by Noam Chomsky
I very strongly believe that Tehran can be taken over by a very relatively small force, determined, ruthless, cruel. I mean the men who would lead that force will have to be emotionally geared to the possibility that they’d have to kill ten thousand people.*
* Lubrani’s background is with the Labor Party. He was a member of the kibbutzbased strike force of the Haganah (Palmach) in the pre-state period, and was later secretary to the dovish Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett (later Prime Minister), adviser on Arab affairs in the Ben-Gurion government, and a high official of the Levi Eshkol Labor government in the 1960s. He served as Ambassador to Ethiopia and Uganda before being sent to Iran, where he was a strong supporter of the Shah’s regime (for his positive views on the Shah, at the end of his rule, see TNCW, p. 455). In Iran, he was close to American Ambassadors—Richard Helms and William Sullivan. After he was appointed Defense Secretary, replacing Sharon, Moshe Arens recommended Lubrani for the new position of coordinator of Israeli activities in Lebanon, to replace David Kimche after negotiations on partial withdrawal are completed, and he was appointed by Begin, who had been “impressed by the Ambassador at the time
Israel’s purpose in sending arms to Iran is to find, maintain contact with and support such men, and then to re-establish the Israeli-Iranian alliance that was considered the foundation of American domination of the region in the 1970s, as discussed in chapter 2. David Kimche, head of Israel’s Foreign Office and former deputy director of the Mossad, emphasized that Israel wants the Iranians to be strong so that there may be an army takeover. “To encourage just such a takeover,” Tibenham adds, “the Israelis embarked on a series of totally secret deals to supply arms to the Iranian military,” establishing contacts through a Paris trading firm with the assistance of “a French government agent.” The thinking is rather like that of New Republic editor Martin Peretz, who in this as other respects, as noted earlier, lines up with right-wing Israeli hardliners. His view is that it was the “timidity” of Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance that led to the fall of the Shah25 and stood in the way of the “U.S.-backed military coup” that he advocated when the Shah’s regime was endangered.*
of his [Begin’s] secret visit to the Shah in Teheran” in February 1978. Reporting these facts, Shmuel Segev observes that Lubrani’s experience in Iran in the last days of the Shah’s rule should stand him in good stead in arranging Israel’s affairs with various groups in Lebanon, including the Phalangists but also, he says, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt with whom closer relations have been established (see chapter 6. section 7.2) and Shiite leaders in the south. Ma’ariv, April 22, 1983.
*Martin Peretz, “Illusions,” New Republic. Oct. 14, 1982. He also denounces the “gauchistes and mindless ones (the Nation and [columnist] Carl Rowan, for example)” who are “furious at Sadat for trying to keep Egypt from recapitulating the experience of Iran,” referring, presumably, to the objections of these mindless types to the corruption, increasing class divisions and repression that
Israel’s drive for a kind of Ottomanization of the region has been noted by others, among them, Boaz Evron, who describes Sharon’s plan as “a revival of the Ottoman Empire’s ‘millet’ system,” that is, a system in which each religious-ethnic group (Druze, Armenians, Maronites, etc.) has its own internal administration but under Ottoman (Turkish) rule. “Sharon is now offering to set up a ‘millet’ of the same religious-ethnic kind, but one that is armed and tyrannising its own oppressed population. Moreover, since the ‘millet’ is not territorial, but organized along religious and ethnic lines, it can have no clear boundaries.” This plan aims at a breakdown of the national state system which was imposed by the colonial powers on the Middle East, as elsewhere, and is indeed an alien implantation, a fact that has given rise to endless turmoil and suffering; recall what happened during the hundreds of years when the national state system was consolidating itself in Europe, without the contributions of external force.
In Lebanon, Evron continues, the plan is to set Maronites, Sunnite and Shiite Muslims and Druze against one another. Israel will help each group to maintain itself in the “perpetual civil wars” that will result, based ultimately on “the main, basic dispute between the ruling groups and the oppressed Muslims,” extending this system beyond Lebanon into Syria, which will also be “dismembered.” He also points out that the policy derives from earlier Zionist thinking across the political spectrum, including labor leader Yigal Allon, with the goal of creating an “alliance between the Hebrew nation or the Jewish state (depending on the authors of the different versions of the same idea) with the other
were among the factors that alienated much Egyptian opinion while Sadat became a hero in the United States. The title of Peretz’s piece is a rather appropriate one. On the facts concerning the alleged “timidity” of Carter and his advisers, see TNCW, pp. 378-9, and references cited.
ethnic and religious minorities in the region, such as the Druze and the Maronites.” This alliance would be aimed “against the supremacy of Sunni Muslim Arabism.” Evron believes that Israel too is retreating “from the concept of a state” in the modern sense, undermining “its own civil structure in favor of Jewish religious and ethnic chauvinism” as a reflection of the system it is attempting to introduce into the whole region, in which, of course, it is assumed that Israel will reign supreme. He believes that “The deeper we will sink into this quagmire, the more our national base will disintegrate, and we ourselves will break up into rival ethnic groups. Since the structure of the state of Israel is also becoming increasingly ethnic-religious, this is entirely probable.”26
One might see the beginnings of the fulfilment of Evron’s prophecy in the rise of religious-chauvinist fanaticism to a position of some prominence in Israel and the internal ethnic-religious conflicts, as when Sephardic Jews riot against their Ashkenazi oppressors, shouting that they should all have been sent to Nazi extermination camps. But as the examples cited earlier indicate, it would be an error to draw the lines too sharply in terms of Arab or Western origin; some of the most extreme elements are recent American and Russian immigrants, generally with a religious background, and of the two chief Rabbis (replaced in early 1983), the Sephardi had not adopted the Khomeinist stance of his Ashkenazi counterpart, among many other examples that might be cited. Evron himself comes from an old Jerusalem family.
Evron is highly critical of the concept he outlines. Others, who are well within the mainstream, advance something like it, not in such explicit terms as Oded Yinon in the Hebrew ideological journal of the World Zionist Organization, but in a more measured form, for an American audience. Consider the study edited by Daniel Elazar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Federal Studies, published by the American Enterprise Institute, which I have cited several times.27 In his summary remarks for this collection of scholarly essays, Elazar argues that “ethnoreligious communities,” not states, are the natural form of organization in the Middle East: any general political settlement must remain “dubious about those who claim statehood on the basis of fifteen or thirty or even fifty years of national self-identification.” A possible model is the Ottoman millet system, he suggests. He rules out returning the occupied territories to Jordanian or Egyptian rule, or the establishment of a Palestinian state. The latter option ignores “the Palestinian character of Jordan.” Furthermore, “even disregarding Israel’s own need for secure borders, such a state would be too small and poor relative to its neighbors to be viable,” and “hence it would be extremely vulnerable to extremist control” and would be unable to “control its ‘crazies”’—as Israel, the USSR, the U.S., and other states have so successfully done. The reasoning is not transparent. It is not obvious why a small and weak state should not, rather, fall under conservative control, fearing its more powerful neighbors and dependent for survival on their goodwill and on the support of the most conservative forces in the region among the Arab oil producers. But let us proceed.
Elazar also rules out “territorial co
mpromise” on the Labor model. What he advocates is a “federative solution.” He claims without reference that in 1969 Shimon Peres “endorsed the pursuit of federative options” and later elaborated “a plan for a redivision of the entire CisJordanian area into multiple Jewish and Arab cantons” while others within the Israeli political leadership also advanced federative solutions, though unfortunately “none of these plans nor those produced by others outside of political life such as this writer [Elazar], produced any echoes in the Arab camp… Israel found no partners,” the familiar tragedy in Israel’s constant search for a peaceful political settlement. But now, perhaps, partners can be found, though he is unclear about what the arrangements will be—surely not the “Israel-Palestine federation, which is sometimes proposed by well-meaning people.” In the “federative solution” that he outlines, Israel and Jordan “will maintain their own independence and status as politically sovereign entities,” and the status of the Palestinians remains obscure.
It is difficult to believe that Peres or anyone else in Israeli political life, or Elazar, seriously proposed a cantonal arrangement—which entails the abandonment of the concept of a “Jewish state”—but were rebuffed by Arab refusal, though it is true that Peres made vague remarks about some form of “federation” after the 1973 war had undermined Labor’s plans for integrating the occupied territories in its preferred manner. Some did make such proposals; I did, for example (recalling suggestions by Ben-Gurion and others from the early 1930s), during the period before the 1973 war, though by then, as I also noted, the possibilities that might have existed before no longer did.28 These proposals led to considerable outrage in Israel, across the political spectrum, and much more so here. If such proposals were serious, they might well have been reasonable, and might be resurrected—so I believe, in fact. Elazar says little about what he has in mind, but enough to indicate that his proposal is not serious. In fact, it is simply a proposal for Israeli domination over the Palestinians, who are to be deprived of national self-determination. It will be noticed that there is one crucial exception to his remarks on the inappropriateness of the state system to the Middle East. While we are to remain “dubious” about those states that have emerged in the past decades, Israel is free from these doubts; and as for Jordan, it can claim sovereignty, but as a state with a “Palestinian character,” with obvious implications for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The dissolution of the state system, hinted at though not explicitly proposed, in favor of a patchwork of “ethno-religious communities,” will leave Israel in a hegemonic position, and will leave the Palestinians with nothing other than a form of Begin’s “autonomy” under Israeli rule. The rest is plainly window dressing. The interest of the article is to illustrate, once again, the appeal of the “Ottomanization option” to the Israeli political imagination.
There can be little doubt that from shortly after the 1967 conquest, Israel has been moving in the directions indicated earlier: international isolation apart from pariah states, dependence on the U.S. with the concomitant pressure to serve U.S. interests, militarization of the society, the rise of religious-chauvinist fanaticism, the internal “feedback” from the policies of oppression and domination, an increasing sense of the inevitability of permanent conflict and with it, the perceived need to disrupt the region and establish a form of Israeli hegemony under the U.S. aegis. These tendencies have been widely noted within Israel. As a last example, consider a thoughtful analytic article by Yoram Peri—former Adviser to Prime Minister Rabin and European representative of the Labor Party, and a specialist on civil-military relations in Israel—in the Labor Party journal Davar, just after the fighting in Lebanon came to a probably temporary end.29
Peri describes a “true revolution” that has taken place in Israel’s basic “military-diplomatic conception,” one that he dates to the political victory of Begin and Sharon, though the shift seems to me to have been more gradual and more deeply-rooted than as he describes it. The earlier conception was based on the search for “coexistence” and maintenance of the status quo. Israel aimed at a peaceful settlement in which its position in the region would be recognized and its security achieved. The new conception is based on the goal of “hegemony,” not “coexistence.” No longer a status quo power, having achieved military dominance as the world’s fourth most powerful military force, and no longer believing in even the possibility of peace or even its desirability except in terms of Israeli hegemony, Israel is now committed to “destabilization” of the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In accordance with the new conception, Israel should now use its military dominance to expand its borders and “to create a new reality,” a “new order,” rather than seek recognition within the status quo.
The first step was the invasion of Lebanon designed to “destroy the Palestinian national movement” and “establish a new order in Lebanon.” Next will come the overthrow of the Hashemite state in Jordan and its conversion to a Palestinian state while the occupied territories are absorbed within Israel, with consequences that he does not elaborate as regards the Arab population in the occupied territories. The next steps will be Damascus, Saudi Arabia, and who knows where else, as Israel strives to become “the hegemonic power in the region,” or as Begin sees it, “to organize the whole world.”
Peri is concerned that this program—apart from its general madness—will sooner or later set Israel in opposition to the U.S., on which it now depends for its existence as well as its position as the world’s fourth greatest military power.* The reason is that the U.S. is
* Elsewhere Peri has expressed the fear that parallel developments within Israel itself may lead to a “military democracy” (Between Battles and Ballots, final chapter: “The Begin era: will there be a military coup?”). This might happen, he envisions, if international pressures “force Israel to sign a peace settlement with the PLO, involving evacuation of the areas occupied in 1967 and establishment of a Palestinian state,” leading to a “state of national emergency” and a call to the military to take over. On the basis of the troubled history of civil-military relations and the high level of “penetration by former senior army officers into the top political echelons,” he questions “the proposition that Israel is a stable democracy immune to military participation in Government” and ends his study by stating that “an upheaval should not be ruled out.”
basically a status quo power itself, opposed to destabilization of the sort to which Israel is increasingly committed. The new strategic conception is based on an illusion of power, and may lead to a willingness, already apparent in some of the rhetoric heard in Israel, to undertake military adventures even without U.S. support. The illusions become obvious when one considers the reality of contemporary Israel, “dependent on others.” He cites a recent report that Israel is 92nd in a list of 114 countries ranked in order of the danger of serious economic problems by international banks, considered barely more healthy economically than Angola, Haiti, El Salvador. It has one of the largest foreign debts per capita. Begin is “a Napoleon” in a balloon that will quickly burst if Israeli policy leads it into conflict with American objectives, a consequence inherent in the new drive for regional hegemony, he believes. Others too feel that Begin and Company are treading on thin ice as they come to believe their own propaganda about Israeli power, pursuing an independent imperial mission, abandoning the traditional conception that Israel must act in alliance with some major power—in practice, the United States, if possible, in the framework of a regional arrangement such as Ben-Gurion’s periphery pact or the Israeli-Iranian alliance of the 1970s.
4.2 Assuming an Abandonment of U.S. Rejectionism
4.2.1 The Effect on Israeli Policy These considerations lead to the final question. Suppose that the United States does modify or abandon its support for Israeli rejectionism, either because of a conflict in regional goals as Peri fears, or because the U.S. comes to join the international consensus which recognizes the right of Israel
and the Palestinians to national selfdetermination within secure and recognized borders. How would Israel react to such a radical shift in the American stand? It would at first glance appear that the impact should be decisive, that Israel is incapable of resisting U.S. pressure. From its origins, Israel has relied heavily on outside support, and now its economy and military strength are highly artificial, crucially dependent on American largesse. One might assume, therefore, that Israel would have to bend to the U.S. will, since the alternative would be economic collapse and military defeat.
4.2.2 Israel’s Secret Weapon Some years ago, this line of argument might well have been valid. Perhaps it still is, though there are now other factors that cannot be ignored. By the late 1970s, some U.S. military analysts began to fear that Israel’s military power had reached such a high level, thanks to U.S. assistance programs, that the state could no longer be controlled and might pose “a major national security problem” for the U.S. by carrying out aggressive actions on its own contrary to U.S. interests.* Yoram Peri’s observations, expressing concerns felt by many others, carry this analysis a step further, viewed now from an Israeli perspective.30
Quite apart from the question of hegemonic aspirations and a commitment to “destabilize” the surrounding region in accordance with the new “strategic conception” that Peri quite plausibly outlines, there have on occasion been barely disguised hints from Israel that if it is
* Anthony H. Cordesman, Armed Forces Journal, Oct. 20, 1977. For daring to raise this question, Cordesman was denounced as “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish” by the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, consistent with the general practice of what was, at one time, a civil libertarian organization.30