[lbo-talk] experiment

[Eric Beck]

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a model that will determine how
problems of terrorism will be dealt with with elsewhere, even in
Europe. The worldwide cooperation of States, and the worldwide
organization of police and criminal proceedings, will necessarily lead
to a classification extending to more and more people who will be
considered virtual "terrorists." This situation is analogous to the
Spanish Civil War, when Spain served as an experimental laboratory for
a far more terrible future.

Today Israel is conducting an experiment. It has invented a model of
repression that, once adapted, will profit other countries. There is
great continuity in Israeli politics. Israel believes that the U.N.
resolutions verbally condemning Israel in fact put it in the right.
Israel has transformed the invitation to leave the occupied
territories into the right to establish colonies there. It thinks
sending an international peace-keeping force into Southern Lebanon is
an excellent idea… provided that this force, in the place of Israeli
forces, transforms the region into a police zone, a desert of
security. This conflict is a curious kind of blackmail, from which the
whole world will never escape unless we lobby for the Palestinians to
be recognized for what they are: "genuine partners" in peace talks.
They are indeed at war, in a war they did not choose.

[written in 1978]