Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

49. Apr. 14.

  50. AP, Mar. 28. There was brief and inadequate notice in the Boston Globe, Mar. 29 and NYT, Mar. 28; editorial, JP, Mar. 29, deploring the army’s “blunder.”

  51. Dan Fisher, Los Angeles Times, Apr. 10; Uri Nir, Ha’aretz, Apr. 13; AP, Apr. 9. A May 3 NYT report from the village by Joel Brinkley describes none of this.

  52. Yizhar Be’er and Munir Man’e, Kol Hair, Apr. 15.

  53. John Kifner, NYT, Apr. 7, 8, 9; News from Within (Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem), May 10; FACTS Weekly Review, FACTS Weekly Review,

  9, a Palestinian publication that provides weekly summaries of the uprising; Shomron, cited from Kifner, Apr. 9, and JP Apr. 12; Nahum Barnea, Koteret Rashit, Apr. 13; Peretz Kidron, Middle East International, Apr. 16.

  54. News from Within, May 10; Daoud Kuttab, Middle East International, Apr. 16.

  55. Zvi Gilat, Hadashot, Apr. 7.

  56. Ha’aretz, Apr. 15; Hadashot, Apr. 12.

  57. In August, she was given an eight-month sentence, retroactive to her arrest, for “throwing rocks and causing serious bodily harm to Aldubi”; Joel Greenberg, JP, Aug. 12,1988.

  58. BG, May 25; Al-Hamishmar, May 17; Joel Brinkley, NYT, Apr. 28. 59. See introduction to the chapter.

  60. Chronology, Middle East Journal, Spring 1988; Attorney Avigdor Feldman,Hadashot, Jan. 1, 1988; AP, NYT, May 6; Mary Curtius, BG, John Kifner, NYT, Feb. 9; Curtius, BG, June 4.

  61. Hadashot, May 16, 1984; Menahem Shizaf, Hadashot, July 2, 1987; Attallah Mansour, Ha’aretz, Feb. 5, 1986; Reuter, Toronto Globe & Mail, May 16; John Kifner, NYT, Apr. 20; AP, BG, May 18, 21; Eyal Ehrlich, Ha’aretz, Apr. 7; Amnon Levy, Hadashot, June 30, 1987; News from Within, May 13, 1986; Uriel Ben-Ami, Davar, Apr. 11; AP, BG, May

  26.

  62. See chapter 4, section 9.3.

  63. BG, LAT. May 31; AP, May 30.

  64. For Israeli reports on Ansar I, see pp. 231f. On the record of the next few years, see Pirates and Emperors, chapter 2, note 36. Reports from prisoners continue to appear. See David Sharrock, Guardian (London), May 25, 1997, on a man released after 12 years without trial, enduring torture by Israel’s mercenary forces, with regular checks by the Israeli army. On Ansar II, see Al-Hamishmar, Dec. 22, 1986, Jan. 27, 1987; Ha’aretz, July 13, 28, 1987.

  65. Glenn Frankel, WP, Manchester Guardian Weekly, May 22, Avi Katzman, Koteret Rashit, Apr. 20; Hadashot, Apr. 29, cited in News from Within, May 10, along with testimonies of prisoners.

  66. AP, May 19; Minneapolis Star-Tribune, June 1; for official figures, see Joel Brinkley, NYT, Apr. 25.

  67. Oren Cohen,Hadashot, Mar. 24; Peretz Kidron, Middle East International, May 14; AP, May 25.

  68. AI, Mar. 31.

  69. For detailed comparison of freedom of the press in Nicaragua under U.S. attack and Israel attacking its subject population, and of the reaction on the part of U.S. media and commentary to those simultaneous developments, see Necessary Illusions, Appendix V, sections 6-7. 70. AP, Apr. 17.

  71. Raja Shehadeh, personal communication; FACTS, Mar. 5-12. 72. Cohen,Hadashot, Mar. 27; Database Project on Palestinian Human Rights, Update, Mar. 21-Apr. 5; JP Mar. 30; Globe & Mail, Mar. 31. 73. AP, May 11; Database Project, Update, May 14, 1988.

  74. Eban, “Where is the grand vision?,” JP, May 29,1989.

  75. For detailed analysis of this complex affair, see particularly Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan (Columbia, 1988).

  76. NYT, Dec. 30,1989.

  77. See Necessary Illusions, Appendix V, section 4, for details. Howe, Symposium “What’s a Jew to Do?” Village Voice, May 18, 1988. 78. Friends of Peace Now, Newsletter, Winter/Spring 1989, based apparently on the Hebrew original, Shalom Achshav, Jerusalem, nd, the official Peace Now program; Inbari, New Outlook, Jan. 1989. 79. Rosenthal, “Editorial Notebook,” NYT, Oct. 22,1989.

  80. On the legislation, see Aryeh Rubinstein, JP, Nov. 14, 1985. See Pirates and Emperors, chapter 1, at note 17. Asher Felix Landau, JP, Dec. 27,

  1989, reviewing the High Court decision of Sept. 19, 1989. 81. Shapiro, JP Dec. 15; Yediot Ahronot, Dec. 15, 1989.

  82. Shapiro, Landau, op cit.

  83. Yediot Ahronot, Dec. 15, 1989.

  84. On Walzer’s beliefs and values with regard to these issues, see Towards a New Cold War, pp. 240f.

  85. AP, LAT, Feb. 6, 1989.

  86. For details, see Necessary Illusions, Appendix V, section 4, and my World Orders Old and New (Columbia, 1994; Epilogue 1996). 87. Nahum Barnea, “Happy in their lot,” Yediot Ahronot, Feb. 24, 1989. 88. Hadashot, Feb. 14; Friedman, NYT, Mar. 12,1989.

  89. On the aftermath, see references cited in note 86, this chapter, and chapter 10.

  9. “Limited War” in Lebanon*

  * Taken from “‘Limited War’ in Lebanon,” Z Magazine, September 1993. 1. The Rules of the Game

  O

  n July 25, 1993, Israel launched what the press described as its “biggest military assault on Lebanon” since the 1982 invasion. The assault was provoked by guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, killing seven Israeli soldiers.

  By the time a U.S.-arranged cease-fire took hold on July 31, about 125 Lebanese were reported killed, along with three Syrians and three Israelis, one a soldier in southern Lebanon, while about 500,000 people were driven from their homes, according to reports from Lebanon.1

  Journalists in Lebanon reported that 80% of the 80,000 inhabitants of Tyre joined the flood of refugees northwards. Villages were deserted, with many casualties and destruction of civilian dwellings by intensive bombardment. Nabatiye, with a population of 60,000, was described as “a ghost town” by a Lebanese reporter a day after the attack was launched. Inhabitants described the bombings as even more intense and destructive than during the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982. Those who had not fled were running out of food and water but were trapped in their villages, Mark Nicholson reported from Nabatiye in the Financial Times, because “any visible movement inside or outside their houses is likely to attract the attention of Israeli artillery spotters, who…were pounding shells repeatedly and devastatingly into selected houses.” Artillery shells were hitting some villages at a rate of more than 10 rounds a minute at times, he reported, while Israeli jets roared overhead, and in nearby Sidon, “the main Hammoud hospital was admitting new casualties every 15 minutes by late afternoon” of July 27. In Tripoli, 40 miles north of Beirut, a Palestinian refugee camp was attacked by Israeli planes firing missiles. Israeli naval forces bombarded coastal areas near Beirut and intercepted vessels approaching Lebanese ports, though whether they also resumed their longtime practice of kidnapping and killing passengers on the high seas is not reported.2

  An Israeli army (IDF) spokesman said that “70% of the village of Jibshit is totally destroyed.” The intent is “to destroy the village completely because of its importance to the Shiite population of southern Lebanon”; “The inhabitants of Jibshit will find the town in ruins.” Jibshit, reporter Aharon Klein notes, was the home of Sheikh Obeid, “kidnapped by Israel four years ago” in one of its many terrorist operations in Lebanon. Reporting from Jibshit, a veteran British Middle East correspondent added that Sheikh Obeid’s “home received a direct hit from a missile, although the Israelis were presumably gunning for his wife and three children—after all, they kidnapped the Sheikh in 1989 and still hold him in the Ashkelon prison in Israel.” The general aim is “to wipe the villages from the face of the earth and to sow destruction around them,” a senior officer of the northern command added. “In a cool and analytic manner, the IDF is engaged in ‘population removal’,” Meir Shalev writes, using the official term, borrowed from U.S. counterinsurgency literature in Vietnam.3

  Israel and the UN observer force (UNIFIL) estimate that there were 300-400 active guerrillas in south Lebanon, from the Iranian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God). Eight were reported killed, by Lebanese sources.4

  The reasons for the attack were made clear at once. Prime Minister Rabin informed the Israeli parliament th
at after Israeli forces killed Hizbollah leader Sheikh Abbas Mussawi in Lebanon in February 1992 well north of the “security zone,” Hizbollah changed “the rules of the game, adopting the policy that in response to our strikes north of the security zone—it reacts by firing on Israel”; Rabin neglected to mention that the helicopter attack that killed Mussawi on his way to Sidon from Jibshit, where he had spoken at a memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces, also killed his wife and five-year-old child, or that the Israeli helicopters then attacked a Volvo bringing victims of the first attack to a nearby hospital. As explained by Israeli Chief of Staff General Ehud Barak, “a pattern had emerged that Israel considered intolerable: Every time Hezbollah attacked an Israeli or pro-Israeli position inside the security zone, Israel would fire back at the attackers north of the zone. Then, the attackers would lob rockets at civilians in northern Israel rather than at military targets inside the zone as in the past.”5

  The “security zone” is a region of southern Lebanon that Israel has occupied in one or another form since its 1978 invasion. In recent years, it has been held by a terrorist mercenary army (the South Lebanon Army of General Lahd) backed by Israeli military forces. Any indigenous resistance to the rule of Israel and its proxies is considered “terrorism,” which Israel has a right to counter by attacking anywhere in Lebanon as it chooses (retaliation, preemption, or whatever)—what General Barak chooses to call “firing back at the attackers.” But the resistance has no right to retaliate by shelling northern Israel. These are the rules; one goal of Israel’s July attack was to reestablish them.

  The U.S. government agrees that these are to be the operative rules, while occasionally expressing qualms about the tactics used to enforce them—meanwhile providing a huge flow of arms and the required diplomatic support. Given Washington’s stand, it follows that the rules are unchallengeable background assumptions, merely presupposed in reporting and commentary. It is unnecessary to ask what the reaction would be if any state not enjoying Washington’s favor were to carry out comparable atrocities, in gross violation of international law and the UN Charter.

  On July 30, Hizbollah announced that rocket attacks on northern Israel could only end “with the complete and permanent halt of aggression against villages and civilians and the stopping of Israeli attacks from air, land and sea on all Lebanese territory.” The statement “received a testy response in Jerusalem,” the New York Times reported. Reviewing the Lebanese operation, the Cabinet did not even consider the Hizbollah proposal, the spokesman for the Rabin government said. That is understandable. The rules are that Israel is allowed to strike “villages and civilians” at will, anywhere, if its occupying forces are attacked in southern Lebanon. Since these rules are also accepted by Washington, the Hizbollah statement was dismissed here as well.6

  Secretary of State Warren Christopher was highly praised by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for arranging the cease-fire, which, according to Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, satisfied all of Israel’s demands, imposing its rules, thus granting the expected rewards for “benign aggression,” the category that is acceptable to the world ruler. The Israeli leaders informed the press “that the U.S.-brokered deal included an understanding that Israel and the southern Lebanese militia it sponsors would continue to operate freely inside Israel’s so-called security zone” in southern Lebanon, while rocketing of northern Israel will cease (Ethan Bronner). There must be “quiet, I stress, on both sides of the border,” Rabin emphasized, referring to the “security zone.” “The status of the security zone has not changed,” Peres added, “and if they try to plot against our forces there, or the South Lebanon Army forces there, we will take measures against them.” The meaning is clear. The new “understandings” permit Israel to carry out military operations at will anywhere in Lebanon, as in the past, if it perceives “plots” against its mercenary forces or its own military rule. The tacit assumption, surely, is that in such an eventuality, Israel will receive at worst a tap on the wrist accompanied by a new flow of weapons.7

  The occupation, which continues as of early 1999, is in violation of UN Security Council resolution 425 of March 1978, calling on Israel to withdraw immediately and unconditionally from Lebanon. The government of Lebanon has reiterated this demand, notably in February 1991 during the Gulf conflict; apart from odd corners like Z Magazine, the request was drowned out by the self-congratulatory oratory about the wondrous new order of law and justice. As Israel launched a new attack in July 1993, Lebanon again brought a complaint to the Security Council, reporting that Israeli military forces “had continued unabated their brutal and arbitrary war against Lebanon’s sovereignty, citizens and property,” reiterating that “The people of Lebanon would continue to exercise their right to resist occupation until Israel complied with Council resolution 425 (1978) and withdrew from the territory,” and calling on the Council to act to guarantee implementation of its resolutions.8

  Israel is free to ignore such minor annoyances as the Security Council and international law thanks to the stance of its superpower patron, which is powerful enough to ignore the UN or reduce it to an instrument of its foreign policy and to shape international law as it chooses, as was seen once again in the ludicrous legal arguments put forth to justify Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in June 1993.

  For the same reason, Israel is free to reject the concept of “terrorism” held by the international community, but rejected by the United States. The concept is spelled out in the major UN General Assembly resolution on terrorism (42/159, December 7, 1987), which condemns international terrorism and outlines measures to combat the crime, with one proviso: “that nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination, nor...the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and to seek and receive support [in accordance with the Charter and other principles of international law].” The resolution passed 153-2, U.S. and Israel opposed, Honduras alone abstaining. Naturally, Washington denies any right to resist the terror and oppression imposed by its clients. The pleas of the government of Lebanon are therefore ignored.9

  U.S. rejection of a General Assembly resolution amounts to a veto, and suffices to remove the issue from the realm of articulate opinion. Accordingly, when the PLO endorsed all UN resolutions on terrorism, Yasser Arafat was denounced with derision across the spectrum for his evasiveness on terror and his failure to repeat George Shultz’s “magic words” with appropriate humility; as Shultz now reports in his much acclaimed apologia, Turmoil and Triumph, he told Reagan in December 1988 that Arafat was saying in one place “‘Unc, unc, unc,’ and in another he was saying, ‘cle, cle, cle,’ but nowhere will he yet bring himself to say ‘Uncle’,” in the style expected of the lesser breeds.10

  Similarly, no one within the culture of respectability could dream of questioning the doctrine that Iran’s support for resistance against foreign occupation, in accord with the Charter and the near-unanimous resolution on terrorism, is still further evidence that it is a terrorist state—though Washington’s support for the illegal military occupation and its violence within and beyond does not suggest that the U.S. is a terrorist state. These are among the prerogatives of power.

  2. The Logic of Terror

  A

  s Operation Accountability (“Din ve-Heshbon”) began, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin informed the Israeli parliament that “we want to create a wave of flight.” The goal is not simply destruction, he explained, “but moving the population north, in the hope that this

  will signal something to the central authorities about the refugees who are likely to reach Beirut.” He said “that he planned to flood Beirut with refugees to press the Lebanese government to end the attacks,” as the New York Times paraphrased his inimitable prose. “He said I
srael would continue to blast villages as long as Katyusha rockets slammed into Israeli settlement towns in Galilee”—in retaliation against Israeli attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon to counter guerrilla attacks in the “security zone.” Israel’s plan, Army spokesman Michael Vromen stated, was to “create pressure on the Lebanese government [to rein in the Hizbollah guerrillas] by having as many refugees as possible gathered around Beirut.” The “limited war is a noisy, frightening ‘message’ in the words of officials [in Tel Aviv] that the south will be uninhabitable unless Hizbollah is stopped” (Bronner). “We believe that the Lebanese government of Rafik Hariri, which has been promising order and stability in Lebanon, will not allow this kind of chaos to continue for very long,” a senior Israeli official explained: “Between the population of the south, the Lebanese government and the Syrians, we are hoping Hezbollah will be stopped.” As the cease-fire was announced, Rabin stated that one of the goals of the operation, now achieved, had been “the use of firepower to create conditions to allow understandings with the power brokers who influence the terrorist organizations in Lebanon.”11

  A broader goal was outlined by Uri Lubrani, Israel’s coordinator of Lebanese policy. The purpose of the attack, he said, is to induce the Lebanese government to demand Syrian permission to negotiate directly with Israel. “This is an attempt to drive home a point,” Lubrani said. “Lebanese government, you claim you want to exercise authority over all of Lebanese territory. You want us to take you seriously in your negotiations. Go to your masters [in Damascus] and tell them: ‘Let me decide on my own fate’.”12 According to this conception, Israel is advancing the “peace process” by attacking Lebanon. That is entirely reasonable, if we understand the “peace process” to be a program for imposing U.S.-Israeli dominance over the region by a mixture of violence and diplomacy with a gun visibly cocked—as we should.