by Noam Chomsky
While the two major political groupings, Labor and Likud, agree in their overall rejectionism, they do differ in the arrangements they prefer for the occupied territories. The Labor governments pursued what has been called the “Allon Plan,” proposed by Minister Yigal Allon. Its basic principles were that Israel should maintain control of the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, parts of the Eastern Sinai, and much of the West Bank including the Jordan valley, a considerably expanded area around Jerusalem (Arab East Jerusalem was annexed outright by the Labor government over virtually unanimous international protest, including in this case the U.S.), and various corridors that would break up the Arab West Bank and ensure Israeli control over it. In his study of this period, Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk writes that the Allon Plan was “rendered operational” in 1970, and envisioned the annexation of about 1/3 of the West Bank—actually about 40%; see chapter 4, section 4.1. The centers of dense Arab settlement, however, would be excluded, with the population remaining under Jordanian control or stateless so as to avoid what is called “the demographic problem,” that is, the problem of absorbing too many non-Jews within the Jewish State. To the present, this remains essentially the position of the Labor Party, as we shall see. Thus former Prime Minister Rabin, interviewed in the Trilateral Commission journal in January 1983, states that “speaking for myself, I say now that we are ready to give back roughly 65% of the territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where over 80% of the population now resides,”17 a formulation that is less extreme than most. We return to other expressions of this unchanging commitment.
The Allon Plan was designed to enable Israel to maintain the advantages of the occupation while avoiding the problem of dealing with the domestic population. It was felt that there would be no major problem of administrative control or support by Western liberal opinion (an important matter for a state that survives largely on gifts and grants from the West) as long as the second-class Arab citizens remained a minority, though such problems might arise if their numbers approached half the population. As Anthony Lewis writes, actual annexation “will change the very nature of the Jewish state, incorporating within it a large, subservient and resentful Arab population”18—in contrast to the 15% minority of today, to which the same terms apply.
In contrast, Begin’s Likud coalition has been moving towards extension of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza and has virtually annexed the Golan Heights, though it was willing to return the Sinai in full to Egypt—over strong objections from leading segments of the Labor Party—in the context of the Camp David accords.* Like Labor19, Likud also apparently intends to keep the Gaza Strip. Contrary to what is often assumed, Likud has not called for annexation of the West Bank and does not appear to be aiming for this, at least in the short run. Extension of Israeli sovereignty—the actual announced intent—is a more subtle device, which will allow Israel to take what it wants while confining the Arab population to ever-narrower ghettoes, seeking ways to remove at
* Former Prime Minister Golda Meir “assailed Prime Minister Begin’s government yesterday, calling his peace plan ‘a concrete, terrible danger’ for Israel,” and “accused” Begin of “agreeing to concessions she would never stand for”; “Labor Knesset Member [former Chief of Staff] Mordechai Gur today sharply opposed the continuation of the peace process with Egypt” on the grounds that Sadat would demand return to the 1967 borders. Many Labor leaders were particularly opposed to the return of the northeast Sinai settlements that they had established.19 See also chapter 4, section 4.2.2, below.
least the leadership and possibly much of the population, apart from those needed as the beasts of burden for Israeli society. Outright annexation would raise the problem of citizenship for the Arabs, while extension of sovereignty, while achieving the purposes of annexation, will not, as long as liberal opinion in the West is willing to tolerate the fraud.
The logic of the Likud position does, however, appear to be that the Arab population must somehow be reduced, and it has been alleged that then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon “hopes to evict all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and drive them into Jordan.”20 Sharon is not entirely alone in this view, though his position, if correctly reported, is extreme. The idea that the solution to the problem is for the Palestinians to leave—far away—has deep roots in liberal and socialist Zionism, and has recently been reiterated by American “democratic socialists” as well as by Israeli leaders sometimes regarded as doves. We return to various expressions of such ideas, in virtually all shades of Zionist thought, and to current policies in the occupied territories.
While the two major political groupings do differ in the ways in which they formulate their rejectionist positions, neither has been explicit about the matter—which is easy enough to understand, given Israel’s dependence on liberal opinion in the West—and it is therefore not easy to formulate this difference clearly. Thus as noted, while the policies of the Likud government have regularly been interpreted as leading to annexation by the Labor opposition and others, in fact, Begin calls for the establishment of Israeli “sovereignty” over the currently occupied territories. Under this Israeli sovereignty, those Arabs who remain would have some form of local autonomy. Presumably, they and their descendants would not receive Israeli citizenship under this arrangement, so that the “demographic problem” would not arise. Or, perhaps, if their numbers are sufficiently restricted they might opt for either Israeli or Jordanian citizenship, while Israeli sovereignty remains in force over the entire territory in question. Surely it is intended by both Labor and Likud that the Jewish settlers will retain Israeli citizenship. Under the Labor Alignment plan, the inhabitants would be Jordanian citizens or stateless, but effectively under Israeli control.
In essence, then, the two programs are not very different. Their difference lies primarily in style. Labor is, basically, the party of the educated Europe-oriented elite—managers, bureaucrats, intellectuals, etc. Its historical practice has been to “build facts” while maintaining a low-keyed rhetoric with conciliatory tones, at least in public. In private, the position has been that “it does not matter what the Gentiles say, what matters is what the Jews do” (Ben-Gurion) and that “the borders [of Israel] are where Jews live, not where there is a line on a map” (Golda Meir).21 This has been an effective method for obtaining the ends sought without alienating Western opinion—indeed, while mobilizing Western (particularly American) support.
In contrast, the mass base of the Likud coalition is largely the underclass, the lower middle class, and the workforce, the Sephardic population of Arab origin, along with religious-chauvinist elements, including many recent immigrants from the U.S. and the USSR; it also includes industrialists and many professionals. Its leadership is not so attuned to Western styles of discourse and has frequently been willing to flaunt its disregard for the hypocritical Gentile world, often in a manner regarded as openly insulting in the West, including the U.S. For example, in response to Reagan’s September 1982 call for a settlement freeze, the Likud leadership simply announced plans for 10 new settlements while Begin sent a “Dear Ron” letter with a lesson on “simple historic truth.”22 Under somewhat similar circumstances in the past, Labor responded not by establishing new settlements but by “thickening” existing ones or by establishing military outposts which soon became settlements, meanwhile keeping to conciliatory rhetoric. The more devious Labor approach is much more welcome to the West, and raises fewer problems for “supporters of Israel.”
In the case of the Reagan September 1982 proposals, Labor’s response was one of qualified interest. In part, the reason was the traditional difference in style; in part, it reflected the fact that Reagan’s proposals, while vague in essentials, could be interpreted as compatible with Labor’s ideas in part, though they certainly were not consistent with the Likud demand for total “sovereignty.” Furthermore, Labor’s show of statesmanlike interest might, it was hoped, strengthen its dismal electoral prospects by discreditin
g the government. Labor speaks of “territorial compromise” or “trading peace for territory,” terms that have a pleasant sound to American ears, though the reality they disguise is not very different from Likud’s “sovereignty.” In fact, the “compromise” and “trade” are explicitly rejectionist positions. There have already been two “territorial compromises” in Mandatory Palestine: the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution that recommended partitioning Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish State, and the 1949 armistice agreement that divided the Palestinian State, with about half annexed by Israel and the rest annexed by Jordan or administered by Egypt (see chapter 4). A further “compromise,” in terms of some version of the Allon Plan, simply eliminates the right of Palestinian selfdetermination.
It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier “territorial compromise,” namely, in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised “national home for the Jewish people.” In fact, in 1922 “the Council of the League of Nations accepted a British proposal that Transjordan should be exempted from all clauses in the mandate providing for…the development of a Jewish National Home in Palestine,” a decision that is difficult to criticize in the light of the fact that “the number of Jews living there permanently in 1921 has been reliably estimated at two, or according to some authorities, three persons.”23
2.2.2 The Legacy of the Founding Fathers Both political groupings, then, have been consistently rejectionist, willing to grant no national rights to the indigenous Arab population. Israel’s consistent rejectionism is founded on the attitudes expressed by the long-time leader of the Labor Party, David Ben-Gurion, when he stated that the Palestinian Arab shows no “emotional involvement” in this country:
Why should he? He is equally at ease whether in Jordan, Lebanon or a variety of places. They are as much his country as this is. And as little.24
Elsewhere, “Ben-Gurion followed Weizmann’s line when he stated that: ‘there is no conflict between Jewish and Palestinian nationalism because the Jewish Nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation’.”25 Essentially the same view was expressed by Moshe Dayan at a time when he was a principal spokesman for the Labor Party. The cause of the Palestinians (which he professed to understand and appreciate) is “hopeless,” he intimated, so they should establish themselves “in one of the Arab countries.” “I do not think,” he added, “that a Palestinian should have difficulties in regarding Jordan, Syria or Iraq as his homeland.”26 Like Ben-Gurion, Dayan was asserting that the Palestinians, including the peasantry, had no particular attachment to their homes, to the land where they had lived and worked for many generations, surely nothing like the attachment to the land of the Jews who had been exiled from it 2000 years ago.
Similar views were expressed by Prime Minister Golda Meir of the Labor Party, much admired here as a grandmotherly humanitarian figure, in her remark that:
It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.27
Elsewhere, she describes the Palestinian problem as merely an “invention of some Jews with distorted minds.”28 In accordance with these dominant views concerning the Palestinians, an Israeli court ruled in 1969 that the Palestinians “are not a party to the conflict between Israel and the Arab States,” and Foreign Minister Abba Eban of the Labor Party (a well-known dove) insisted that the Palestinians “have no role to play” in any peace settlement,29 a position that received no major challenge within the Labor Party when it governed or in opposition. Simha Flapan concludes his study of this question with the observation that “The Palestinians were never regarded as an integral part of the country for whom long-term plans had to be made, either in the Mandatory period or since the establishment of the state.” This was the most “lasting impact” of “Weizmann’s legacy.”30 This appears to be quite a realistic judgment, as far as the mainstream of the Zionist movement was concerned. We return to further discussion in the next chapter.
These positions, which have been consistently maintained, amount to rejectionism in its clearest form, though the matter is rarely seen in this light in the U.S. Both major political groupings in Israel have taken the position that Jordan is a Palestinian state, and that Israel will accept no third state between Israel and Jordan—the “Jordanian-Palestinian Arab State” in the official words of the Labor Party,31 the “Palestinian State” in Likud rhetoric. This is not, of course, the position of what might reasonably be called the “peace movement,” a small but significant minority that adheres to the international consensus. On its actual scale, see chapter 7, section 4.1.1.
2.2.3 The Disguise The consistent rejectionism of both major political groupings in Israel is disguised in the United States by two main devices. First, as already noted, the concept of “rejectionism” is restricted to the denial of Jewish national rights, on the implicit racist assumption that the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine do not have the human rights that we naturally accord to Jews. Second, it is observed—quite accurately—that Israel has always been more than willing to negotiate with the Arab states, while they have not reciprocated this willingness. It requires barely a moment’s thought to perceive that Israel’s willingness in this regard is strictly rejectionist, since the Palestinians are excluded. When a framework for negotiations has been proposed that includes the Palestinians, Israel has always refused to participate. Thus Israel’s apparently forthcoming position with regard to negotiations, much heralded in the U.S., is simply part and parcel of its commitment to the rejection of Palestinian rights, an elementary point that is regularly suppressed in discussion of the issue in the U.S. Like the term “territorial compromise,” so also the appealing phrase “negotiated settlement” has become a disguise for outright rejectionism in American discourse.
When these simple points are understood, we can interpret properly the pronouncements of Israel’s American propagandists. For example, the general counsel to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (see chapter 2, section 2.1), Arnold Forster, condemns current U.S. government policy because he sees the U.S. as insisting that an IsraelLebanon peace must be part of a more “comprehensive” settlement:
Absurdly, the Israelis are made to appear dreadful simply because they ask of Lebanon open borders, tourism both ways, trade relations, negotiations in their respective capitals32 and regular political contacts—all the stuff of a healthy, peaceful relationship between countries. Our Government argues that if genuine peace is achieved only between Israel and Lebanon, the pressure would then be off the Jewish state to resolve the West Bank Palestinian problem along the lines of President Reagan’s fading peace plan. Secretary Shultz’s clever tactic is therefore to deny Israel the peace with Lebanon it hungers for—unless Israel simultaneously withdraws from the West Bank.33
This argument will no doubt seem impressive to those who share the assumptions of this well-known civil rights group, specifically, the assumption that Palestinians do not have the same rights as Jews. Dropping these assumptions, we see at once that Israel’s proposals, which Forster advocates, would simply take another long step towards the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories. In short, Forster is simply presenting a brief for a “Greater Israel” and for the denial of elementary human rights to the Arabs of Palestine. Furthermore, the “healthy, peaceful relationship” that Israel seeks to impose on Lebanon by force would be one that subordinates Lebanon—at the very least, southern Lebanon—to Israeli interests, as a market for Israeli goods, a potential source of cheap labor and water, etc., a fact that is plain when we consider the relations of economic and military power and that was well on its way towards realization as Forster wrote (see chapter 6, section 7.1). This “healthy, peaceful relationship,” then, would be of the sort imposed by many other “peace-loving states” during the colonial era, for example, the relationship imposed on India by benevolent Britain (after
the destruction of native Indian enterprise) or on China at the time of the Opium Wars, to mention two of many classic examples. All of this is so transparent that it might be surprising that the general counsel of an alleged human rights organization would be willing to make such statements publicly—until one recalls that this is the New York Times, with an audience of educated readers for whom the underlying racist assumptions are so firmly implanted that the obvious conclusions will generally not be drawn. As to whether Forster is correct in his belief that the U.S. government is really dropping its rejectionist stance, that is another matter; the increase in aid to Israel, passed by Congress at exactly that time, surely belies this assumption, as already noted.
2.3 The Population of the Occupied Territories The third party to be considered is the population of the occupied territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—the latter, called “Judea and Samaria” by both the Labor government and Likud, though the U.S. press regularly attributes this usage, which is taken to imply a biblicallyendorsed right of possession, to Menachem Begin.* In fact, reference to biblical rights is common in both political groupings.34 Thus Shimon Peres, the socialist leader of the Labor Party, accepted Begin’s rationale for retaining the West Bank, writing: “There is no argument in Israel about our historic rights in the land of Israel. The past is immutable and the Bible is the decisive document in determining the fate of our land.” This doctrine apparently causes few raised eyebrows in the Socialist International, in which Peres and his Labor Party are honored members.35 Nevertheless, Peres advocates “territorial compromise” in accordance with the Allon Plan, to free Israel of an unwanted Arab population which “would eventually endanger the Jewish character of Israel…36