Fateful Triangle
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That’s a fair sample.
One intriguing feature is that the factual assertions are not even close to true. Israel did not “agree to quit West Bank” or “End Jews’ Biblical Claim on the West Bank.” It signed no “agreement extending Palestinian rule to most of West Bank” or “to eventually cede Israeli control of West Bank lands to the Palestinians.” Rabin never so much as hinted at an offer “of walling off the Gaza Strip and West Bank”; quite the contrary, he was adamant, clear, and consistent in stressing that nothing of the sort was even a remote possibility. And although Rabin’s “ideas about peace” had indeed “roamed far” from 1992, it was not quite in the direction indicated: in 1992, as in 1988 and before, Rabin was advocating the traditional Labor Party stand that Israel should keep about 40% of the occupied territories, not the far greater proportion he accepted on the Day of Awe.
As for what is “undeniable” and “irreversible,” readers can make their own guesses, recognizing that these are speculations lacking any serious factual basis. Those who “know” that Rabin’s course would lead to an authentic Palestinian state, not “a Palestinian Bantustan,” might want to explain why they dismiss out of hand not only all relevant facts, but also the explicit statements of the leadership, not only Rabin, but also Shimon Peres, even more of a “visionary dove” than Rabin. Explaining the Oslo II accords to a gathering of ambassadors in Jerusalem, Peres responded to the question whether the permanent settlement could involve a Palestinian state by making it crystal clear that “this solution about which everyone is thinking and which is what you want will never happen.” Two weeks before, journalist Amnon Barzilai reports further in Ha’aretz, Peres responded with a “resounding ‘No”’ when asked at a meeting with the editorial board of Newsweek whether a Palestinian state might be the eventual outcome. He proceeded with a “learned explanation,” which, however, was never completed, because the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial was just then broadcast, so the meeting had to stop, and afterwards the Newsweek editors were “too excited about the verdict” to return to his thoughts.33
Part of the standard story is indeed true. We should “Score One for Clinton” and observe what happened with Awe. The scale of the victory can only be appreciated by reviewing the history, almost totally suppressed in the US.—and, quite interestingly by now largely forgotten abroad, not only in Europe but in Latin America and elsewhere. The facts are not in dispute, and need not be reviewed here once again. In brief, from 1967 to 1971 the U.S. led the international consensus in support of a diplomatic settlement based on UN 242, which it understood as implying full peace in return for full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 (with perhaps minor and mutual modifications). When President Sadat of Egypt accepted these terms in February 1971 in what Rabin describes in his memoirs as a “famous…milestone” on the road to peace, the U.S. had to decide whether to keep to the policy it had crafted or join its Israeli ally in rejecting it. Kissinger insisted on “stalemate”—no negotiations, only force—and won out in the internal conflict, setting the U.S. on a lonely path as leader of the rejectionist camp, not only ignoring Palestinian rights (as did UN 242 and Sadat’s offer as well) but also rejecting one of the two paired requirements of UN 242: Israeli withdrawal. U.S. isolation deepened a few years later as the international consensus shifted to support for a two-state settlement incorporating the wording of UN 242, compelling Washington to veto Security Council resolutions, vote alone annually at the General Assembly (with Israel, and occasionally some other client state), and block all other diplomatic initiatives, a task that became increasingly complex from the early 1980s as the PLO more forcefully called for negotiations leading to mutual accommodation, but was handled with ease, thanks to the services of the intellectual community.34
It was not until the Gulf war established that ‘What We Say Goes,” in George Bush’s words, that the U.S. was able to initiate the Madrid negotiations, an authentic “peace process” because it was unilaterally run by Washington and restricted to its extremist agenda. The establishment of Washington’s rejectionist stand in Oslo I, and its affirmation in Oslo II, is an impressive achievement.34
The character of the triumph is revealed in a different way when we compare the reaction to the Rabin assassination with other cases, the most obvious one being the assassination of Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir) by Israeli commandos in Tunis in April 1988. This act of international terrorism was probably intended mostly for morale-building in Israel at the height of the popular uprising (Intifada), which Israel was then unable to suppress, despite considerable brutality. On little credible evidence, Abu Jihad was charged with directing the Intifada, a claim reported as fact in the U.S. media, which did, however, recognize that Abu Jihad was known “as one of the more moderate and thoughtful officials in the PLO hierarchy” (Washington Post). The Post also reported that “many Israelis celebrated his killing as evidence of Israel’s willingness and ability to strike back at alleged terrorist leaders” and that the assassination evoked “widespread applause from Israelis, ranging from the liberal left to the far right.” The State Department condemned “this act of political assassination,” but that was the end of the matter. There were no regrets, flags at half-mast, laments about the fate of the peace process, or other moving commentary. Abu Jihad was not a “martyr for peace.”35
Why not? One possible reason is that he was a terrorist; true, but plainly irrelevant. His terrorist career, while bloody enough, did not even bring him close to those honored as “men of peace,” including Rabin and Peres, or still more obviously, the statesmen who praise them. Another possible reason is that he opposed the “peace process.” That too is true, at least in a technical sense. He did oppose U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, joining most of the rest of the world in advocating a twostate settlement to be achieved by negotiations leading to mutual recognition. If we adopt the usage of doctrinal convention, he opposed “the peace process,” insisting on something other than a peace of the victors in which the Palestinians become “just another crushed nation.”
Adopting the technical usage, we can make sense of the weird comments of Dennis Ross, chief Middle East negotiator for the Bush and Clinton Administrations, reported by Times Middle East specialist Elaine Sciolino. Ross describes how in March 1993 Rabin presented Clinton with a “brilliant, cogent, clear-cut argument” explaining “exactly why the delegates then negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians would not be able to deliver”—to deliver a nonrejectionist settlement recognizing the rights of the indigenous population alongside of Israel, Sciolino refrains from adding. But the PLO refused to accept Rabin’s brilliant argument: “at that point they hadn’t demonstrated they were prepared to make peace,” Ross “recalled”; Sciolino’s term “recalled” implies that the recollection is accurate (one doesn’t “recall” what didn’t happen), as indeed it is, if “making peace” means accepting U.S.-Israeli terms, rejecting UN 242 and any thought of self-determination. When we adopt the conventions, Ross’s statement is transformed from gibberish to simple truth, and Sciolino is not misleading her readers by reporting all of this as factually accurate. A little confusing perhaps, but with a proper education it all works out.36
We might ask what the authentic martyr for peace was up to when Abu Jihad was assassinated—at Rabin’s “enthusiastic” initiative, Times correspondent John Kifner reported from Jerusalem. Then Defense Minister, Rabin had ordered his troops to suppress the Intifada by brutality and terror and, shortly after, to attack villages using plastic bullets, because more casualties.., is precisely our aim,” “our purpose is to increase the number [of wounded] among those who take part in violent activities.” Their “violent activities” are to dare to assert that they are free, Rabin explained: “We want to get rid of the illusion of some people in remote villages that they have liberated themselves,” and by military attacks that produce “more casualties,” we “make it clear to them where they live and within which framework,” teaching familiar
lessons in Western Civ. Shortly after, when the U.S. was driven to a “dialogue” with the PLO in a last-ditch effort to derail their increasingly irritating calls for negotiations leading to mutual recognition, Rabin assured a delegation of Peace Now leaders that the dialogue was of no significance, merely a delaying action intended to grant Israel at least a year to suppress the Intifada by “harsh military and economic pressure”—exactly what happened, allowing the “peace process” to resume on course.37
Plainly Rabin is a martyr for peace and Abu Jihad a terrorist who deserved his fate.
We might also ask what Washington’s men of peace were doing at that crucial moment in 1988 when the U.S. and Israel were desperately trying to fend off the growing threat of diplomatic settlement The leading figure among them was surely George Shultz, untainted by Reaganite scandal. Just before Abu Jihad was assassinated, Shultz was pursuing his “peace mission” in Jordan, where he “explained his understanding of the aspirations of Palestinians,” Elaine Sciolino reported, offering the example of the United States, where he is a Californian and George Bush a Texan, but they have no problem living in harmony. Palestinian aspirations can be handled in the same civilized way under whatever arrangements U.S.-Israeli power dictate; blandly reported, plainly uncontroversial.38
Shultz’s understanding of the adversary’s aspirations has echoes elsewhere, as recent news reminds us. A week before Rabin’s assassination, Fathi Shiqaqi, head of Islamic Jihad, was shot in the back and killed in Malta, “probably by Israeli agents,” the Times reported. As in the case of Abu Jihad, Israel did not take responsibility, though the press did so with “huge headlines,” Israeli correspondent Haim Baram reports. Reports and commentaries extolled “the long arm of Israel” and “the night of revenge,” praising the murder and warning that “Israel will punish whoever is responsible for the killing of Jews,” while “both Rabin and Peres hinted gleefully that Mossad was involved.” Peres commented that “Islamic Jihad are killers, so it’s one less killer”— true enough, though again one might observe that Peres’s own achievements put them well in the shade, not to speak of George Shultz.39
Shiqaqi’s position on peace was the mirror image of Shultz’s. Shiqaqi probably understood the “aspirations of Israelis” in the Shultz style, and would have accepted an outcome in which Jews lived submissively under Palestinian rule. On non-racist assumptions, then, either both Shultz and Shiqaqi are men of peace, or both are murderous terrorists who deserve the fate that only one has suffered. Fortunately such assumptions are unthinkable, so we need not pursue the exercise.
While Abu Jihad and (obviously) Fathi Shiqaqi do not enter the Pantheon, some Arabs do. When Rabin was assassinated, alongside the front-page story in the Boston Globe reporting that “peace has claimed another victim,” the adjacent column recalled the assassination of Anwar Sadat—who qualifies as a peacemaker not because of his acceptance of a full peace treaty with Israel in terms of official U.S. policy in 1971, a “famous milestone” banned from history, but because of his visit to Jerusalem in 1977, opening the way to the Camp David settlement, admissible because it kept to Washington’s rejectionist demands.40
The phrase “Day of Awe” is not out of place. The U.S. has carried out a very impressive power play The events are a remarkable testimony to the rule of force in international affairs and the power of doctrinal management in a sociocultural setting in which successful marketing is the highest value and the intellectual culture is obedient and unquestioning. The victory is not only apparent in the terms of Oslo I and II and the facts on the ground, but also in the demolition of unacceptable history, the easy acceptance of the most transparent falsehoods, and the state of international opinion, now so submissive on this issue that commentators and analysts have literally forgotten the positions they and their governments advocated only a few years ago, and can even see that “Israel agrees to quit West Bank” when they know perfectly well that nothing of the sort is true. That is really impressive, and instructive.
3. “Another Crushed Nation”?*
T
he Oslo II agreement and its aftermath take another long step towards establishing the triumph of firm and dedicated U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, in isolation from world opinion but holding the guns and other levers of power.
Useful instruction on such matters was provided by the influential neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol as the project of the past quarter century took shape. He pointed out that “insignificant nations, like insignificant people, can quickly experience delusions of significance,” which must be driven from their primitive minds by force: “In truth, the days of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ are never over... Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order.”
The sentiments are not original, of course. Fifty years earlier, the eminent British statesman Lloyd George had praised his government for having undermined a disarmament treaty, recognizing the importance of “reserving the right to bomb niggers.” A few years before, another admired statesman had expressed his enthusiasm for “using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”—specifically Kurds and Afghans, but “recalcitrant Arabs” generally (Winston Churchill). The racist diatribes of Theodore Roosevelt—not to speak of the practices he lauded and advocated—would be familiar to anyone who had taken a high school course in authentic American history. There is little novelty when centuries of intellectual history converge on the judgment that Palestinians should “be turned into just another crushed nation, like the
*Taken from “The ‘Peace Process’ in U.S. Global Strategy,” in Haim Gordon, ed., Looking Back at the June 1967 War (Praeger, 1999).
Kurds or the Afghans,” thus putting an end to the “boring” Palestinian problem (Martin Peretz).41 Kristol’s ire had been aroused by Middle East upstarts who had dared to raise the price of oil beyond what the master preferred. More sweeping proposals for dealing with this insubordination were offered at the same time by Walter Laqueur, another highly regarded public intellectual and scholar. He urged that Middle East oil “could be internationalized, not on behalf of a few oil companies, but for the benefit of the rest of mankind.” If the insignificant people do not perceive the justice and benevolence of this procedure, we can send the gunboats.
Laqueur did not draw the further conclusion that the industrial and agricultural resources of the West might also be internationalized, “not on behalf of a few corporations, but for the benefit of the rest of mankind,” even though “by the end of 1973, U.S. wheat exports cost three times as much per ton as they had little more than a year before,” to cite just one illustration of the sharp rise in commodity prices that preceded or accompanied the rise of oil prices. Those who perceive an inconsistency need only be reminded of the crucial distinction between significant and insignificant people.
As discussed earlier, Palestinians are not only “insignificant people” but are much lower in the ranking, because they interfere with the plans of the world’s most “significant people”: privileged Americans and Israeli Jews (as long as they keep their place). Worse yet, instead of sinking into the oblivion that becomes them, “Palestinian Arabs [are] people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery,” Ruth Wisse explained in a prestigious intellectual journal. That is “the obvious key to the success of the Arab strategy” of driving the Jews into the sea in a revival of the Nazi Lebensraum concept, she continued. Then a professor at McGill University, she moved to Harvard to take a chair endowed by Martin Peretz.42
One cannot fully understand the “peace process” without an appreciation of the cultural milieu from which it arises, illustrated not only by such thoughts of prominent Western intellectuals, but more significantly by the fact that they pass without notice, apparently being considered quite natural, though change of a few names would elicit a rather different reaction.43
Whether the U.S. and Israel decide to call the cantons they allow the PLO to “govern” a “state” or something else—perhaps “fried chi
cken” as David Bar-Illan elegantly suggested44—the results are likely to resemble the Bantustan model. No one familiar with the situation in the territories created by the Rabin-Peres-[Benjamin] Netanyahu governments and their predecessors will fail to recognize the picture given in a standard work of African history:
South African retention of effective power through its officials in the Bantustans, its overwhelming economic influence and security arrangements gave to this initiative [of elections] elements of a farce. However, unlikely candidates as were the Bantustans for any meaningful independent existence, their expanding bureaucracies provided jobs for new strata of educated Africans tied to the system in a new way and a basis of accumulation for a small number of Africans with access to loans and political influence. Repression, too, could be indigenised through developing homeland policy and army personnel. On the fringe of the Bantustans, border industry growth centres were planned as a means of freeing capital from some of the restraints that influx control imposed on industrial expansion elsewhere and to take advantage of virtually captive and particularly cheap labour. Within the homelands economic development was more a matter of advertising brochures than actual practical activity although some officials in South Africa understood the needs from their own perspective for some kind of revitalisation of the homelands to prevent their economies from collapsing even further.45
So far, Israeli officials have not recognized any need to keep the economies of the cantons from collapsing even further, though sooner or later they may see the merit in the demands of Israeli industrialists for a “transition from colonialism to neo-colonialism” in the territories, with the collaboration of “the representatives of the Palestinian bourgeoisie,” thus creating “a situation similar to the relations between France and many of its former colonies in Africa”—or the U.S. and Mexico, Western investors and the Third World that is being restored in Eastern Europe, international capital in southeast China, etc.