First the Carrot, Then the Stick: Behind the Carnage in Palestine
by Norman G. Finkelstein
During the June 1967 war, Israel
occupied the West Bank and Gaza, completing the Zionist conquest
of British-mandated Palestine. In the war's aftermath, the
United Nations debated the modalities for settling the
Arab-Israeli conflict. At the Fifth Emergency Session of the
General Assembly convening in the war's immediate aftermath,
there was "near unanimity" on "the withdrawal of the armed
forces from the territory of neighboring Arab states occupied
during the recent war" since "everyone agrees that there should
be no territorial gains by military conquest."
(Secretary-General U Thant, summarizing the G.A. debate) In
subsequent Security Council deliberations, the same demand for a
full Israeli withdrawal in accordance with the principle of
"the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war"
was inscribed in United Nations Resolution 242, alongside the
right of "every state in the region" to have its sovereignty
respected. A still-classified State Department study concludes
that the US supported the "inadmissibility" clause of 242,
making allowance for only "minor " and "mutual" border
adjustments. (Nina J. Noring and Walter B. Smith II, "The
Withdrawal Clause in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of
1967") Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan later warned
Cabinet ministers not to endorse 242 because "it means
withdrawal to the 4 June boundaries, and because we are in
conflict with the Security Council on that resolution."
Beginning in the mid-1970s a modification
of UN Resolution 242 to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict
provided for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank
and Gaza once Israel withdrew to its pre-June 1967 borders. Except
for the United States and Israel (and occasionally a US client
state), an international consensus has backed, for the past quarter
century, the full-withdrawal/full recognition formula or what is
called the "two-state" settlement. The United States cast the lone
veto of Security Council resolutions in 1976 and 1980 calling for a
two-state settlement that was endorsed by the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) and front-line Arab states. A December 1989
General Assembly resolution along similar lines passed 151-3 (no
abstentions), the three negative votes cast by Israel, the United
States, and Dominica.
From early on, Israel consistently opposed
full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, offering the
Palestinians instead a South African-style Bantustan. The PLO.,
having endorsed the international consensus, couldn't be dismissed,
however, as "rejectionist" and pressure mounted on Israel to accept
the two-state settlement. Accordingly, in June 1982 Israel invaded
Lebanon, where the PLO was headquartered, to fend off what an
Israeli strategic analyst called the PLO's "peace offensive." (Avner
Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security)
In December 1987 Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza rose up in a basically non-violent civil revolt (intifada)
against the Israeli occupation. Israel's brutal repression
(extra-judicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions,
indiscriminate torture, deportations, and so on ) eventually crushed
the uprising. Compounding the defeat of the intifada, the
PLO suffered yet a further decline in its fortunes with the
destruction of Iraq, the implosion of the Soviet Union, and the
suspension of funding from the Gulf states. The US and Israel
seized this occasion to recruit the already venal and now desperate
PLO leadership as surrogates of Israeli power. This is the real
meaning of the "peace process" inaugurated at Oslo in September
1993: to create a Palestinian Bantustan by dangling before the PLO
the perquisites of power and privilege.
"The occupation continued" after Oslo, a
seasoned Israeli commentator observed, "albeit by remote control,
and with the consent of the Palestinian people, represented by their
`sole representative,' the PLO." And again: "It goes without saying
that `cooperation' based on the current power relationship is no
more than permanent Israeli domination in disguise, and that
Palestinian self-rule is merely a euphemism for Bantustanization."
(Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies)
After seven years of on-again, off-again
negotiations and a succession of new agreements that managed to rob
the Palestinians of the few crumbs thrown from the master's table at
Oslo (the population of Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories
had fully doubled in the meanwhile), the moment of truth arrived at
Camp David in July 2000. President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak
delivered Arafat the ultimatum of formally acquiescing in a
Bantustan or bearing full responsibility for the collapse of the
"peace process." As it happened, Arafat refused. Contrary to the
myth spun by Barak-Clinton as well as a compliant media, in fact "Barak
offered the trappings of Palestinian sovereignty," a special adviser
at the British Foreign Office reports, "while perpetuating the
subjugation of the Palestinians." (The Guardian, 10 April l
2002; for details and the critical background, see Roane Carey, ed.,
The New Intifada)
Consider in this regard Israel's response
to the recent Saudi peace plan. An Israeli commentator writing in
Haaretz observes that the Saudi plan is "surprisingly similar
to what Barak claims to have proposed two years ago." Were Israel
really intent on a full withdrawal in exchange for normalization
with the Arab world, the Saudi plan and its unanimous endorsement by
the Arab League summit should have been met with euphoria. In fact,
it elicited a deafening silence in Israel. (Aviv Lavie, 5 April
2002) Nonetheless, Barak's - and Clinton's - fraud that
Palestinians at Camp David rejected a maximally generous Israeli
offer provided crucial moral cover for the horrors that ensued.
Having failed in its carrot policy, Israel
now reached for the big stick. Two preconditions had to be met,
however, before Israel could bring to bear its overwhelming military
superiority: a "green light" from the U.S. and a sufficient pretext.
Already in summer 2000, the authoritative Jane's Information Group
reported that Israel had completed planning for a massive and bloody
invasion of the Occupied Territories. But the US vetoed the plan
and Europe made equally plain its opposition. After 11 September,
however, the US came on board. Indeed, Sharon's goal of crushing
the Palestinians basically fit in with the US administration's goal
of exploiting the World Trade Center atrocity to eliminate the last
remnants of Arab resistance to total US domination. Through sheer
exertion of will and despite a monumentally corrupt leadership,
Palestinians have proven to be the most resilient and recalcitrant
popular force in the Arab world. Bringing them to their knees would
deal a devastating psychological blow throughout the region.
With a green light from the US, all Israel
now needed was the pretext. Predictably it escalated the
assassinations of Palestinian leaders following each lull in
Palestinian terrorist attacks. "After the destruction of the houses
in Rafah and Jerusalem, the Palestinians continued to act with
restraint," Shulamith Aloni of Israel's Meretz party observed.
"Sharon and his army minister, apparently fearing that they would
have to return to the negotiating table, decided to do something and
they liquidated Raad Karmi. They knew that there would be a
response, and that we would pay the price in the blood of our
citizens." (Yediot Aharonot, 18 January 2002) Indeed,
Israel desperately sought this sanguinary response. Once the
Palestinian terrorist attacks crossed the desired threshold, Sharon
was able to declare war and proceed to annihilate the basically
defenseless civilian Palestinian population.
Only the willfully blind can miss noticing
that Israel's current invasion of the West Bank is an exact replay
of the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon. To crush the Palestinians'
goal of an independent state alongside Israel - the PLO's "peace
offensive" - Israel laid plans in August 1981 to invade Lebanon. In
order to launch the invasion, however, it needed the green light
from the Reagan administration and a pretext. Much to its chagrin
and despite multiple provocations, Israel was unable to elicit a
Palestinian attack on its northern border. It accordingly escalated
the air assaults on southern Lebanon and after a particularly
murderous attack that left two hundred civilians dead (including 60
occupants of a Palestinian children's hospital), the PLO finally
retaliated killing one Israeli. With the pretext in hand and a
green light now forthcoming from the Reagan administration, Israel
invaded. Using the same slogan of "rooting out Palestinian terror,"
Israel proceeded to massacre a defenseless population, killing some
20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, almost all civilians.
The problem with the Bush administration,
we are repeatedly told, is that it has been insufficiently engaged
with the Middle East, a diplomatic void Colin Powell's mission is
supposed to fill. But who gave the green light for Israel to commit
the massacres? Who supplied the F-16s and Apache helicopters to
Israel? Who vetoed the Security Council resolutions calling for
international monitors to supervise the reduction of violence? And
who just blocked the proposal of the United Nation's top human
rights official, Mary Robinson, to merely send a fact-finding team
to the Palestinian territories? (IPS, 3 April 2002)
Consider this scenario. A and B stand
accused of murder. The evidence shows that A provided B with the
murder weapon, A gave B the "all-clear" signal, and A prevented
onlookers from answering the victim's screams. Would the verdict be
that A was insufficiently engaged or that A was every bit as guilty
as B of murder?
To repress Palestinian resistance, a senior
Israeli officer earlier this year urged the army to "analyze and
internalize the lessons of…how the German army fought in the Warsaw
ghetto." (Haaretz, 25 January 2002, 1 February 2002) Judging
by the recent Israeli carnage in the West Bank - the targeting of
Palestinian ambulances and medical personnel, the targeting of
journalists, the killing of Palestinian children "for sport" (Chris
Hedges, New York Times former Cairo bureau chief), the
rounding up, handcuffing and blindfolding of all Palestinian males
between the ages 15 and 50, and affixing of numbers on their wrists,
the indiscriminate torture of Palestinian detainees, the denial of
food, water, electricity, and medical assistance to the Palestinian
civilian population, the indiscriminate air assaults on Palestinian
neighborhoods, the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields,
the bulldozing of Palestinian homes with the occupants huddled
inside - it appears that the Israeli army is following the officer's
advice. Dismissing all criticism as motivated by anti-Semitism,
Elie Wiesel - chief spokesman for the Holocaust Industry - lent
unconditional support to Israel, stressing the "great pain and
anguish" endured by its rampaging army. (Reuters, 11 April;
CNN, 14 April)
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Nobel laureate in
literature, Jose Saramago, invoked the "spirit of Auschwitz" in
depicting the horrors inflicted by Israel, while a Belgian
parliamentarian avowed that Israel was "making a concentration camp
out of the West Bank." (The Observer, 7 April 2002) Israelis
across the political spectrum recoil in outrage at such comparisons.
Yet, if Israelis don't want to stand accused of being Nazis they
should simply stop acting like Nazis.
Norman G. Finkelstein
contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
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