On Palestine (17 page)

Florent Barat: Final question now: Ilan, are you working on a book right now?

IP:
I've got several in fact. One of them is coming out next winter. It's called
The Idea of Israel
(Verso). It's a history of the production of knowledge in Israel. In 2015 my book on Israel's history of the occupation of the West Bank, called
Mega Prison of Palestine
, will come out.

 

 

This conversation between Ilan Pappé,
Frank Barat, and Frank's brother Florent Barat was recorded on October 20, 2013, and has been condensed and edited.

Chapter Six

Inside the United States

 

FB: What is the definition of negotiations in Israel-US language and why is the Palestinian Authority playing along?

NC:
From the US point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, all with full US support. And the framework of negotiations, as in the past twenty years of the Oslo experience, has simply provided a cover for this.

FB: Why is the PA playing along with this and going to negotiations time after time?

NC:
It's probably partly out of desperation. You can ask whether it's the right choice or not, but they don't have many alternatives.

FB: So in your opinion it's pretty much to survive that they indeed accept the framework?

NC:
If they were to refuse to join the US-run negotiations, their basis for support would collapse. They survive on donations essentially. Israel has made sure that it's not a productive economy. They're a kind of what would be called in Yiddish a
schnorrer
society: you just borrow and live on what you can get.

Whether they have an alternative to that is not so clear, but if they were to refuse the US demand for negotiations on completely unacceptable terms, their basis for support would erode. And they
do
have support—external support—enough so that the Palestinian elite can live a fairly decent, often lavish, lifestyle, while the society around them collapses.

FB: So would the crumbling and disappearance of the PA be a bad thing after all?

NC:
It depends on what would replace it. If, say, Marwan Barghouti were permitted to join the society the way, say, Nelson Mandela was finally, that could have a revitalizing effect in organizing a Palestinian society that might press for more substantial demands. But remember: they don't have a lot of choices.

In fact, go back to the beginning of the Oslo agreements, now twenty years old. There
were
negotiations under way, the Madrid negotiations, at which the Palestinian delegation was led by Haider Abdel-Shafi, a highly respected, left-nationalist figure in Palestine. He was refusing to agree to the US-Israel terms, which required crucially that settlement expansion be allowed to continue. He refused, and therefore the negotiations stalled and got nowhere.

Meanwhile Arafat and the external Palestinians went on the side track through Oslo, gained control, and Haider Abdel-Shafi was so opposed to this he didn't even show up to the dramatic and meaningless ceremony where Clinton beamed while Arafat and Rabin shook hands. He didn't show up because he realized it was a total sellout. But he was principled and therefore could get nowhere, and
we'll
get nowhere unless there's substantial support from the European Union, the Gulf States, and ultimately, from the United States.

FB: In your opinion what is really at stake in what's unraveling in Syria at the moment, and what does it mean for the broader region?

NC:
Well, Syria is descending into suicide. It's a horror story and getting worse and worse. There's no bright spot on the horizon. What will probably happen, if this continues, is that Syria will be partitioned into probably three regions: a Kurdish region—which is already forming—that could pull out and join in some fashion the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, maybe with some kind of deal with Turkey.

The rest of the country will be divided between a region dominated by the Assad regime—a brutal, horrifying regime—and another section dominated by the various militias, which range from the extremely malicious and violent to the secular and democratic. Meanwhile, Israel is looking on and enjoying the spectacle.

For the United States, that's fine, they don't want an outcome either. If the US and Israel wanted to assist the rebels—which they do not—they can do it, even without military intervention. For example, if Israel were to mobilize forces on the Golan Heights—of course, it's the
Syrian
Golan Heights, but by now the world more or less tolerates or accepts Israel's illegal occupation—if they would just do that, it would compel Assad to move forces to the south, which would relieve pressure against the rebels. But there's no hint even of that. They're also not giving humanitarian aid to the huge number of suffering refugees, not doing all kinds of simple things that they could do.

All of which suggests that both Israel and the United States prefer exactly what is happening today. Meanwhile, Israel can celebrate its status as what they call a “villa in the jungle.” There was an interesting article by the editor of
Haaretz
, Aluf Benn, who wrote about how Israelis are going to the beach and enjoying themselves, and congratulating themselves on being a “villa in the jungle” while the wild beasts out there tear each other to shreds. And, of course, Israel in this picture is doing nothing except defending itself. They like that picture and the US doesn't seem too dissatisfied with it either. The rest is shadowboxing.

FB: What about talk of a US strike then; do you think it's going to happen?

NC:
A bombing?

FB: Yes.

NC:
Well, it's kind of an interesting debate in the United States. The ultra-Right, the right-wing extremists, who are kind of off the international spectrum, they're opposing it, though not for reasons I like. They're opposing it because “Why should we dedicate ourselves to solving other people's problems and waste our own resources?” They're literally asking, “Who's going to defend us when we're attacked, because we're devoting ourselves to helping people overseas?” That's the ultra-Right. If you look at the “moderate” Right, people like, say, David Brooks of the
New York Times
, considered an intellectual commentator on the right. His view is that the US effort to withdraw its forces from the region is not having a “moderating effect.” According to Brooks, when US forces are in the region, that has a moderating effect; it improves the situation, as you can see in Iraq, for example. But if we're withdrawing our forces, then we're no longer able to moderate the situation and make it better.

That's the standard view from the intellectual right over to the mainstream, the liberal Democrats, and so on. So there's a lot of talk about “Should we exercise our ‘responsibility to protect'?” Well, just take a look at the US record on “responsibility to protect” [R2P]. The fact that these words can even be spoken reveals something quite extraordinary about the US—and, in fact, Western—moral and intellectual culture.

This is quite apart from the fact that it's a gross violation of international law. Obama's latest line is that
he
didn't establish a “red line,” but the world did through its conventions on chemical warfare. Well, actually, the world
does
have a treaty, which Israel didn't sign and which the US has totally neglected, for example when it supported Saddam Hussein's really horrifying use of chemical weapons. Today, this is used to denounce Saddam Hussein, overlooking the fact that it was not only tolerated but basically supported by the Reagan administration. And, of course, the convention has no enforcement mechanisms.

There's also no such thing as “responsibility to protect,” that's a fraud perpetrated in Western intellectual culture. There
is
a
notion
, in fact two notions: there's one passed by the UN General Assembly, which does talk about a “responsibility to protect,” but it offers no authorization for any kind of intervention except under conditions of the United Nations charter. There is another version, which is adopted only by the West, the US, and its allies, which is unilateral and says R2P permits “military intervention by regional organizations in the region of their authority without Security Council authorization.”

Well, translating that into English, this means that it provides authorization for the US and NATO to use violence wherever they choose without Security Council authorization. That's what's called “responsibility to protect” in Western discourse. If it weren't so tragic, it would be farcical.

 

 

This conversation between Noam Chomsky and Frank Barat was recorded September 6, 2013, and has been condensed and edited. Originally published
September 7, 2013, at
Ceasefire
magazine.

Part Two

Reflections

Chapter Seven

Gaza's Torment, Israel's Crimes, Our Responsibilities

Noam Chomsky

At 3 a.m. Gaza time, July 9, 2014, in the midst of Israel's latest exercise in savagery, I received a phone call from a young Palestinian journalist in Gaza. In the background, I could hear his infant child wailing, amid the sounds of explosions and jet planes, targeting any civilian who moves, and homes as well. He just saw a friend of his in a car clearly marked “press” get blown away. And he heard shrieks next door after an explosion but couldn't go outside or he'd be a likely target. This is a quiet neighborhood, no military targets—except Palestinians who are fair game for Israel's high-tech US-supplied military machine. He said that 70 percent of the ambulances have been destroyed, and that by then more than seventy had been killed, and of the three hundred or so wounded, about two-thirds were women and children. Few Hamas activists or rocket launching sites have been hit—just the usual victims.

It is important to understand what life is like in Gaza when Israel's behavior is “restrained,” in between the regular manufactured crises like this one. A good sense is given in a report to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) by Mads Gilbert, the courageous and expert Norwegian physician who has worked extensively in Gaza, including throughout the vicious and murderous Cast Lead operation. In every respect, the situation is disastrous. Just keeping to children, Gilbert reports: “Palestinian children in Gaza are suffering immensely. A large proportion are affected by the man-made malnourishment regime caused by the Israeli imposed blockage. Prevalence of anaemia in children under 2 years in Gaza is at 72.8 percent, while prevalence of wasting, stunting, underweight have been documented at 34.3 percent, 31.4 percent, 31.45 percent respectively.” And it gets worse as the report proceeds.

When Israel is on “good behavior,” more than two Palestinian children are killed every week, a pattern that goes back over fourteen years. The underlying cause is the criminal occupation and the programs to reduce Palestinian life to bare survival in Gaza, while Palestinians are restricted to unviable cantons in the West Bank and Israel takes over what it wants, all in gross violation of international law and explicit Security Council resolutions, not to speak of minimal decency. And it will continue as long as it is supported by Washington and tolerated by Europe—to our everlasting shame.

 

 

Originally published in
Z
magazine, July
12, 2014.

Chapter Eight

A Brief History of Israel's Incremental Genocide

Ilan Pappé

In a September 2006 article for the
Electronic Intifada
, I defined the Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip as an incremental genocide.

Israel's present assault on Gaza alas indicates that this policy continues unabated. The term is important since it appropriately locates Israel's barbaric action—then and now—within a wider historical context.

People in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine feel disappointed at the lack of any significant international reaction to the carnage and destruction the Israeli assault has so far left behind in the Strip. The inability, or unwillingness, to act seems to be first and foremost an acceptance of the Israeli narrative and argumentation for the crisis in Gaza. Israel has developed a very clear narrative about the present carnage in Gaza: it is a tragedy caused by an unprovoked Hamas missile attack on the Jewish state, to which Israel had to react in self-defense.

While mainstream Western media, academia, and politicians may have reservations about the proportionality of the force used by Israel, they accept the gist of this argument. This Israeli narrative is totally rejected in the world of cyber-activism and alternative media. There it seems the condemnation of the Israeli action as a war crime is widespread and consensual.