by Noam Chomsky
Oslo II stipulates further that the Palestinian Council that is to be elected must recognize the “legal rights of Israelis related to Government and Absentee land located in areas under the territorial jurisdiction of the Council.” In effect, the PA therefore accepts the legality of already existing Jewish settlements and any further ones that Israel may choose to construct, and recognizes Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank that Israel decides to designate as state and absentee lands (unilaterally, as in the past): up to 90% of Area B, according to “wellinformed Palestinian sources” cited by the Report on Israeli Settlement, an estimate only because the ruling authorities do not release information.11
By incorporating these provisions, Oslo II rescinds the position of virtually the entire world that the settlements are illegal and that Israel has no claim to the territories acquired by force in 1967. Oslo II reaffirms the basic principle of Oslo I: UN resolution 242 of November 1967, the basic framework of Middle East diplomacy, is dead and buried; UN 242, that is, as interpreted by those who formulated it, including—quite explicitly—the United States until Washington switched policy in 1971, departing from the international consensus it had helped shape. The “peace process” keeps to the doctrines that the U.S. has upheld in international isolation (apart from Israel) from the early 1970s, a matter of no slight significance.
To summarize, as of September 1995, Israel runs Zone C (about 70% of the West Bank) unilaterally and Zone B (close to 30%) effectively while partially ceding Zone A (1-3%). Israel retains unilateral control over the whole West Bank to the extent that it (and its foreign protector) so decide, and the legality of its essential claims is now placed beyond discussion. The principles extend to the Gaza Strip, where Israel retains full control of the 30% that it considered of any value.
To illustrate with an analogy, it is somewhat as if New York State were to cede responsibility for slums of South Bronx and Buffalo to local authorities while keeping the financial, industrial, and commercial sectors, wealthy residential areas, virtually all of the usable land and resources, indeed everything except for scattered areas it would be happy to hand over to someone else, just as Israel is delighted to free itself from the burden of controlling downtown Nablus and Gaza City directly. Here and in the isolated villages of Zone B, Palestinian forces are to manage the population on the standard models: the British in India, Whites in South Africa and Rhodesia, the U.S. in Central America, and so on. Israel has at last recognized the absurdity of using its own forces to keep the natives quiet.
To take another standard of comparison, recall that in 1988, at the most extreme period of U.S.-Israeli refusal to recognize any Palestinian rights or to have any dealings with the PLO, Rabin called for Israeli control of 40% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, speaking for the Labor Party and reiterating its basic stand from 1968 (with some variations). In 1995, Rabin recognized the need to sacrifice, and at Oslo II was willing to accept Israeli control of only about twice as much as he had demanded before—70-97% of the West Bank and 30% of the Gaza Strip—along with recognition of the legality of whatever Israel and its sponsor have done and may choose to do.
There has been another change from 1988: at Oslo, Rabin and Shimon Peres were willing to negotiate with the PLO and recognize it as “the representative of the Palestinian people,” at least in a side letter though not in the official agreement. In 1988, they had flatly refused any dealings with the PLO. That transformation has evoked much acclaim from U.S. commentators, who were particularly impressed by Rabin’s ability to overcome the revulsion he felt for his old enemy—and who prefer not to listen to the explanation offered by the objects of their admiration: ‘There has been a change in them, not us,” Peres informed the Israeli public as the Oslo I accords were announced; “We are not negotiating with the PLO, but only with a shadow of its former self.” The new approved shadow effectively accepts Israel’s demands, abandoning its call for mutual recognition in a two-state settlement, the program that branded the PLO a terrorist organization unfit for entry into negotiations, according to the conventions of U.S. discourse.
Without consideration of the actual background, discussion of the issues can hardly be serious. The crucial facts of recent history however, have been almost totally banned, even from scholarship for the most part; again, a matter of no slight significance.12
Commenting on the early stages of the “historic trade,” as the press terms the achievement, Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani sees “the beginning of a trend towards the militarization of Palestinian society,” consistent with the standard model of population control by client forces. That trend proceeds, Middle East correspondent Graham Usher adds, alongside “the repressive Israeli regime of containment that since Oslo [I] has killed 255 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, while attacks by Palestinians have claimed 137 Israelis” (to mid-1995), and that has arrested 2400 Palestinians “for alleged ‘Islamist tendencies’ between October 1994 and January 1995” alone.13
The brutality of the new Palestinian forces and their cooperation with the Israeli security apparatus have been reported extensively by the Israeli press and human rights monitors, and should come as no surprise. That, after all, was the announced plan. Speaking to the political council of the Labor Party on October 2, 1993, immediately after Oslo I, Prime Minister Rabin explained that the Palestinian security forces would be able to “deal with Gaza without problems caused by appeals to the High Court of Justice, without problems made by [the human rights organization] B’Tselem, and without problems from all sorts of bleeding hearts and mothers and fathers.” His plan was as rational as it is conventional.
Small wonder that Henry Kissinger sees Rabin as a “visionary” though reaching his full heights as “a visionary late in life,” on the path to Oslo I: “When you sit where I do and have, the number of world class thinkers among statesmen is very limited—and he was one of them,” Kissinger explained.14
Minister of Interior Ehud Barak announced that Oslo II “ensures Israel’s absolute superiority in both the military and economic fields.” Benvenisti points out that the Oslo II map, establishing the “peace of the victors,” conforms to the most extreme Israeli proposal, that of the ultraright General Sharon in 1981. Not surprisingly, Sharon does not appear too dissatisfied with the outcome. Correspondents report that after Oslo II, he was “smiling broadly as he talked about the bright future for” a new West Bank settlement that he had “planned and helped build…and others like it” while watching the “construction going on” and showing the press his own proposed map from 1977, now implemented by Rabin, with whom Sharon said he “felt close,” thanks to the congruence of their programs. Yisrael Harel, the founder of the Yesha Council of West Bank settlers and editor of its extremist newspaper Nekudah, agrees with Sharon and the governing Labor Party: “If they keep to the current plan, I can live with it,” he says. Prime Minister Peres’s righthand man, Labor dove Yossi Beilin, explains that the Oslo II agreement “was delayed for months in order to guarantee that all the settlements would remain intact and that the settlers would have maximum security. This entailed an immense financial investment. The situation in the settlements was never better than that which was created following the Oslo II agreement.”
In his report on Oslo II to the Knesset, Rabin outlined “the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution.” In accord with these primary demands, hardly likely to be subject to negotiation, Greater Israel is to incorporate “united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim [a town to its east] and Givat Ze’ev,” a suburb to its north; the Jordan Valley; “blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria like the one in Gush Katif” (the southern sector of Gaza that Israel retains surrounding its settlements). These blocs are to include “Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities” in the West Bank. The press reported that Ma’ale Adumim will be annexed to the greatly expanded Jerusalem area after expanded settlement establishes contiguity
between the two urban areas.15
The meaning of the “peace of the victors” has been spelled out accurately in the Hebrew press in Israel. Tel Aviv University Professor Tanya Reinhart observed after the Cairo agreement that the arrangements being imposed should not be compared with the end of Apartheid in South Africa; rather, with the institution of that system, with its “home rule” provisions for new “independent states,” as they were viewed by South African Whites and their friends. The analysis, since reiterated by Benvenisti and others, is quite reasonable. Political scientist Shlomo Avineri points out that “In one sense [Oslo II] is a major victory for Israel and a minimalist settlement for Arafat,” who “has done a relatively good job given the impossible circumstances under which he is working.” That is almost accurate. It is necessary however, to recall other features of the Third World model: Arafat, his cronies, and rich Palestinians can expect to do quite well in the client relationship, whatever the effects on the population.16
In brief, there is considerable agreement about the bare facts across a spectrum ranging from Sharon and Harel to the sharpest critics.
There is disagreement, however, about what the facts portend, a matter of speculation, of course. Some believe that the foundation has been laid for Palestinian independence beyond the Bantustan level, even full Israeli withdrawal. To others, the more likely prospect conforms to the hopes expressed by New Republic editor Martin Peretz as he advised Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982 and administer to the PLO a “lasting military defeat” that will drive notions of independence out of the minds of Palestinians in the occupied territories: then “the Palestinians will be turned into just another crushed nation, like the Kurds or the Afghans,” and the Palestinian problem, which “is beginning to be boring,” will be resolved.17 Speculation aside, at least this much seems clear: it would be pointless for Israel to retain anything like the territory it controls under Oslo II. Presumably, the government will sooner or later decide to restrict its administrative burden while continuing to integrate within Israel whatever land and resources it finds valuable, at which point another “historic trade” will be celebrated.
The “historic trade” just consummated establishes the most extreme position of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism that has been seriously put forth within the mainstream political spectrum. But however extreme a position may be, some will remain unsatisfied. In the 1980s, central elements of the Likud coalition reiterated their claim to Jordan, while conceding that “in the context of negotiations with Jordan we might agree to certain concessions in Eastern Transjordan” (the largely uninhabited desert areas). A similar position had long been held by the mainstream of the Kibbutz movement, Ahduth Avodah, which played a leading role in the Golda Meir Labor government. To my knowledge, such claims have never been renounced. Today some sectors, Americans and ultra-orthodox prominent among them, claim the right to every stone West of the Jordan.18
Looking more closely, we find that the expanding area of Greater Jerusalem-Ma’ale Adumim extends virtually to Jericho and the Jordan Valley so that the anticipated permanent settlement effectively bisects the West Bank. A huge array of “bypass roads” is being constructed to fragment the region further into “cantons,” as they are called in the programs of the ultra-right now being implemented. The new roads link the territories under Israeli control so that settlers can travel freely without having to see the Arab villages scattered in the hills, or the municipal areas run by the PA. Construction of Israeli settlements, housing, and infrastructure has accelerated since Oslo I was signed in September 1993, using funds provided by the U.S. taxpayer with the agreement of the Bush and particularly the Clinton Administrations. The government of Israel continues to provide inducements to Jews to settle in the territories, where they enjoy a subsidized lifestyle well beyond the reach of the general population; most recently, new efforts to encourage settlement in lands confiscated from Bedouins in Ma’ale Adumim, where a new bypass road was opened on October 23, 1995, and 6000 new housing units are to be erected by the year 2005 along with 2400 new hotel rooms, its population projected to grow to 50,000. Building starts increased by over 40% from 1993 to 1995 (not including East Jerusalem), according to a report by Peace Now issued in October 1995, though they are still well below 1992.19
The same conception, Israel Shahak observes, has been implemented in Gaza, “sliced into enclaves controlled by the bypass roads [that] cut the Gaza Strip in two, in its strategically most sensitive spot between Gaza town and the big refugee camps to the south of it.” The settlements “serve as pivots of the road grid devised to ensure Israeli control” over the areas granted “autonomy,” which are separated from Egypt and from each other. In both Gaza and the West Bank, these arrangements allow Israel to continue to imprison the population in whole or in part by road and area closures, as it has often done, sometimes for long periods.20
The motive for curfew-closure may be punishment, or to deter possible terrorist action (particularly after some Israeli atrocity, or for several weeks during the signing of Oslo II). Or simply to liberate Jewish citizens from the annoying presence of the locals, as when the Arab population of Hebron was locked up under 24-hour curfew for four days during the Passover holidays in 1995 so that settlers and 35,000 Jewish visitors brought there in chartered buses could have picnics and travel around the city freely dancing in the streets with public prayers to bring down “the government of the Left,” laying the cornerstone for a new residential building, and indulging in other pleasures under the protective gaze of extra military forces, using the opportunity “to insult the Palestinians imprisoned in their houses and to throw stones at them if they dared to peek out of the windows at the Jews celebrating in their city,” and finally bringing the celebration to a close “by settlers rampaging through the Old City destroying property, and smashing car windows…in a city magically cleansed…of Palestinians.” “Children, parents and old people are effectively jailed for days in their homes, which in most cases, are seriously overcrowded,” able to turn on their TV sets to “watch a female settler saying happily ‘There is a curfew, thank God’,” and to hear the “merry dances of settlers” and “festive processions,” some to “the Patriarchs Cave open only to Jews.” Meanwhile “commerce, careers, studies, the family, love—all are immediately disrupted,” and “the medical system was paralyzed” so that “many sick persons in Hebron were unable to reach hospitals during the curfew and women giving birth could not arrive in time at the clinics.”21
In annexed East Jerusalem, Israel is free to extend its programs to reduce Arab citizens to second-class status. These were devised and implemented by former Mayor Teddy Kollek, much admired in the U.S. as an outstanding democrat and humanitarian, and are now being extended under his successor, Ehud Olmert of Likud. Their purpose, Kollek’s adviser on Arab affairs Amir Cheshin explained, was “placing difficulties in the way of planning in the Arab sector.” “I don’t want to give [the Arabs] a feeling of equality,” Kollek elaborated, though it would be worthwhile to do so “here and there, where it doesn’t cost us so much”; otherwise “we will suffer.” Kollek’s planning commission advised development for Arabs if it would have “a ‘picture window’ effect,” which “will be seen by a large number of people (residents, tourists, etc.).” Kollek informed the Israeli media in 1990 that for the Arabs, he had “nurtured nothing and built nothing,” apart from a sewage system— which, he hastened to add, was not intended “for their good, for their welfare,” “they” being the Arabs of Jerusalem. Rather, “there were some cases of cholera [in Arab sectors], and the Jews were afraid that they would catch it, so we installed sewage and a water system against cholera.” Under Olmert, treatment of Arabs has become considerably harsher, according to reports from the scene.22
The Kollek programs are analyzed by Israeli community planner Sarah Kaminker (a City Council member and city planner in Kollek’s administration) in a June 1994 report submitted to the High Court on behalf of Arab plaintiffs by th
e Society of St. Yves, the Catholic Legal Resource Center for Human Rights. In Jewish West Jerusalem, the report concludes, “there is large-scale illegal construction” which the Municipality does not prevent and retroactively approves. In Arab East Jerusalem, standards are different. There, 86% of the land has been made “unavailable for use by Arabs.” The remaining 14% “is not vacant land but land that has already been developed”; vacant lands are reserved for development for Jews, or kept as “open landscape views” (often for eventual development for Jews, so it regularly turns out). “The dearth of land zoned for Arab housing is a result of government planning and development policy in East Jerusalem,” where the Kollek Administration conducted “a consistent effort since 1974 to limit the land area available to Arabs for licensed construction.” The goal is “demographic balance,” partially achieved in 1993 when Kollek’s Municipality “was able to announce that the number of Jews residing in East Jerusalem had surpassed the number of Arabs.”
The government has provided housing in formerly Arab East Jerusalem: 60,000 units for Jews, 555 for Arabs. Arabs whose homes have been demolished for Jewish settlement often “come from the lowest economic strata of their community” and now “live in makeshift hovels, doubled and tripled up with other families, or even in tents and caves.” Those who are willing to build their own homes on their own lands are barred by law and subject to demolition if they proceed. The threat is executed, unlike Jewish West Jerusalem, where “the problem of illegal construction…is as serious, if not more so, than that in East Jerusalem.” “Demographic balance” is advanced further by discriminatory regulations on building heights, far more limited in Arab than Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. An array of zoning provisions and other legal instruments has been designed to intensify the discrimination between Jews and Arabs, as throughout Israel itself, always using funds provided by the U.S. taxpayer directly or through tax-free donations, always with the approval of admiring U.S. commentators.23