir)

by Israeli commandos in Tunis in April 1988. This act of international

terrorism was probably intended mostly for morale-building in Israel at

the height of the popular uprising (Intifada), which Israel was then

unable to suppress, despite considerable brutality. On little credible

evidence, Abu Jihad was charged with directing the Intifada, a claim

reported as fact in the U.S. media, which did, however, recognize that

Abu Jihad was known “as one of the more moderate and thoughtful

officials in the PLO hierarchy” (Washington Post). The Post also

reported that “many Israelis celebrated his killing as evidence of

Israel’s willingness and ability to strike back at alleged terrorist

leaders” and that the assassination evoked “widespread applause from

Israelis, ranging from the liberal left to the far right.” The State

Department condemned “this act of political assassination,” but that was

the end of the matter. There were no regrets, flags at half mast,

laments about the fate of the peace process, or other moving commentary.

Abu Jihad was not a “martyr for peace.”

Why not? One possible reason is that he was a terrorist; true, but

plainly irrelevant. His terrorist career, while bloody enough, did not

even bring him close to those honored as “men of peace,” including Rabin

and Peres, or still more obviously, the statesmen who praise them.

Another possible reason is that he opposed the “peace process.” That too

is true, at least in a technical sense. He did oppose U.S.-Israeli

rejectionism, joining most of the rest of the world in advocating a

two-state settlement to be achieved by negotiations leading to mutual

recognition. If we adopt the usage of doctrinal convention, he opposed

“the peace process,” insisting on something other than a peace of the

victors in which the Palestinians become “just another crushed nation.”

Adopting the technical usage, we can make sense of the weird comments of

Dennis Ross, chief Middle East negotiator for the Bush and Clinton

Administrations, reported by Times Middle East specialist Elaine

Sciolino. Ross describes how in March 1993 Rabin presented Clinton with

a “brilliant, cogent, clear-cut argument” explaining “exactly why the

delegates then negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians would not be

able to deliver” — to deliver a non-rejectionist settlement recognizing

the rights of the indigenous population alongside of Israel, Sciolino

refrains from adding. But the PLO refused to accept Rabin’s brilliant

argument: “at that point they hadn’t demonstrated they were prepared to

make peace,” Ross “recalled”; Sciolino’s term “recalled” implies that

the recollection is accurate (one doesn’t “recall” what didn’t happen),

as indeed it is, if “making peace” means accepting U.S.-Israeli terms,

rejecting UN 242 and any thought of self-determination. When we adopt

the conventions, Ross’s statement is transformed from gibberish to

simple truth, and Sciolino is not misleading her readers by reporting

all of this as factually accurate. A little confusing perhaps, but with

a proper education it all works out.

We might ask what the authentic martyr for peace was up to when Abu

Jihad was assassinated — at Rabin’s “enthusiastic” initiative, Times

correspondent John Kifner reported from Jerusalem. Then Defense

Minister, Rabin had ordered his troops to suppress the Intifada by

brutality and terror, and shortly after, to attack villages using

plastic bullets, because “more casualties…is precisely our aim,” “our

purpose is to increase the number of (wounded) among those who take part

in violent activities.” Their “violent activities” are to dare to assert

that they are free, Rabin explained: “We want to get rid of the illusion

of some people in remote villages that they have liberated themselves,”

and by military attacks that produce “more casualties,” we “make it

clear to them where they live and within which framework,” teaching

familiar lessons in Western Civ. Shortly after, when the U.S. was driven

to a “dialogue” with the PLO in a last-ditch effort to derail their

increasingly irritating calls for negotiations leading to mutual

recognition, Rabin assured a delegation of Peace Now leaders that the

dialogue was of no significance, merely a delaying action intended to

grant Israel at least a year to suppress the Intifada by “harsh military

and economic pressure” — exactly what happened, allowing the “peace

process” to resume on course.

Plainly, Rabin is a martyr for peace and Abu Jihad a terrorist who

deserved his fate.

We might also ask what Washington’s men of peace were doing at that

crucial moment in 1988 when the U.S. and Israel were desperately trying

to fend off the growing threat of diplomatic settlement. The leading

figure among them was surely George Shultz, untainted by Reaganite

scandal. Just before Abu Jihad was assassinated, Shultz was pursuing his

“peace mission” in Jordan, where he “explained his understanding of the

aspirations of Palestinians,” Elaine Sciolino reported, offering the

example of the United States, where he is a Californian and George Bush

a Texan, but they have no problem living in harmony. Palestinian

aspirations can be handled in the same civilized way, under whatever

arrangements U.S.-Israeli power dictate; blandly reported, plainly

uncontroversial.

Shultz’s understanding of the adversary’s aspirations has echoes

elsewhere, as recent news reminds us. A week before Rabin’s

assassination, Fathi Shiqaqi, head of Islamic Jihad, was shot in the

back and killed in Malta, “probably by Israeli agents,” the Times

reported. As in the case of Abu Jihad, Israel did not take

responsibility, though the press did so with “huge headlines,” Israeli

correspondent Haim Baram reports, extolling “the long arm of Israel” and

“the night of revenge,” while articles praised the murder and warned

that “Israel will punish whoever is responsible for the killing of

Jews,” and “both Rabin and Peres hinted gleefully that Mossad was

involved.” Peres commented that “Islamic Jihad are killers, so it’s one

less killer” — true enough, though again one might observe that Peres’s

own achievements put them well in the shade, not to speak of George

Shultz.

Shiqaqi’s position on peace was the mirror image of Shultz’s. Shiqaqi

probably understood the “aspirations of Israelis” in the Shultz style,

and would have accepted an outcome in which Jews lived submissively

under Palestinian rule. On non-racist assumptions, then, either both

Shultz and Shiqaqi are men of peace, or both are murderous terrorists

who deserve the fate that only one has suffered. Fortunately, such

assumptions are unthinkable, so we need not pursue the exercise.

While Abu Jihad and (obviously) Fathi Shiqaqi do not enter the Pantheon,

some Arabs do. When Rabin was assassinated, alongside the front-page

story in the Boston Globe reporting that “peace has claimed another

victim,” the adjacent column recalled the assassination of Anwar Sadat —

who qualifies as a peacemaker not because of his acceptance of a full

peace treaty with Israel in terms of official U.S. policy in 1971, a

“famous milestone” banned from history, but because of his visit to

Jerusalem in 1977, opening the way to the Camp David settlement,

admissible because it kept to Washington’s rejectionist demands.

Power and Propaganda

The phrase “Day of Awe” is not out of place. The U.S. has carried out a

very impressive power play. The events are a remarkable testimony to the

rule of force in international affairs and the power of doctrinal

management in a sociocultural setting in which successful marketing is

the highest value and the intellectual culture is obedient and

unquestioning. The victory is not only apparent in the terms of Oslo I

and II and the facts on the ground, but also in the demolition of

unacceptable history, the easy acceptance of the most transparent

falsehoods, and the state of international opinion, now so submissive on

this issue that commentators and analysts have literally forgotten the

positions they and their governments advocated only a few years ago, and

can even see that “Israel agrees to quit West Bank” when they know

perfectly well that nothing of the sort is true. That is really

impressive, and instructive.

The most important aspect of any doctrinal system is the way issues are

framed and presented, the presuppositions that are insinuated to bound

discussion, remaining invisible, beyond reflection or analysis. In the

old Soviet Union, the game was over if the question under debate was

whether the Kremlin had made a mistake in its defense of Czechoslavakia

and Afghanistan; or in Nazi Germany, if the issue was whether the threat

of the Jews to civilization had been exaggerated. In the present case,

what is important is the conquest of the notion “peace process,” which

must be deprived of its meaning and restricted to a technical usage that

ensures that the game is over before it begins. That has been done, very

effectively, not by the exercise of any particular skill, but by sheer

power. It is by now unimaginable that the term “peace process” would

refer to the effort to achieve peace.

To be sure, that concept of “peace process” is too broad. Everyone wants

peace, even Hitler and Genghis Khan. The question always is: On what

terms? Under whose direction? In our highly disciplined intellectual

culture, the answer to those questions is a virtual reflex: On

Washington’s terms, and under its direction.

The conventions have useful consequences. One is that the phrase “the

U.S. government is trying to advance the peace process” is true by

definition, whatever Washington happens to be doing — say, undermining

diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. And the phrase “the U.S. government

is trying to undermine the peace process” is meaningless, unthinkable,

even if plainly true, as it often is, dramatically so in the present

case for 25 years.

Though there is no space to review the matter here, the lead domestic

story (the budget) reflects a similar achievement of the doctrinal

institutions. The only issue is how long it should take to balance the

budget, 7 years or a bit longer. There are other possible questions. Is

that what the population wants? Demonstrably not, by very large margins.

Does the plan make sense? It surely does for some sectors, those that

hope to maintain a powerful nanny state for the rich while the majority

“learn responsibility” under rigorous market discipline, enforced by the

unaccountable private tyrannies that are to rule untroubled by unruly

noises from below. But does it make sense for the health of the economy,

understood in terms that have to do with human interests and concerns,

even economic growth? That is hardly obvious, to put it mildly. But no

such questions arise once we have restricted debate to a spectrum

bounded at one extreme by statist reactionaries of the Gingrich variety,

and at the other by the President, who tells us: “Let’s be clear: of

course — of course — we need to balance the budget,” though not quite as

fast as those a few millimeters to the right would like, while

“centrists” like Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley seek a more “moderate”

course between the extremists of left and right. And if Americans think

they oppose budget balancing under any realistic conditions, they can be

reassured that they are wrong about their beliefs by tuning in to the

ultraliberal media, for example, National Public Radio, where co-host

Robert Siegel of “All Things Considered” assures them that “Americans

voted for a balanced budget,” detailing the cuts in social spending

pursuant to the public will (and irrelevantly, over its overwhelming

opposition, during the election and since, at least if opinion polls are

anywhere near accurate).

In case after case, that is just what we find. Open discussion is a fine

thing, as great as democracy itself, if only it is kept within the

bounds that support power and privilege. It’s about as close to a true

historical generalization as one can find that respectability is won by

adhering to these fundamental principles, and that rending these chains

is a first step towards freedom and justice.