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Z: Is there a qualitative change in what's happening
now?
I
think there is a qualitative change. The goal of the
Oslo process was accurately described in 1998 by Israeli
academic Shlomo Ben-Ami just before he joined the
Barak government, going on to become Barak's chief
negotiator at Camp David in summer 2000. Ben-Ami observed
that "in practice, the Oslo agreements were founded
on a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence
of one on the other forever." With these goals,
the Clinton-Rabin-Peres agreements were designed to
impose on the Palestinians "almost total dependence
on Israel," creating "an extended colonial
situation," which is expected to be the "permanent
basis" for "a situation of dependence."
The function of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was
to control the domestic population of the Israeli-run
neocolonial dependency. That is the way 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 made it clear that it was
-- as commonly described in Israel -- a Bantustan
proposal; that is presumably
the
reason why maps were carefully avoided in the US mainstream.
It is true that Clinton-Barak advanced a few steps
towards a Bantustan-style settlement of the kind that
South Africa instituted in the darkest days of Apartheid.
Just prior to Camp David, West Bank Palestinians were
confined to over 200 scattered areas, and Clinton-Barak
did propose an improvement: consolidation to three
cantons, under Israeli control, virtually separated
from one another and from the fourth canton, a small
area of East Jerusalem, 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 the PA. That means destruction of
the institutions of the potential Bantustan that was
planned by Clinton and his Israeli partners; in the
last few days, even a human rights center. The Palestinian
figures who were designated to be the counterpart
of the Black leaders of the Bantustans are also under
attack, though not killed, presumably because of the
international consequences. The prominent Israeli
scholar Ze'ev Sternhell writes that the government
"is no longer ashamed to speak of war when what
they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which
recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor
neighborhoods of the blacks in South Africa during
the apartheid era." This new policy is a
regression below the Bantustan model of South Africa
40 years ago 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 critical analyses for the past 10 years,
including plenty of material posted regularly on Znet,
reviewing developments as they proceeded.
Exactly
how the Israeli leadership intends to implement these
programs is unclear -- to them too, I presume.
It
is convenient in the US, and the West, to blame Israel
and particularly Sharon, but that is unfair and hardly
honest. Many of Sharon's worst atrocities were carried
out under Labor governments. Peres comes close to
Sharon as a war criminal. Furthermore, the prime responsibility
lies in Washington, and has for 30 years. That is
true of
the
general diplomatic framework, and also of particular
actions. Israel can act within the limits established
by the master in Washington, rarely beyond.
Z:
What's the meaning of Friday's Security Council Resolution?
The
primary issue was whether there would be a demand
for immediate Israeli withdrawal from Ramallah and
other Palestinian areas that the Israeli army had
entered 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 frame
specified. The Resolution therefore accords with the
official US stand, largely reiterated in the press:
Israel is under attack and has the right of self-defense,
but shouldn't go too far in punishing Palestinians,
at least too visibly. The facts -- hardly controversial
-- are quite different. Palestinians have been trying
to survive under Israeli military occupation, now
in its 35th year. It has been harsh and brutal throughout,
thanks to decisive US military and economic support,
and diplomatic protection, including the barring of
the long-standing international consensus on a peaceful
political settlement. There is no symmetry in this
confrontation, not the slightest, and to frame it
in terms of Israeli self-defense goes beyond even
standard forms of distortion in the interests of power.
The harshest condemnations of Palestinian terror,
which are proper and have been for over 30 years,
leave these basic facts unchanged.
In
scrupulously evading the central immediate issues,
the Friday Resolution is similar to the Security Council
Resolution of March 12, which elicited much surprise
and favorable notice because it not only was not vetoed
by the US, in the usual pattern, but was actually
initiated by Washington. The Resolution called for
a "vision" of a Palestinian state. It therefore
did not rise to the level of South Africa 40 years
ago when the Apartheid regime did not merely announce
a "vision" but actually established Black-run
states that were at least as viable
and legitimate as what the US and Israel had been
planning for the occupied territories.
Z:
What is the U.S. up to now? What U.S. interests are
at stake at this juncture?
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 this region of the
world is control over the world's major energy resources.
The US-Israel alliance took shape in that context.
By 1958, the National Security Council concluded that
a "logical corollary" of
opposition to growing Arab nationalism "would
be to support Israel as the
only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East."
That is an exaggeration, but an affirmation of the
general strategic analysis, which identified indigenous
nationalism as the primary threat (as elsewhere in
the Third World); typically called "Communist,"
though it is commonly recognized in the internal record
that 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 Israel
performed an important service for US power by destroying
the main forces of secular Arab nationalism, considered
a very serious threat to US domination of the 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 Israel is virtually
a US military base, also closely integrated with the
militarized US high-tech economy.
Within
that persistent framework, the US naturally supports
Israeli repression of the Palestinians and integration
of the occupied territories, including the neocolonial
project outlined by Ben-Ami, though specific policy
choices have to be made depending on circumstances.
Right now, Bush planners continue to block steps towards
diplomatic settlement, or even reduction of violence;
that is the meaning, for example, of their veto of
the Dec. 15 2001 Security Council
Resolution
calling for steps towards implementing the US Mitchell
plan and introduction of international monitors to
supervise the reduction of violence. For similar reasons,
the US boycotted the Dec. 5 international meetings
in Geneva (including the EU, even Britain) which reaffirmed
that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the occupied
territories, so that critically important US-Israeli
actions there are "grave breaches" of the
Convention - war crimes, in simple terms - as the
Geneva declaration elaborated. That merely reaffirmed
the Security Council Resolution of October 2000 (US
abstaining), which held once again that the Convention
applied to the occupied territories. That had been
the official US position as well, stated formally,
for example, by George Bush I when he was UN Ambassador.
The US regularly abstains or boycotts in such cases,
not wanting to take a public stand in opposition to
core principles of international law, particularly
in the light of the circumstances under which the
Conventions were enacted: to criminalize formally
the atrocities of the Nazis, including their actions
in the territories they occupied. The media and intellectual
culture generally cooperate by their own "boycott"
of these unwelcome facts: in particular, the fact
that as a High Contracting Party, the US government
is legally 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 support for maintaining the occupation by
force and terror and extending settlements continues
without any pause. Z: What's your opinion of the Arab
summit?
The
Arab summit led to general acceptance of the Saudi
Arabian plan, which reiterated the basic principles
of the long-standing international consensus: Israel
should withdraw from the occupied territories in the
context of a general peace agreement that would guarantee
the right of every state in the region, including
Israel and a new Palestinian State, to peace and security
within recognized borders (the basic wording of UN
242, amplified to include a Palestinian state). There
is nothing new about this. These are the basic terms
of the Security Council resolution of
January 1976 backed by virtually the entire world,
including the leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe,
the Soviet bloc, the non-aligned countries -- in fact,
everyone who mattered. It was opposed by Israel and
vetoed by the US, thereby vetoed from history. Subsequent
and similar initiatives from the Arab states, the
PLO, and Western Europe were blocked 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, when President Sadat of Egypt offered
Israel a full peace treaty in return for Israeli withdrawal
from Egyptian territory, not even bringing up Palestinian
national rights or the fate of the other occupied
territories. Israel's Labor government 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 the
Palestinians under military occupation was described
frankly to his Cabinet colleagues by Moshe Dayan,
one of the Labor leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian
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 will see
where this process leads." Following that recommendation,
the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant
and degrading humiliation, along with torture, terror,
destruction of property, displacement and settlement,
and takeover of basic resources, crucially water.
Sadat's
1971offer conformed to official US policy, but Kissinger
succeeded in instituting his preference for what he
called "stalemate": no negotiations, only
force. Jordanian peace offers were also dismissed.
Since
that time, official US policy has kept to the international
consensus on withdrawal (until Clinton, who effectively
rescinded UN resolutions and considerations of international
law); but in practice, policy has followed the Kissinger
guidelines, accepting negotiations only when compelled
to do so, as Kissinger was after the near-debacle
of the 1973 war for which he shares major responsibility,
and under the conditions that Ben-Ami articulated.
Official doctrine instructs us to focus attention
on the Arab summit, as if the Arab states and the
PLO are the problem, in particular, their intention
to drive Israel into the sea. Coverage presents the
basic problem as vacillation, reservations, and qualifications
in the Arab world. There is little that one can say
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 the Saudi Fahd Plan of 1981, claiming
that that initiative was undermined by Arab refusal
to accept the existence of Israel. The facts are again
quite different. The 1981 plan was undermined by an
Israeli reaction that even its mainstream press condemned
as "hysterical," backed by the US. That
includes Shimon Peres and other alleged doves, who
warned that acceptance of the Fahd plan would "threaten
Israel's very existence." An indication of the
hysteria is the reaction of Israel's President Haim
Herzog, also considered a dove. 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 Council resolution that was "prepared
by" the PLO, at the time when he was Israel's
UN Ambassador. These claims can hardly be true, but
they are an indication of the desperate fear of a
political settlement on the part of Israeli doves,
backed throughout by the US. The basic problem then,
as now, traces back to
Washington, which has persistently backed Israel's
rejection of a political settlement in terms of the
broad international consensus, reiterated in 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 mostly beside the point.
And we should not be drawn into it -- for example,
by implicitly accepting the assumption that developments
at the Arab summit are a critical problem. They have
significance, of course, but it is secondary. The
primary problems are right here, and it is our responsibility
to face them and deal with them, not to displace them
to others.
Michael
Albert
Z Magazine / ZNet
sysop@zmag.org
www.zmag.org/weluser.htm |
