by Noam Chomsky
The unwillingness of major segments of the peace movement to face this issue—and more generally, to confront the question of how a nuclear war is likely to break out as a result of tensions and conflicts in the Third World to which the U.S. often makes a significant contribution—deserves some thought. It is a stance that reflects a curious arrangement of priorities on the part of people who are committed to reducing the likelihood of nuclear war.
4. Prospects
T
he dangers to the partners in this triangular relationship are therefore clear enough. There can also be no serious doubt that U.S. policies and actions will have a significant effect on what comes to be, as in the past. The current prospects are for a continuation
of past tendencies: “support for Israel” at the material, diplomatic and ideological levels, combined with conflict at the meaningless rhetorical level. If this remains so, what evolves will, in significant measure, reflect the workings of Israel’s social and political order. Let us first consider that question and then turn finally to the possible consequences of a move away from the rejectionist positions of the past in the United States.
Before entering into these two crucial questions, we might take note of some that are secondary in the present connection. As for the third partner in the triangular relationship on which attention has been focused here, the Palestinians, they are so weak and their options are so few that their impact on events will be slight. As discussed earlier, they have already approached or joined the international consensus, though one might also note, again, that both their actions and their propaganda (and their almost complete failure to reach an American audience, not wholly their own fault) have often been self-destructive, and particularly in earlier years, intolerable. Those marginal groups in the West that have given the PLO the kind of “support” that the overwhelmingly dominant groups and institutions have given to Israel merit the same reaction as do the latter, though the phenomenon is so slight in comparison with the “support for Israel” as to be barely worth comment. There are, of course, other actors in the Middle East: Europe, the Arab states, the USSR, and others as well. But in present circumstances their role is secondary at best, and in any event, of far less significance for Americans than the role of the U.S. and U.S.-supported Israel, for transparent reasons, which merit comment, if at all, only because of the constant pretense of inability to understand them: it is the policies of the U.S. that we can hope to influence, and indirectly, the policies of others that are shaped to a degree by U.S. action.
4.1 Assuming U.S. Rejectionism
4.1.1 The Spectrum of Israeli Political Thinking As has been made abundantly clear, the two major political groupings in Israel are alike in their rejectionism, but differ in the means by which they choose to implement it. Both intend to hold on to the Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. As for the West Bank, Likud advocates an extension of Israeli “sovereignty” while Labor prefers that Israel maintain control over its resources and a substantial part of its territory while overcoming the “demographic problem” by leaving the population stateless or under some form of Jordanian administration but Israeli military control. Neither position can be reconciled with the rather vague rhetoric of the Reagan plan, though Labor’s position comes closer. For this and other reasons, the U.S. government and a good part of the press appear to favor the return of Labor to power.
Poll results indicate that none of the current Labor leaders come close to Begin in popularity. Consequently there has been some hope that former President Yitzhak Navon, a Labor Party veteran who is of Sephardic origin and who ranks considerably higher in the polls,* will
*See P. 440*. Some early 1983 polls indicated that if the Labor Alignment were led by Navon, it would draw even with Begin’s Likud, though few political agree to lead the party in the next elections. Whatever illusions there might have been about this dovish alternative were—or should have been—dissipated by his visit to the U.S. in January 1983, arranged with considerable fanfare as affording a closer look at the alternative to Begin. Navon emphasized that Labor and Likud do not disagree on the legality of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, but “mainly on where Israelis should settle and at what pace”; in other words, should new settlements be established in accord with the program of Likud or Labor as to how to integrate the territories within Israel? As for withdrawal of troops from Lebanon, Israel requires “tangible expressions of peace” from the country it invaded before agreeing to withdraw—a position that is not regarded as unreasonable within the remarkable framework of assumptions that constrains discussion in the United States. He refused to accept a freeze on settlement in the West Bank as a means for drawing King Hussein into the Reagan “peace process.” At a meeting in Boston, Navon “strongly defended Mr. Begin after a university professor criticized the Prime Minister.” “Those of us who thought that there would be massive shifts in Israeli policy if Begin were gone had better think again,” a “Washington-based Jewish activist said.”17 In fact, there was no basis for any such view before, and if recent history is any guide, the view will be maintained despite this disillusioning experience, and in fact, in complete disregard of whatever the facts may be.
There is a rather detailed analysis of Israeli opinions on crucial political questions by Sammy Smooha of Haifa University and the State University of New York (Binghamton) and Don Peretz of the latter institution, which provides useful background for these matters.18 They
analysts in Israel appear to attach much credence to this possibility. On poll results in Israel in this period, see Khalik Nakhleh’s essay in The PalestineIsrael War of 1982, Institute for Arab Studies (Belmont, Mass.), forthcoming.
base their conclusions on polls taken in July 1980. The prime focus of their investigation is the Arab population within Israel (Israeli Arab citizens), but more relevant to our concerns here are the comparative results they present concerning Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs tend towards support of the international consensus as described earlier, no great surprise, since this position is virtually uniform outside of the United States and Israel. As for the PLO, 68% of Israeli Arabs believe that Israel should recognize it as the representative of the Palestinians (an additional 22% “under certain circumstances”) and half regard it as a representative for Israeli Arabs, while “58% justified Fedayeen actions in which Israeli Jews are killed” (resistance activities from their point of view, terrorism from the point of view of those who hold the occupied territories by force).
Turning to the Jewish population of Israel, 46% favor settlement in the occupied territories without reservations, an additional 27% with reservations, 1% favor a political settlement on the Green Line (pre-June 1967 borders), an additional 8% “with certain modifications.” 57% favor a settlement on the current borders “with certain modifications,” while an additional 33% favor “present borders with willingness to compromise also in Judea and Samaria.” Among “dovish leaders,” 3% favor a settlement on the Green Line, an additional 44% “with certain modifications,”—and 53% favor present borders with compromise in the West Bank. 86% of the public and 77% of the dovish leaders oppose a peace settlement if it would entail giving up annexed East Jerusalem— an annexation recognized by virtually no one, not even the U.S. On “Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian nation,” 11% of the Jewish public was in favor, an additional 35% “under certain circumstances,” with 54% entirely opposed under any circumstances. The corresponding figures among dovish leaders were 59%, 27%, 15%. On recognition of the PLO as the Palestinians’ representative, among the public 3% approved, an additional 13% under certain circumstances, while 85% opposed recognition under any circumstances. Among dovish leaders, the corresponding figures were 21%, 27%, 53%. As for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, 5% of the public approved, an additional 18% under certain circumstances, and 77% were opposed under any circumstances. Among dovish leaders, the corresponding figures were 15%, 29%, 56%.
It is clear, then, that massive changes wo
uld have to take place within Israel, and considerable changes among the dovish leaders, before any departure from far-reaching rejectionism would become a significant force. As to what the distribution of responses would be if the United States had not backed Israeli rejectionism with such consistency and commitment, one can only speculate.
4.1.2 “From Coexistence to Hegemony” Given the state of opinion within Israel, and still assuming unchanging U.S. “support for Israel,” what long-term policies is Israel likely to pursue, apart from continued steps towards integration of the occupied territories in either the Likud or Labor style? Surely Israel will not tolerate any military build-up in the surrounding region that it considers a potential threat, and there will be no end to such threats if there is no political settlement, a prospect virtually guaranteed by U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. Furthermore, the costs of a permanent state of war are immense, and mounting, costs that Israel is increasingly unable to bear and that cannot be reduced as long as tension exists and its adversaries are not crushed.* Hence the inducement to undertake a preemptive
*For a recent analysis of these costs, see Zvi Kassler, “The True Cost of the Lebanon War,” Kozeret Rashit, Feb. 23, 1983. Until the 1967 war, Israel’s strike will always be high, and with it, the likelihood of regional or even global war. It is only natural to expect that Israel will seek to destabilize the surrounding states, for essentially the reasons that lead South Africa on a similar course in its region. In fact, given continuing military tensions, that might be seen virtually as a security imperative. A plausible long-term goal might be what some have called an “Ottomanization” of the region, that is, a return to something like the system of the Ottoman empire, with a powerful center (Turkey then, Israel with U.S.-backing now) and much of the region fragmented into ethnic-religious communities, preferably mutually hostile.
A clear version of such a picture was presented just prior to the Lebanon war by Oded Yinon, who was formerly in the Israeli foreign service, in the ideological journal of the World Zionist Organization.19 Yinon argues that Israel must restore the status quo that reigned in the Sinai before the “mistaken peace agreement” with Sadat. Egypt is weak (“a corpse”) and events will lead to Israeli reconquest of the Sinai. Furthermore, the dismemberment of Egypt should be “the political goal of Israel in the 1980s on its Western front.” On the other fronts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula must also be dismembered into smaller “factors,” religious and ethnic, as in the Levant during the Ottoman period. Jordan will be handed over to the
military expenditures amounted to about 10% of GNP, rising to 18% at the time of that war and to 33% with the October 1973 war. After a decline to below 25% in late 1978, they began a steady rise, reaching 36.6% with Operation “Peace for Galilee,” and are expected to remain at about that level, if not higher. The plausible conclusion, which Kassler draws, is that Israel will have to seek “new solutions,” perhaps regular “small wars” to keep potential enemies weak or (as others have proposed) reliance on nuclear weapons. There is, of course, little reason to be confident that “small wars” will remain small.
Palestinians and the population of the occupied territories will emigrate there: “the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the territories to the west of the river.” With the separation of the two peoples, there will be “true peace.” All of this is encased in ideological and geopolitical fantasies concerning the collapse of the West before the Soviet-Third World onslaught, an upsurge of anti-Semitism in the West that will make Israel the “last refuge” for Jews, etc. Israel alone has the power to resist these awesome challenges as the humanistic European civilization of the postRenaissance period is collapsing, Yinon explains, with extensive reference to neo-Conservative literature here and other sources.
In this publication and other current developments, the Israeli writer Amos Elon perceives “the spreading of irrationalism in our collective existence.”20 Instead of recognizing and dealing with the phenomenon, American “supporters of Israel” prefer to deny that it exists, and to protect the facts from scrutiny by defamation of those who are concerned with them. In fact, the views that Yinon expressed in the official ideological journal of the World Zionist Organization are not those of the Zionist mainstream, but of an extreme fringe of Israeli politics, the Tehiya party, essentially; the journal is, incidentally, not likely to feature the views of the other type of “extremists,” those who support the international consensus. Shortly afterwards, Tehiya Knesset Member Yuval Ne’eman, who had written in the Jerusalem Post in favor of a “new order” in which southern Lebanon would be incorporated in some fashion into Israel, was offered a major cabinet position with responsibility and ample funding for settlement and development in the occupied territories.
Extreme these views may be, but they are not out of the political mainstream, and they may sooner or later come to dominate it in the natural course of events. The entire history of Zionism and later the State of Israel, particularly since 1967, is one of gradual shift towards the positions of those formerly regarded as right-wing extremists; consider, for example, the general attitude in earlier days towards the current terrorist leadership, Begin, Shamir, et al., and their actions and doctrines.21 Furthermore, in this case the conceptions of the Labor Zionist leadership were not radically different. Recall Ben-Gurion’s strategic aims when the state was established in May 1948: to smash Transjordan and Syria, annex southern Lebanon and set up a Christian state in what remained, bombing Egypt if it resists, and to proceed towards realizing the longer-term “vision,” by force if necessary, once a state was established under the partition agreement as a preliminary step; see chapter 4, pp. 162-3 and elsewhere.
In fact, much of what Yinon discusses is quite close to mainstream thinking. Both major political groupings agree that Jordan is ‘the Palestinian state,” though Labor wants it to take over areas of heavy Arab population concentration in the occupied West Bank as well so as to relieve Israel of the “demographic problem.” Both political groupings look forward to an eventual transfer of large parts of the Arab population to Jordan, reflecting ideas that have deep roots in Labor Zionist thought, as documented earlier. The “new order” that Israel is attempting to impose in Lebanon is based on a conception not unlike what Yinon expresses, and there is every reason to suppose that similar ideas with regard to Syria may seem attractive to the political leadership. With regard to Iraq, Ze’ev Schiff observed just before the Lebanon war that it would be in Israel’s interest for it to be divided into three states, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish—and it is difficult to see why Israel would refrain from seeking this objective.
Schiff’s comments were a response to information that Israel was selling weapons to Iran,* and it is indeed likely that Israel’s support for
*Recall that Israel was closely allied to Iran prior to the fall of the Shah. The Iran (in silent partnership with Syria and Libya) is aimed in part at weakening Iraq, eventually splitting it up into separate states as Schiff and Yinon recommend. There is more involved, however. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens, now Sharon’s replacement as Defense Minister, stated that Israel had provided arms to the Khomeini regime “in coordination with the U.S. government…at almost the highest of levels.” “The objective,” he stated, “was to see if we could not find some areas of contact with the Iranian military, to bring down the Khomeini regime.” Publication of this report elicited official U.S. government denials, and as Arens told the Globe: “I caught a little flack from the State Department.” Arens then reiterated his statement about coordination with the U.S. government, but qualified the account of the “objective”: the arms flow was too small to bring down the Khomeini regime; rather, “The purpose was to make contact with some military officers who some day might be in a position of power in Iran.”22
More information on Israeli ideas with regard to Iran was presented in a BBC program of February 1982 concerned with Israel’s arms shipments to Iran and what the mo
derator, Philip Tibenham, calls “one of the most closely-guarded secrets in the Middle East—Israel’s attempt to trigger a military coup in Iran.”23 The first person interviewed was Jacob
nature of this alliance was revealed in part after the Shah’s fall by discussion in the Israeli press, particularly, the account by former Israeli Ambassador Uri Lubrani, who reports that “the entire upper echelon of the Israeli political leadership” visited the Shah’s Iran, including David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Abba Eban, Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, and Menachem Begin, and who describes the warm relations that developed between Israel’s Labor leaders and the Shah’s secret police (SAVAK), who hosted these visits, taking time off from torturing prisoners.24
Nimrodi, head of Mossad (the Israeli CIA, in effect) in Iran under cover as Israeli military attaché under the Shah. He is described as the Israeli closest to the Shah and his military staff during the period of the IsraeliIranian alliance. Nimrodi states that “I think that we can do with the West together of course something to save Iran from this regime,” namely, stage a military coup, which he thinks is possible and “important…for the West.” Unless there is a coup, “Iran will fall into the hands of the Communists,” first into the hands of the Tudeh (Communist) Party, “and after that in the hands of the Soviet Union.” Former Ambassador to Iran Uri Lubrani adds:24
