Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  In October 1973, Sadat made good his threat. As a group of Israeli and American-Israeli scholars observe, “After the Egyptian Ra’is [Sadat] had realized that all diplomatic efforts would lead to a dead end, he decided to try a limited military option which, combined with an oil embargo, would lead to a significant Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories.”73 To the great surprise of Israel, the U.S., and virtually everyone else, Egypt and Syria were remarkably successful in the early stages of the war and Saudi Arabia was compelled (reluctantly, it seems) to join in an oil boycott, the first major use of the “oil weapon,” a move with considerable long-term implications in international affairs. Primary responsibility for these developments is attributable to Henry Kissinger’s ignorance and blind reliance on force.

  At that point, U.S. policy shifted, reflecting the understanding that Egypt and the oil-producing states could not be so easily dismissed or controlled. Kissinger undertook his shuttle diplomacy and other diplomatic efforts. Concealed behind the razzle-dazzle was the easily discernible intent, now surely clear in retrospect even to those who could not perceive it at the time, to accept Egypt as a U.S. client state while effectively removing it from the Middle East conflict with a Sinai agreement. Then Israel would be free to continue its policies of integrating the occupied territories—and to concentrate its forces for war on the northern border without concern for the major Arab military force, as when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982.

  Egypt continued to press for a full-scale peace settlement, now joined by other Arab states. In January 1976, the U.S. was compelled to veto a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a settlement in terms of the international consensus, which now included a Palestinian state alongside of Israel. The resolution called for a settlement on the 1967 borders, with “appropriate arrangements…to guarantee…the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” including Israel and a new Palestinian state in the occupied territories. The resolution was backed by the “confrontation states” (Egypt, Syria, Jordan), the PLO, and the USSR. President Chaim Herzog, who was Israel’s UN Ambassador at the time, writes that the PLO not only backed this peace plan but in fact “prepared” it; the PLO then condemned “the tyranny of the veto” (in the words of the PLO representative) by which the U.S. blocked this important effort to bring about a peaceful two-state settlement. The occasion for Herzog’s remarks was the Saudi Arabian peace proposal that had just been announced, which Israel was right to reject, Herzog asserts, just as it correctly rejected the “more moderate” PLO plan of January 1976. According to Herzog, the “real author” of the 1981 Saudi Arabian (Fahd) peace plan was also the PLO, who never seem to cease their machinations.74

  Israel refused to attend the January 1976 Security Council session, which had been called at Syrian initiative. The Rabin government—a Labor Party government regarded as dovish—announced that it would not negotiate with any Palestinians on any political issue and would not negotiate with the PLO even if the latter were to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, thus adopting a position comparable to that of the minority Rejection Front within the PLO.75 The main elements of the PLO had been moving towards acceptance of a two-state settlement, and continued to do so, at times with various ambiguities, at times quite clearly, as in this case.

  The Arab states and the PLO continued to press for a two-state settlement, and Israel continued to react with alarm and rejection. In November 1976, the Jerusalem Post noted that Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Fahmy had offered four conditions for a Middle East peace settlement: “Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 war frontiers; the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; the ban on nuclear weapons in the region; and the inspection of nuclear installations in the area.” It noted further President Sadat’s statement to a group of U.S. Senators “that he was prepared to sign a peace treaty with Israel if it withdrew from all Arab territories captured in the 1967 war, and if a Palestinian state was created on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.” The Labor Party journal Davar quoted Prime Minister Rabin’s response to this disturbing “peace offensive”:

  But there is nothing new in all of this, in the objectives that the Arabs wish to obtain, stressed the Prime Minister when recalling that back in 1971 Sadat told Dr. Jarring of his willingness to reach a peace settlement as he understood it. On the contrary, he has even made the conditions harder, since then, as opposed to now, he did not link an IsraeliEgyptian agreement with agreements with other Arab countries and did not raise, in such a pronounced manner [in fact, at all], his demand for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.76

  Thus no Israeli reaction was in order. The following year, Egypt, Syria and Jordan “informed the United States that they would sign peace treaties with Israel as part of an overall Middle East settlement.”77 The Palestinian National Council, the governing body of the PLO, issued a declaration on March 20, 1977 calling for the establishment of “an independent national state” in Palestine—rather than a secular democratic state of Palestine—and authorizing Palestinian attendance at an Arab-Israeli peace conference. Prime Minister Rabin of Israel responded “that the only place the Israelis could meet the Palestinian guerrillas was on the field of battle.”78 The same session of the National Council elected a new PLO Executive Committee excluding representatives of the Rejection Front.79

  Shortly after, the PLO leaked a “peace plan” in Beirut which stated that the famous Palestinian National Covenant would not serve as the basis for relations between Israel and a Palestinian state, just as the founding principles of the World Zionist Organization were not understood as the basis for interstate relations, and that any evolution beyond a two-state settlement “would be achieved by peaceful means.”80

  Supporters of Israel have long treasured the Covenant as the last line of defense for their rejectionism when all else fails. Israeli doves, in contrast, have always dismissed this last-ditch effort. For example, Elie Eliachar, former president of the Council of the Sephardic Community in Israel and the first person from Jerusalem to represent it at the Zionist Congresses, made the following statement in a lecture at the Hebrew University in 1980:

  On the basis of personal contacts I have had with leaders of the PLO, in London and elsewhere [in] meetings that were held openly, and that interested people know all about, I can say categorically that the idea that the PLO covenant is an obstacle to negotiations is utter nonsense... There is no Arab organization in existence today which can bring about a durable peace in our region, except the PLO, including its extremist factions.

  Mattityahu Peled, asked why the PLO does not abandon the Covenant, responded: For the same reason that the Government of Israel has never renounced the decisions of the Basle Zionist Congress, which supported the establishment of a Jewish state in the historic land of Israel—including Transjordan. No political body would do this. Similarly Herut and the Irgun [its terrorist forerunner] never abandoned their map [which includes Transjordan, contemporary Jordan; the official slogan of Begin’s Herut Party still calls for an Israel on both banks of the Jordan]. We demand a ritual abandonment of the Covenant—a kind of ceremony of humiliation—instead of concerning ourselves with the decisions that were accepted by the PLO from 1974, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories evacuated by Israel.

  It is, in fact, interesting to see how Israeli propaganda has focused on the Covenant with increasing intensity as it is deemphasized by the PLO in favor of subsequent resolutions which drastically modify its terms, for reasons that are hardly obscure.81 We should note that the Convenant holds a rejectionist view comparable to that of the Labor Party and Likud.

  A few months after releasing the 1977 peace plan, the PLO endorsed the Soviet-American statement of October 1977, which called for the “termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relat
ions” between Israel and its neighbors, as well as for internationally guaranteed borders and demilitarized zones to enhance security. “The United States had, however, quickly backed away from the joint statement under Israeli protest,” Seth Tillman observes, adding that “without exception,” proposals for superpower collaboration to bring about a settlement and to guarantee it “have been shot down by Israeli leaders and supporters of Israel in the United States, who have perceived in them the bugbear of an ‘imposed’ settlement”—that is to say, a settlement that is unacceptable (otherwise, no sane person would care whether it was “imposed” or not) because it departs from their rejectionist principles. There were “a few dissenters from the prevailing consensus,” Tillman points out, among them Nahum Goldmann, who described the Soviet-American agreement of October 1977 as “a piece of real statesmanship,” adding that “it is regrettable that Israel’s opposition and that of the pro-Israel lobby in America rendered the agreement ineffective” (Goldmann’s words), another piece in the familiar pattern.82

  2.4.2 Sadat’s Trip to Jerusalem and the Rewriting of History The failure of many such efforts as these led Sadat to undertake his

  November 1977 trip to Jerusalem, motivated by a desire to convene a Geneva conference of major powers to settle the conflict, according to Hermann Eilts, who was U.S. Ambassador to Egypt at the time.83 It is also likely that Sadat was motivated by concern over the escalating conflict across the Israel-Lebanon border, initiated by Israeli-Maronite bombing of Nabatiya and culminating in Israeli air raids that killed some 70 people, mostly Lebanese.84

  The United States has generally been opposed to a Geneva conference, which would include the USSR and the European powers. As Kissinger had explained, his diplomatic efforts were designed “to keep the Soviets out of the diplomatic arena” and “to ensure that the Europeans and Japanese did not get involved in the diplomacy” concerning the Middle East, where the U.S. role is to remain predominant.85 Israel has also consistently opposed the idea, adamantly so if the PLO participates. The reason was explained by Prime Minister Rabin of the Labor Party after the Knesset had approved a resolution to this effect. If Israel agrees to negotiate “with any Palestinian element,” he stated, this will provide “a basis for the possibility of creating a third state between Israel and Jordan.” But Israel will never accept such a state: “I repeat firmly, clearly, categorically: it will not be created.”86 The Labor Party’s rejection of the right of the Palestinians to any meaningful form of self-determination has been consistent and exceptionless.

  Sadat’s dramatic visit to Jerusalem did not open the way to negotiations for a comprehensive political settlement involving true accommodation in the sense of the earlier discussion and the international consensus. Rather, the resulting Camp David “peace process,” as the U.S. government and the press designate it, consummated Kissinger’s earlier efforts. Egypt has, temporarily at least, been incorporated within the U.S. system and excluded from the ArabIsraeli conflict, allowing Israel to continue its creeping takeover of the occupied territories, apart from the Sinai, now returned to Egypt and serving as a buffer zone. Diplomatic efforts remain largely in the hands of the U.S., excluding both the USSR and the rivals/allies of Europe and Japan.

  From 1977, the Begin government rapidly extended land expropriation and settlement in the occupied territories while instituting a considerably more brutal repression there, particularly from the fall of 1981, with the Milson-Sharon administration. The U.S. government signalled its approval by increasing the massive aid which, in effect, funded these projects—while also emitting occasional peeps of protest. As noted earlier (see section 2.3.3 above), the Begin government indicated from the start its rejection of the “peace process,” so it is not surprising that it moved at once to “fulfill its rights to sovereignty” by large-scale development projects designed to ensure that the West Bank could not be separated from Israel.

  Evidently, the actual historical record—here briefly reviewed up to Sadat’s November 1977 trip to Jerusalem—is not exactly in accord with the familiar picture of U.S.-Israel-Arab diplomatic interactions in this period. The preferred story is one of Arab intransigence and U.S.-Israeli efforts at accommodation. Sadat, for example, is regularly portrayed as a typical Arab warmonger who tried to destroy Israel by force in 1973, then learned the error of his ways and became a man of peace under the kindly tutelage of Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter. As the New Republic puts the matter, Sadat’s “decision to make peace” came after the 1973 war: “Finally, after the enormous destructiveness of the 1973 war, Anwar Sadat realized that the time had come to replace the conflict of war with law and rights.”87 The other Arabs—particularly the PLO— persist in their evil ways.* Endless references can be cited from the press to illustrate this version of history.88

  To reconcile the actual history with the preferred picture has been a relatively simple matter; It has only been necessary to resort to Orwell’s useful memory hole. The historical record has been so effectively sanitized that even as well-informed a person as Harold Saunders (former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs) can write that “As long as no Arab government but Egypt would make peace, Israel saw no alternative to maintaining its security by the force of its own arms.”89

  Sadat’s pre-1977 peace efforts have been conveniently expunged from the record, like the January 1976 Security Council Resolution and much else. In Israel and Egypt, Sadat’s 1971 offer is described as his “famous” attempt to establish a genuine peace with Israel.90 Similarly,

  * The New Republic goes on to explain that one of the great achievements of the Israeli war in Lebanon is that the destruction of the PLO and “its elimination as an independent political force [will] allow those on the Arab side who have no designs on Haifa or Tel Aviv to negotiate free from intimidation” (my emphasis). Prior to 1982, this leading journal of American liberalism would have us believe, no Arabs were “allowed” to consider a settlement that would include the existence of Israel. Compare the record sampled here.

  Amnon Kapeliouk describes Sadat’s expression of willingness “to enter into a peace agreement with Israel” (the words of the official English text of Israel’s recognition of Sadat’s offer) as a “historic event in Israel-Arab relations.”91

  Consider, in contrast, the two-page encomium to Sadat by Eric Pace, Middle East specialist of the New York Times, after Sadat’s assassination.92 There is no mention here of the real history, as briefly sketched above; indeed in the New York Times version, the well-documented facts are explicitly denied. Thus, referring to Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in 1977, Pace writes:

  Reversing Egypt’s longstanding policy, he proclaimed his willingness to accept Israel’s existence as a sovereign state. Then, where so many Middle East negotiators had failed, he succeeded, along with Presidents Carter and Reagan and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, in keeping the improbable rapprochement alive.

  An elegant example of what has sometimes been called “historical engineering,”93 that is, redesigning the facts of history in the interests of established power and ideology, a crime of which we justly accuse our enemies.

  Such historical engineering is in fact quite widespread. To illustrate more closely how the system works, I will cite one final example, again from the New York Times, which is much more interesting in this connection than, say, the New Republic or Commentary, because of its image and pretensions as an independent journal. After the Lebanon war and the Beirut massacres of September, there was much debate about how Americans, and American Jews in particular, should relate to Israel. The contribution of the New York Times Magazine was a discussion by Mark Helprin,* who is identified as a Middle East specialist with service in the Israeli army.94

  Helprin begins by setting up a framework for discussing the issue. There are two extreme positions: “Among Jews in the United States there are those who would see Israel fall, and those who care only for its aggrandizement.” These “two extr
emes,” he adds, “have been highlighted in the debate following the massacre of innocents in Beirut.” We must reject both of these extremes, he urges, and take the “middle ground,” which is described rather vaguely, but is intended to be understood as the position of the Labor Party, it appears.

  Now of course, every commentator sees himself as occupying the middle ground between the extremists. The question is: who stands at the two extremes? As the sole example of those “Jews in the United States who would see Israel fall,” Helprin cites George Habash, the leader of the rejectionist faction of the PLO. It is not surprising that he offers no other example; it would be difficult indeed to find real cases.

  What about the other “extreme,” i.e., those who support the policies of Likud. Helprin does not elaborate on the constituency of this group, * It would be misleading to describe this as just one man’s opinion, fully in place in an independent journal. That would indeed be true if the range of permitted opinion extended beyond the rejectionist spectrum, but it does not, contrary to much pretense (the reference of note 111 below being one example). The Times Magazine published an interesting letter critical of Helprin’s article, by Julius Berman, Chairman, Conference of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (Dec. 12). Berman held that Helprin rejected the “consensus” of American Jews: that the PLO is excluded as a negotiating partner and that “an independent Palestinian state would be a dagger poised at the heart of Israel.” The latter phrase is borrowed from Hitler, who used it with reference to Czechoslovakia.