> > First the Carrot, Then the Stick: Behind the Carnage in Palestine
>
> > Norman G. Finkelstein
>>
>> 14 April 2002
>>
>>
>> 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 theWest 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.
>>
>>
>> 14 April 2002
>>
>>
>>
>>
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