After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region.
During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
children, often by excessive use of lethal force in circumstances
in which neither the lives of the security forces nor others were in
imminent danger, resulting in unlawful killings,
Amnesty
International concluded in a detailed report that was scarcely
mentioned in the US. The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli dead was then
about 15-1, reflecting the resources of force available.
Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar:
they conform to the final status map
presented by the US-Israel
as the basis for the Camp David negotiations that collapsed in
July. This plan, extending US-Israeli rejectionist proposals of
earlier years, called for cantonization of the territories that Israel
had conquered in 1967, with mechanisms to ensure that usable land and
resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the
population is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian
authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to indigenous
collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the Black
leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the most
obvious analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include
Nablus and other Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in
Ramallah, and a southern canton in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain
isolated. Palestinians would be effectively cut off from Jerusalem,
the center of Palestinian life.
Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the
southern coastal region and a small settlement at Netzarim (the site
of many of the recent atrocities), which is hardly more than an excuse
for a large military presence and roads splitting the Strip below Gaza
City. These proposals formalize the vast settlement and construction
programs that Israel has been conducting, thanks to munificent US aid,
with increasing energy since the US was able to implement its version
of the peace process
after the Gulf war.
For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25 commentary; and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom, Oct. 10.
The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to
this project. Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of
violence began. Tensions, always high, were raised when the Barak
government authorized a visit by Ariel Sharon with 1000 police to the
Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a Thursday (Sept. 28). Sharon is
the very symbol of Israeli state terror and aggression, with a rich
record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's announced purpose
was to demonstrate Jewish sovereignty
over the al-Aqsa
compound, but as the veteran correspondent Graham Usher points out,
the al-Aqsa intifada,
as Palestinians call it, was not
initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive and intimidating
police and military presence that Barak introduced the following day,
the day of prayers. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of
people streamed out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200
wounded.
Whatever Barak's purpose, there could hardly have been a more
efficient way to set the stage for the shocking atrocities of the
following weeks. The same can be said about the failed negotiations,
which focused on Jerusalem, a condition observed strictly by US
commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling was
exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this problem could
have been reached in five minutes,
but he is right to say that
by any diplomatic logic [it] should have been the easiest issue to
solve
(Ha'aretz, Oct. 4).
It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to suppress what they are doing in the occupied territories, which is far more important. Why did Arafat agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the leadership of the Arab states regard the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have little problem with the Bantustan-style settlement, but cannot overlook administration of the religious sites, fearing the reaction of their own populations. Nothing could be better calculated to set off a confrontation with religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as centuries of experience reveal.
The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the US-Israeli
demands are to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive
diplomacy, and in a harsher form, to punish the victims who refused to
concede politely. The outlines are in basic accord with policies
established informally in 1968 (the Allon Plan), and variants that
have been proposed since by both political groupings (the Sharon Plan,
the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to recall
that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with
the support of the US. That support has been decisive since 1971, when
Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had
initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its
unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed,
culminating in the Oslo process.
Since all of this has been
effectively vetoed from history in the US, it takes a little work to
discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded.
As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar
US-Israeli rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,
telecommunications, and other services that are doled out in meager
rations to the Palestinian population, who are now under virtual
siege. It should be recalled that independent development was
ruthlessly barred by the military regime from 1967, leaving the people
in destitution and dependency, a process that has worsened
considerably during the US-run Oslo process.
One reason is the closures
regularly instituted, must brutally
by the more dovish Labor-based governments. As discussed by another
outstanding journalist, Amira Hass, this policy was initiated by the
Rabin government years before Hamas had planned suicide attacks,
[and] has been perfected over the years, especially since the
establishment of the Palestinian National Authority.
An efficient
mechanism of strangulation and control, closure has been accompanied
by the importation of an essential commodity to replace the cheap and
exploited Palestinian labor on which much of the economy relies:
hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from around the world,
many of them victims of the neoliberal reforms
of the recent
years of globalization.
Surviving in misery and without rights,
they are regularly described as a virtual slave labor force in the
Israeli press.
The current Barak proposal is to extend this program, reducing still
further the prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians. A major
barrier to the program is the opposition of the Israeli business
community, which relies on a captive Palestinian market for some $2.5
billion in annual exports, and has forged links with Palestinian
security officials
and Arafat's economic adviser, enabling them
to carve out monopolies with official PA consent
(Financial Times,
Oct. 22; also NYT, same day). They have also hoped to set up
industrial zones in the territories, transferring pollution and
exploiting a cheap labor force in maquiladora-style installations
owned by Israeli enterprises and the Palestinian elite, who are
enriching themselves in the time-honored fashion.
Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a plan,
though they are a natural extension of what has come before. Insofar
as they are implemented, they would extend the project of invisible
transfer
that has been underway for many years, and that makes
more sense than outright ethnic cleansing
(as we call the
process when carried out by official enemies). People compelled to
abandon hope and offered no opportunities for meaningful existence
will drift elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so.
The plans, which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist
movement from its origins (across the ideological spectrum), were
articulated in internal discussion by Israeli government Arabists in
1948 while outright ethnic cleansing was underway: their expectation
was that the refugees would be crushed
and die,
while
most of them would turn into human dust and the waste of society,
and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab countries.
Current plans, whether imposed by coercive diplomacy or outright
force, have similar goals. They are not unrealistic if they can rely
on the world-dominant power and its intellectual classes.
The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass, in
Israel's most prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18). Seven years after
the Declaration of Principles in September 1993 -- which foretold this
outcome for anyone who chose to see -- Israel has security and
administrative control
of most of the West Bank and 20% of the
Gaza Strip. It has been able to double the number of settlers in 10
years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue its discriminatory
policy of cutting back water quotas for three million Palestinians, to
prevent Palestinian development in most of the area of the West Bank,
and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a
network of bypass roads meant for Jews only. During these days of
strict internal restriction of movement in the West Bank, one can see
how carefully each road was planned: So that 200,000 Jews have freedom
of movement, about three million Palestinians are locked into their
Bantustans until they submit to Israeli demands. The bloodbath that
has been going on for three weeks is the natural outcome of seven
years of lying and deception, just as the first Intifada was the
natural outcome of direct Israeli occupation.
The settlement and construction programs continue, with US support,
whoever may be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz noted that two
governments -- Rabin and Barak -- had declared that settlement was
frozen,
in accord with the dovish image preferred in the US and
by much of the Israeli left. They made use of the freezing
to
intensify settlement, including economic inducements for the secular
population, automatic grants for ultra-religious settlers, and other
devices, which can be carried out with little protest while the
lesser of two evils
happens to be making the decisions, a pattern
hardly unfamiliar elsewhere. There is freezing and there is
reality,
the report observes caustically. The reality is that
settlement inthe occupied territories has grown over four times as
fast as in Israeli population centers, continuing -- perhaps
accelerating -- under Barak.
Settlement brings with it large infrastructure projects designed to
integrate much of the region within Israel, while leaving Palestinians
isolated, apart from Palestinian roads
that are travelled at
one's peril. Another journalist with an outstanding record, Danny
Rubinstein, points out that readers of the Palestinian papers get
the impression (and rightly so) that activity in the settlements never
stops. Israeli is constantly building, expanding and reinforcing the
Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is always
grabbing homes and lands in areas beyond the 1967 lines - and of
course, this is all at the expense of the Palestinians, in order to
limit them, push them into a corner and then out. In other words, the
goal is to eventually dispossess them of their homeland and their
capital, Jerusalem
(Ha'aretz, October 23).
Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are largely shielded from the unwelcome facts, though not entirely so. In the US, it is far more important for the population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious reasons: the economic and military programs rely crucially on US support, which is domestically unpopular and would be far more so if its purposes were known.
To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting and
killing, the defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported the largest
purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a
decade,
an agreement with the US to provide Israel with 35
Blackhawk military helicopters and spare parts at a cost of $525
million, along with jet fuel, following the purchase shortly before of
patrol aircraft and Apache attack helicopters. These are the
newest and most advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US
inventory,
the Jerusalem Post adds. It would be unfair to say that
those providing the gifts cannot discover the fact. In a database
search, David Peterson found that they were reported in the Raleigh
(North Carolina) press. The sale of military helicopters was
condemned by Amnesty International (Oct. 19), because these
US-supplied helicopters have been used to violate the human rights
of Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the recent conflict in the
region.
Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced cretinism.
Israel has been condemned internationally (the US abstaining) for
excessive use of force,
in a disproportionate reaction to
Palestinian violence. That includes even rare condemnations by the
ICRC, specifically, for attackson at least 18 Red Cross ambulances
(NYT, Oct 4). Israel's response is that it is being unfairly singled
out for criticism. The response is entirely accurate. Israel is
employing official US doctrine, known here as the Powell
doctrine,
though it is of far more ancient vintage, tracing back
centuries: Use massive force in response to any perceived threat.
Official Israeli doctrine allows the full use of weapons against
anyone who endangers lives and especially at anyone who shoots at our
forces or at Israelis
(Israeli military legal adviser Daniel
Reisner, FT, Oct. 6).
Full use of force by a modern army includes tanks, helicopter
gunships, sharpshooters aiming at civilians (often children), etc. US
weapons sales do not carry a stipulation that the weapons can't be
used against civilians,
a Pentagon official said; he
acknowleged however that anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters
are not traditionally considered tools for crowd control
-- except
by those powerful enough to get away with it, under the protective
wings of the reigning superpower. We cannot second-guess an Israeli
commander who calls in a Cobra (helicopter) gunship because his troops
are under attack,
another US official said (Deutsche
Presse-Agentur,October 3). Accordingly, such killing machines must be
provided in an unceasing flow.
It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt standard US
military doctrine, which has left a toll too awesome to record,
including very recent years. The US and Israel are, of course, not
alone in adopting this doctrine, and it is sometimes even condemned:
namely, when adopted by enemies targeted for destruction. A recent
example is the response of Serbia when its territory (as the US
insists it is) was attacked by Albanian-based guerrillas, killing Serb
police and civilians and abducting civilians (including Albanians)
with the openly-announced intent of eliciting a disproportionate
response
that would arouse Western indignation, then NATO military
attack. Very rich documentation from US, NATO, and other Western
sources is now available, most of it produced in an effort to justify
the bombing. Assuming these sources to be credible, we find that the
Serbian response -- while doubtless disproportionate
and
criminal, as alleged -- does not compare with the standard resort to
the same doctrine by the US and its clients, Israel included.
In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that If
Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to
economic sanctions led by the United States [which is not accurate,
unfortunately]. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would
be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population
was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in
self-administered `bantustans', with `whites' monopolising the supply
of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed
into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced
townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly
discriminating against them in housing and education spending - would
be recognised as scandalous too
(Observer, Guardian, Oct.15).
Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose vision has not been constrained by the doctrinal blinders imposed for many years. It remains a major task to remove them in the most important country. That is a prerequisite to any constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and destruction, terrible enough before our eyes, and with long-term implications that are not pleasant to contemplate.
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