On Palestine (23 page)

 

 

Adapted from “Ceasefires in Which Violations Never Cease,”
TomDispatch
,
September 9, 2014
.

Chapter Twelve

An Address to the United Nations

Noam Chomsky

It's a pleasure to be here to be able to talk with you and discuss with you afterwards. Many of the world's problems are so intractable that it's hard to think of ways even to take steps toward mitigating them.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is not one of these.

On the contrary, the general outlines of a diplomatic solution have been clear for at least forty years. Not the end of the road—nothing ever is—but a significant step forward. And the obstacles to a resolution are also quite clear. The basic outlines were presented here in a resolution brought to the UN Security Council in January 1976. It called for a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border—and now I'm quoting—“with guarantees for the rights of both states to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized borders.” The resolution was brought by the three major Arab states: Egypt, Jordan, Syria—sometimes called the “confrontation states.”

Israel refused to attend the session. The resolution was vetoed by the United States. A US veto typically is a double veto: the veto, the resolution, is not implemented, and the event is vetoed from history, so you have to look hard to find the record, but it is there. That has set the pattern that has continued since. The most recent US veto was in February 2011—that's President Obama—when his administration vetoed a resolution calling for implementation of official US policy opposition to expansion of settlements. And it's worth bearing in mind that expansion of settlements is not really the issue; it's the settlements, unquestionably illegal, along with the infrastructure projects supporting them. For a long time, there has been an overwhelming international consensus in support of a settlement along these general lines. The pattern that was set in January 1976 continues to the present. Israel rejects a settlement of these terms and for many years has been devoting extensive resources to ensuring that it will not be implemented, with the unremitting and decisive support of the United States—military, economic, diplomatic, and indeed ideological—by establishing how the conflict is viewed and interpreted in the United States and within its broad sphere of influence.

There's no time here to review the record, but its general character is revealed by a look at what has happened in Gaza in the past decade, carrying forward a long history of earlier crimes. Last August, August 26th, a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And the question on all our minds is: what are the prospects for the future? Well, one reasonable way to try to answer that question is to look at the record. And here, too, there is a definite pattern: A ceasefire is reached; Israel disregards it and continues its steady assault on Gaza, including continued siege, intermittent acts of violence, more settlement and development projects, often violence in the West Bank; Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel officially recognizes, until some Israeli escalation elicits a Hamas response, which leads to another exercise of “mowing the lawn,” in Israeli parlance, each episode more fierce and destructive than the last. The first of the series was the Agreement on Movement and Access in November 2005. I'll give a close paraphrase of it. It called for a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import and export of goods and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, the reopening of the airport in Gaza that Israel had recently destroyed. These are essentially the terms of successive ceasefires, including the one just reached a few weeks ago.

The timing of the November 2005 agreement is significant. This was the moment of Israel's disengagement, as it's called, from Gaza—the removal of several thousand Israeli settlers from Gaza. Now, this is depicted as a noble effort to seek peace and development, but the reality is rather different. The reality was described, very quickly, by the Israeli official who was in charge of negotiating and implementing the ceasefire, Dov Weissglass, close confidant of then prime minister Ariel Sharon. As he explained to the Israeli press, the goal of the disengagement—I'm quoting him—was “the freezing of the peace process,” so as to “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state” and to ensure that diplomacy “has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.” The reality on the ground is described by Israel's leading specialists on the occupation—a respected historian, Idith Zertal, and Israel's leading diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, wrote the major book, the standard work on the settlement project, called
Lords of the Land
, referring to the settlers. What they say about the disengagement is this: They say, “the ruined territory”—and by then, it was ruined, largely part of the reason for the removal of the settlers—“the ruined territory was not released for even a single day from Israel's military grip, or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day. After the disengagement, Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and to kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might.” Now, that's an accurate description from the most respected Israeli source.

The Oslo Accords, twenty years ago, established that Gaza and the West Bank are an indivisible territorial unity, whose integrity cannot be broken up. For twenty years, the United States and Israel have been dedicated to separate Gaza and the West Bank in violation of the accords that they had accepted. And a look at the map explains why. Gaza offers the only access to the outside world of Palestine. If Gaza is separated from the West Bank, whatever autonomy might ultimately be granted in the West Bank would be imprisoned—Israel on one side, a hostile Jordan, ally of Israel, on the other side, and in addition, one of Israel's slow and steady US-backed policies is to take over the Jordan Valley, about a third of the West Bank, much of the arable land, which would essentially imprison the rest even more tightly, if Gaza is separated from the West Bank. Now, that's the major geostrategic reason for the Israeli insistence, with US backing, on separating the two in violation of the Oslo agreements and the series of ceasefires that have been reached since November 2005.

Well, the November 2005 agreement lasted for a few weeks. In January 2006, a very important event took place: the first full, free election in the Arab world, carefully monitored, recognized to be free and fair. It had one flaw: it came out the wrong way. Hamas won the Parliament, control of the Parliament. The US and Israel didn't want that. You may recall, at that period, the slogan on everyone's lips was “democracy promotion.” The highest US commitment in the world was democracy promotion. Here was a good test. Democracy: election came out the wrong way; the US instantly decided, along with Israel, to punish the Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way; a harsh siege was instituted, other punishments; violence increased; the United States immediately began to organize a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable government. That's quite familiar practice—I won't go through the record. The European Union, to its shame and discredit, went along with this. There was an immediate Israeli escalation. That was the end of the November agreement, followed by major Israeli onslaughts.

In 2007, a year later, Hamas committed even a greater crime than winning a fair election: it preempted the planned military coup and took over Gaza. That's described in the West, in the United States, most of the West, as Hamas's taking over Gaza by force—which is not false, but something is omitted. The force was preempting a planned military coup to overthrow the elected government. Now, that was a serious crime. It's bad enough to vote the wrong way in a free election, but to preempt a US-planned military coup is far more serious. The attack on Gaza increased substantially at that point, major Israeli onslaughts. Finally, in January 2008, another ceasefire was reached. Terms were pretty much the same as those that I quoted. Israel publicly rejected the ceasefire, said that it would not abide by it. Hamas observed the ceasefire, as Israel officially recognizes, despite Israel's refusal to do so.

Now, that continued until November 4, 2008. On November 4, which was the day of the US election, Israeli forces invaded Gaza, killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That led to Qassam rockets attacking Israel, [then a] huge Israeli response, lots of killings—all Palestinians, as usual. By the end of December, a couple of weeks later, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. The Israeli cabinet considered it and rejected it. This was a dovish cabinet, led by Ehud Olmert—rejected it and decided to launch the next major military operation. That was Cast Lead, which was a horrible operation, so much so that it caused a very substantial international reaction, investigations by a United Nations commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. In the middle of the assault—the assault, incidentally, was carefully timed to end immediately before President Obama's inauguration. He had already been elected, but he wasn't inaugurated yet, so when he was asked to comment on the ongoing atrocities, he responded by saying that he couldn't do so, the United States has only one president, and he wasn't president yet. He was talking about lots of other things, but not this. The attack was timed to end immediately before the inauguration, so he therefore could respond to the questions by saying, “Well, now is not the time to look at the past, let's look forward to the future.”

Diplomats know very well that that's a standard slogan for those who are engaged in serious crime: “Let's forget about the past, let's look forward to a glorious future.” Well, that was right in the middle of the assault. The Security Council did pass a resolution—unanimously, the US abstaining—calling for an immediate ceasefire with the usual terms. That was January 8, 2009. It was never observed, and it broke down completely with the next major episode of “mowing the lawn” in November 2012. Now, you can get a good sense of what was going on by looking at the casualty figures for the year 2012. Seventy-nine people were killed, seventy-eight of them Palestinians—the usual story. . . . As [leading Middle East analyst Nathan Thrall] writes, Israel recognized that Hamas was observing the terms of the ceasefire, and “therefore saw little incentive” in doing the same.

The military attacks on Gaza increased, along with more stringent restrictions on imports. Exports were blocked. Exit permits were blocked. That continued until April 2014, when Palestinians committed another crime: Gaza-based Hamas and West Bank–based Palestinian Authority signed a unity agreement. Israel was infuriated—infuriated even more when the world mostly supported it. Even the United States gave weak, but actual, support. Several reasons for the Israeli reaction. One is that unity between Gaza and the West Bank, between the two movements, would threaten the long-standing policies of separating the two, for the reasons that I mentioned. Another reason was that a unity government undermines one of the pretexts for Israel's refusal to participate in negotiations seriously—namely, how can we negotiate with an entity that is internally divided? Well, if they're unified, that pretext disappears.

Israel was infuriated. It launched major assaults on the Palestinians in the West Bank, primarily targeting Hamas. Hundreds of people arrested, mostly Hamas members. Also Gaza, also killings. There was a pretext, of course. There always is. The pretext was that three teenagers, Israeli teenagers, in the settlements had been brutally murdered—captured and murdered. Israel claimed officially that they thought that they were alive, so therefore launched a long, several weeks' assault on the West Bank, alleging that they were trying to find them alive. Meanwhile, the arrests, attacks, and so on. It turns out that they knew immediately that they had been killed. Now, they also knew immediately that it was very unlikely that Hamas was involved. The government said they had certain knowledge that Hamas had done it, but their own leading specialists [like Shlomi Eldar] had pointed out right away that the assault—which was a brutal crime—was very likely committed by members of a breakaway clan, the Qawasmeh clan in Hebron, which was not given a green light by Hamas and had been a thorn in [its] side. And that, apparently, is true, if you look at the later arrests and punishments.

Anyway, that was a pretext for this assault, killings in Gaza, too. That finally elicited a Hamas response. Then came Operation Protective Edge, the one which was just completed, and more brutal and destructive even than the ones that preceded it. The pattern is very clear. And so far, at least, it appears to be continuing. The latest ceasefire was reached on August 26. It was followed at once by Israel's greatest land grab in thirty years, almost a thousand acres in the Gush Etzion area near what's called Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, about five times the size of anything that Jerusalem ever was, taken over by Israel, annexed in violation of Security Council orders. The US State Department informed the Israeli Embassy that—I'm quoting it now—“Israeli activity in Gush Etzion undermines American efforts to protect Israel at the United Nations,” and urged that Israel shouldn't provide ammunition for “those at the [United Nations] who would interpret [Israel's] position as hardening.”